Grain grading isn’t strictly the realm of elevator operators and private consultants. The information you need to survey your own grain’s quality — short of an official grade — is publicly available, according to recent seminars hosted by Saskatchewan producer groups.
Saskatchewan wheat, barley, canola and flax associations hosted officials from the Canadian Grain Commission for a crash course on grain grading in Indian Head and Swift Current in November to give producers the tools to carry out their own quality assessments.
The idea behind giving farmers the ability to do their own grading is part giving them a better feel for what they have and give grain growers better information when marketing their products, said Joey Vanneste, CGC operations supervisor.
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Armed with that information, “they can go out and market their grain to achieve top dollar for their product.”
Said information — such as proper sieve sizes and techniques, how to identify fusarium, sprout and pest damage, and the procedures and equipment required for test weights — is available through the commission’s Official Grain Grading Guide, Vanneste says. You can find that guide online.
“Producers are educating themselves in grading,” Vanneste says. “It’s not that at the end of the day they are going to be grain graders but we’re trying to educate people on the process and where they can find the information.”
The more producers know about the quality of their product, the easier it will be to market it — and that’s a skill gap seminars such as Grade School help close, says Cody Glenn, a SaskBarley board member.
“Older-generation farmers were used to selling to the Canadian Wheat Board and it was kind of all handled. When the wheat board went away and we had to start marketing our own grain, now we have to determine what we have,” he says. “The younger generation is OK with that, but I think there is a pretty good gap with the older generation not used to it.”
Glenn notes the Grain Grading Guide is updated before the growing season, to give producers the latest information.
“But if people don’t know it’s out there, they aren’t going to use it and that’s why something like this (seminar) really drives it home to producers so that they have a better understanding of how it works,” said Glenn.
Baillie Shewkenek, who took in the Grade School in Swift Current, says farmers having the ability to better assess quality is part of the new reality of farming.
“You have to be state-of-the-art in knowledge and you can never stop learning,” he says. “With technology and crop advancements coming as quickly in this day and age, you need to be attending everything you can to learn as much as possible.”
And with tight margins, it’s essential to have as much information about your product as you can. “If you are one grade out on 100,000 bushels, you could be out $10,000 to $100,000 difference, so you need to know what the options are and protocols are if you disagree with the assessment,” Shewkenek says.
Those protocols include being able to appeal a grade at the elevator to the CGC, with the results binding on both parties.
Growers can also get in on the CGC Harvest Sample Program, Vanneste says. That program provides farmers with unofficial grades for all 21 officially recognized grains.
CGC researchers studying grain quality use program samples, which are also analyzed to produce crop quality reports that marketers use to promote Canadian grain.
