GrainsWest Winter 2020

Winter 2020 grainswest.com 35 to do a lot more adjusting to your process to ensure that the quality of that final flour to your bakers stays the same. It’s a lot of extra work.” Canadian wheat importer Juan Carlos Arriola, director of plant operations at Moderna Alimento in Ecuador, agrees. The company processes 700 tonnes of Canadian wheat daily, and Ecuador imports 300,000 tonnes of Canadian wheat annually. “We use Canadian wheat for everything,” said Arriola, a member of the quality evaluation team of the PGDC. With more than 20 years’ experience in milling, he provides valuable feedback on end-user requirements. “Every company in Ecuador that produces flour for bread is buying CWRS from Canada,” he said. Millers need to have a wheat class that is dependable, and consistency is key, said Arriola. “You don’t want to adjust your process every time you receive a new vessel of wheat. The Canadian grading system provides you that kind of consistency on the quality side.” There are distinct differences between how the Canadian and U.S. systems operate. In the U.S., for instance, Dark Northern Spring wheat is more of a grade standard than a classification standard. “A U.S. farmer isn’t going to know whether he’s delivering Dark Northern Spring until that product gets into the elevator, is delivered into the U.S. system, and the tests for quality specifications come back,” said Dahl. In Canada, we don’t have to do that because there’s an inherent quality in each of those classes, he continued. “The grain company is already going to have a pretty good idea of what the quality specifications are because we already know it’s a CWRS class,” he said. The main difference between the systems is U.S. grain spends a long time in the commercial handling end. It sometimes takes grain companies months to test for quality specifications. This type of infrastructure is very expensive, said Dahl. In Canada, on the other hand, grain will spend maybe two weeks in the commercial handling system, and elevators have a pretty good idea of quality even before the grain comes in. The U.S. competes with Canada in markets such as Japan, which pays a premium for quality. The U.S. delivers quality wheat, said Dahl, but does so in a very different way. Regardless, the inconsistencies in the U.S. system have created space for new business models, such as Shepherd’s Grain, a milling company owned and operated by the farmers who supply its wheat. Shepherd’s Grain was developed to promote no-till, direct-seed farming that relies on minimal inputs. Its members believe their farming practices are directly tied to the resulting quality. Rod Lanier is one of two Alberta farmers who work with Shepherd’s Grain. And while both farmers deliver wheat to the U.S.-based company, they grow Canadian varieties. Canada’s “We’re delivering reliable, consistent quality. We have to ensure that we work to maintain that brand identity.” —CamDahl registration system has made choosing a wheat variety that produces top-quality flour a relatively simple task. Lanier has chosen three, mostly older registered durum varieties, that perfectly fit the needs of Shepherd’s Grain clients. Without the variety registration system in place, he believes it would have been much more difficult to consistently choose successful durum varieties. “If we had just grown anything, I don’t think we would have been successful keeping the pasta customers that we do have,” he said. “It’s a combination of variety and the way we farm—that’s why we still have customers.” Alberta grain farmer Jason Saunders also supplies durum to Shepherd’s Grain. Saunders likes the fact the company is farmer owned. Prices are not commodity-based, but rather reflect the cost of production, milling and distribution. The model provides a year-long stable price for Shepherd’s Grain customers while removing middlemen in the process. QUALITY IS CRUCIAL “Before the Black Sea advances, there was a case to be made for competing on lower protein, high-yielding wheat varieties because that significant competition just wasn’t there,” said Dahl. “But the market is changing and has changed, and our competitive advantage has become that brand, which is reliable, consistent quality.” It’s branding that he said was not concocted by the Canadian grain industry, but has been self-generated by the strength of the product. “That’s what we’re hearing from customers on why they buy Canadian,” he said. “We’re delivering reliable, consistent quality. We have to ensure that we work to maintain that brand identity.”