By: Erica Olson
Posted: Dec 23 2024
It is widely known that North Dakota producers grow some of the highest quality wheat in the world and customers are willing to pay a premium for our wheat classes compared to other sources. When you’re producing high quality wheat at a premium price, promoting that quality and why it is beneficial is extremely important. Promoting and explaining quality to customers around the world has been the goal of the U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) and regional crop quality reports and seminars for decades. The quality reports include thousands of quality data points on six classes of wheat covering grading, kernel characteristics, milling, bake and pasta quality. Producing the reports is a months long process with collaboration from state wheat commissions, quality labs and USDA. The grand finale of this effort is the in-person crop quality seminars that USW coordinates across seven regions, reaching thousands of customers.
The reports and seminars help reinforce our commitment to quality and transparency of data. While the data for each year is important, it is maybe even more important for customers to compare the data from the previous year in order to prepare for new crop changes in the mills, bakeries, and pasta plants. Erica Olson, Market Development & Research Manager for NDWC traveled this year with the Sub-Saharan Africa crop quality team. This region is a bit different from traditional customers in Asia, Europe and Central America where quality is well known. “In this region, having adequate supplies to feed their growing population is more important, but there is great potential in this region as incomes rise and also for use of HRS as an improver wheat. Having a consistent, reliable supply of wheat is even more important as geopolitical issues and conflict have impacted supply flows of wheat,” said Olson. The African region shows great potential for increased demand.
The quality information was also shared with customers in North and southeast Asia, Europe, Central and South America, North Africa and the Middle East. Seminar presenters include university professors, retired U.S. wheat milling and quality professionals and state Commission and USW staff, and at times U.S. producers.
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