Falling numbers

Falling numbers

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
“It is probably the beautifulest crop I have ever seen, some of the highest yields I have ever seen and now that we have a falling number it is pretty disheartening when you have 130 bushel wheat and you have a falling number about 200 and you are looking at a discount of one dollar.”

 

Randy Allstad, general manager of the Pacific Northwest region for Columbia Grain expresses the perplexed feelings of many wheat farmers on the Camas Prairie of North Idaho.

 

"Nobody could have really planned for what happened this year. We're not even sure what happened. We don't know if it was weather, we don't know what time the weather was bad or if it’s varieties and weather or if it is nutrition varieties and weather.”

 

Whatever the reason, growers are reporting low falling numbers. Falling numbers refers to the decline of starch in wheat kernels which makes the soft white and club wheat which is grown in the region and sold at premium prices to Japan and other high end buyers unfit for baking flour. The falling numbers test is the accepted Worldwide standard wheat buyers request on all wheat before they purchase it. The test is like making gravy. Flour is mixed with boiling water as food technologist Art Bedke explains. "The starch and flour slurry are down here and is being boiled. As the temperature is rising the starch begins to gelatinize. It's the same thing is throwing the flower and cornstarch into your gravy, a little heat, a little water, mix it around and starts thickening up. Same thing is going on in here. It is measuring how thick the slurry becomes. At the end of 60 seconds worth of mixing it's going to stop and put the weight on top of that bunch of starch and it's just going to wait and count how many seconds it takes for the plunger to fall… Hence the name, falling number.” And that determines the price of the wheat. More tomorrow.

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