GRADING OF WHEAT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20732, 20 May 1937, Page 6

GRADING OF WHEAT

NEW SYSTEM ADVOCATED By Telegraph—Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, May 19 The institution of a grading system for the handling of wheat and the abolition of the quota system as it affects mills in New Zealand were points advocated by Mr Sten Abdon, an eminent Swedish cereal chemist who is at present in Christchurch. For three weeks Mr Abdon has been working in the city studying the Dominion’s wheat, flour and baking standards, and this morning in an interview he gave his observations on the results of his research. “The wheat you have here is average baking quality, the equivalent of average Australian samples in normal years,” said Mr Abdon, “but when you get bad harvesting weather there is a high amount of sprouted wheat and deterioration in baking quality. The present wheat handling system does not protect the miller in that he has to take the wheat whether it is sprouted or not and has to pay the same price for it. That is not fair to the miller or to the baker. In other countries, Indeed in most wheat producing countries of the world, a wheat grading system on a moisture base has been introduced and that means that the miller pays a fixed price for wheat of average moisture content, say 15.5 per cent., and then there is a premium for dry wheat and a dockage for wheat above the average moisture content."