Promoting U.S. and Northwest wheat to the Saudis

Farm and Ranch March 21, 2011 In 2008 Saudi Arabia made the decision to stop trying to be self-sufficient in wheat and move entirely to imports by 2016. Wheat production was depleting the nation’s scarce water resources.

U.S. Wheat Associates recently put on a crop quality seminar in Riyadh. Washington Grain Commission vice president Glen Squires attended that seminar and says there was a presentation about soft white wheat.

Squires: “One of the presentations was given by Peter Lloyd, a milling consultant for U.S. Wheat Associates. He discussed with them the benefits of blending wheats. You can get the same functionality by blending hard red winter and soft white. Same functionality but you can actually increase your profit margin because soft white is typically lower priced. (Did that raise a few eyebrows?) There was a lot of interest in that. A lot of interest. So the Saudi government is also privatizing their milling industry as well. So there are a lot of changes going on in the country and wheat is kind of center place.”

Shortly after that seminar the Saudis purchased 220-thousand metric tons of U.S. hard wheat shipped out of the Pacific Northwest.

From Riyadh Squires traveled to Oman for a seminar with Iranian millers. That story tomorrow.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net.

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