August 6, 2003

Hectic times loom when, at the end of the year, 8000 Western Australian graingrowers could pull a record harvest of more than 12 million tonnes of grain from their fields and deliver them for export around the world.

It is hard to believe looking at them now, but receival points will be frantic with activity as convoys of trucks arrive, one after the other, in a race to get a resurgent grain crop ‘in the bin’.

Compounding the intensity of harvest are a string of technologies designed to help growers get their grain off the paddock during the crucial window when they are at their best. The length of the harvest season is shrinking while, seasons willing, harvest sizes continue to climb.

These trends will put great pressure on receival points to accept a lot of grain quickly. During the  Grains Research & Development Corporation (GRDC) Board’s recent Western Australia visit, we toured CBH’s Metro Grains Centre and were told of a system they propose will slash the time taken for growers to deliver grain.

It will allow accredited growers, with demonstrable quality assurance (QA) systems, to account for the quality of their own grain and therefore by-pass many of the quality checks which can protract delivery times.

From the GRDC’s perspective, it seems a natural progression for growers to take a greater responsibility for the grain they deliver. The GRDC has invested millions of dollars to develop a comprehensive dossier of specifications for an expanding array of markets and those specifications must be overtly met by growers.

As markets continue to fragment and processors refine their specifications, the GRDC will help breed the best varieties to meet those specifications and grain handling must adjust to handle a complex range of new products.

With more grain, divided into more classes, being delivered over a shorter time, handling systems will need grower managed QA systems to help direct an intense grain traffic flow.

Apart from saving growers some time during deliveries, QA agreements with handlers shape as the backbone of the future grain supply chain.