Harvested crop samples

Sep 29, 2020

With harvest underway in Alberta, a reminder that a step to marketing is knowing the product that you have to offer.

‘Producers should be taking samples of each load as the crop is placed into storage to create a representative sample for each bin,’ explains Neil Blue, provincial crop market analyst with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry.

‘The goal is to have a sample that has the same characteristics as the large volume of product that it represents. Producers will then have a sample that can be used to shop around with various potential buyers.’

The samples should be stored in a sealed contained to identify the source bin.

‘This container should keep out rodents and insects and preserve representative moisture content to maintain sample integrity. Some grain companies provide zip lock bags just for this purpose, which in turn, could be kept in a larger sealed container,’ he adds.

The Canadian Grain Commission offers its Harvest Sample Program.

‘It gives producers a free, unofficial grade on several samples from the current year’s crop. Producers can submit samples of newly harvested crop prior to November and obtain base grade information for their marketing at no charge. This program also helps the Canadian Grain Commission, the Canadian International Grains Institute, and grain buyers to better know, in a general way, the quality of the crop.’

Producers can learn more and sign up for the Harvest Sample Program online, over the phone, or email. The Commission sends participating producers a personalized kit, including postage-paid envelopes for the samples. Upon grading of the submitted samples, grade results are retrievable via phone, e-mail or through the CGC internet site. These results include:

unofficial grade for each sample submitted
dockage assessment, oil, protein and chlorophyll content for canola
oil, protein and iodine values for flaxseed
oil and protein levels for mustard seed and soybeans
protein content on barley, beans, chickpeas, lentils, oats, peas and wheat
deoxynivalenol (DON) content and Falling Number for wheat

Source : alberta.ca

Video: US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Eric van Heugten, PhD, professor and swine extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recently spoke at the Iowa Swine Day Pre-Conference Symposium, titled Soybean Meal 360°: Expanding our horizons through discoveries and field-proven feeding strategies for improving pork production. The event was sponsored by Iowa State University and U.S. Soy.

Soybean meal offers pig producers a high-value proposition. It’s a high-quality protein source, providing essential and non-essential amino acids to the pig that are highly digestible and palatable. Studies now show that soybean meal provides higher net energy than current National Research Council (NRC) requirements. Plus, soybean meal offers health benefits such as isoflavones and antioxidants as well as benefits with respiratory diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

One of several ingredients that compete with the inclusion of soybean meal in pig diets is dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS).

“With DDGS, we typically see more variable responses because of the quality differences depending on which plant it comes from,” said Dr. van Heugten. “At very high levels, we often see a reduction in performance especially with feed intake which can have negative consequences on pig performance, especially in the summer months when feed intake is already low and gaining weight is at a premium to get them to market.”

Over the last few decades, the industry has also seen the increased inclusion of crystalline amino acids in pig diets.

“We started with lysine at about 3 lbs. per ton in the diet, and then we added methionine and threonine to go to 6 to 8 lbs. per ton,” he said. “Now we have tryptophan, isoleucine and valine and can go to 12 to 15 lbs. per ton. All of these, when price competitive, are formulated into the diet and are displacing soybean meal which also removes the potential health benefits that soybean meal provides.”