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No 'typical year' in sample analysis biz - AG Week

GRAND FORKS, N.D. — “I don’t remember the last time we had a typical year,” says Darren Vanek, perhaps summarizing effects of variable weather and climate trends on agricultural businesses in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana, Iowa and Nebraska..

Vanek, 38, for the past 10 years, has been the quality assurance specialist for the Grand Forks office of Northern Plains Grain Inspection Service, as well as second office in Devils Lake, N.D. The company is a federally licensed but privately owned company. Its purpose is to operate official inspections and be a third party inspector grain quality in transactions, most often between grain terminals, buyers and sellers. About 90% of rail shipments are traded on official inspections. Every car is inspected.

The company handles all official inspections in North Dakota from Rugby to Harvey, and east into Minnesota, covering an area as far east as Fosston, Minn., and north to Roseau.

“Every year is different, has its own issue, in supply or demand,” Vanek says. “The difference this year is how delayed everything is. As far as the corn goes, everybody knows it’s out in the field.”

Wheat, corn and soybeans are the biggest commodities shipped by rail, which is the bulk of what the laboratories do. In some areas, barley, canola and others grains might also be a factor. They also do pulses — edible beans, lentils and field peas.

A laboratory like this only makes judgments on the individual samples, so officials make no sweeping generalizations about what they see.

The service also handles samples that will help determine quality factors for crop insurance quality loss purposes. Typically those samples would have come in by last Christmastime. “Now, there’s still (crop) in the field. We’re getting a few of those samples still.” He says the sample numbers aren’t so extraordinary.

“We’re never told where they’ve taken the sample," he says. It could be from corn in a snowdrift they want to get to eventually, or an area where they can access with a combine and want to find out what the quality is before they combine it. From December to late March, the company had brought in only about 30 corn samples.

Parties usually request a “full grade.” That means the whole sample would be graded for test weight, moisture content, damage and “BCFM” (broken corn and foreign material). This is usually for a crop insurance claim. “Any amount of mold on the inside of the kernel is considered damage,” he says. “For external mold, it has to be a certain coverage.”

There have been too few samples to describe any trend, but that’s not the job of the lab, he says.

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No 'typical year' in sample analysis biz - AG Week
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