The Rural Voice, 1987-05, Page 30Spring Planting
Time is H0' -e
STECKLE'S
HURON
RIDGE
ACRES
Providing Friendly Service
with Quality Products
• Shade Trees
• Evergreen Shrubs
• Flowering Shrubs
• Potted Rose Bushes
• Fruit Trees & Fruit Bushes
• Perennial Plants
ONE OF THE LARGEST SELECTIONS
OF HOMEGROWN BEDDING PLANTS
IN HURON COUNTY
David & Carol Steckle
& Family
R.R. 2, Zurich 565-2122
Open Weekdays to 9 p.m.
Sat. 'til 5 p.m.
During May —
Sun. 1:30 to 5 p.m.
28 THE RURAL VOICE
NEWS
SO-CALLED "BLACK" WHEAT VARIETY IS BEING
GROWN FOR PLANNED BRUCE ETHANOL PLANT
At a recent meeting of the Huron
Federation of Agriculture, some far-
mers expressed concern about a rumour
that a large land -holding company had
imported a variety of "black" wheat.
"Black" wheat, according to the
rumour, is used in the dark European
breads, and if put on the market could
downgrade Canadian milling wheat and
damage Ontario wheat exports.
Ross Addemas, general manager of
the Ontario Wheat Producers Market-
ing Board, which markets all wheat
grown in Ontario, says the board has
been aware of the rumour but had no
knowledge of any unregistered varieties
of wheat. The board had asked
Agriculture Canada for information, he
says, but had not received a reply.
Companies seeking to register a
variety, Addemas says, would have to
submit test data to the Standards
Committee of Agriculture Canada to
determine if yield, disease, lodging,
sprouting, milling, and baking quality
met the standards for Ontario wheat.
brought into Canada without the
approval of Agriculture Canada."
Agriculture Canada, which licenses
wheat varieties for specific uses, is
aware of the Adam acreage and will
continue to monitor the crop, says
Tom Hoddson, program co-ordinator of
the Seed Division of the Food Pro-
duction Branch of Agriculture Canada.
"A company has received authorization
to import and plant a non -registered
variety of wheat and to distribute,
continue to produce, export, feed, or
use it for industrial purposes," he adds.
The Adam wheat, says Helmut
Sieber, is being produced experimen-
tally for possible use in a pilot ethanol -
production plant proposed for the
Bruce Energy Station. The plant is
now at the design stage.
Adam is a high -protein, high -
yielding variety that has the potential
to yield 100 bushels per acre with up
to 18 per cent protein. In addition to
Adam, Sieber says, Canadian Agra has
extensive test plots of other varieties
WHAT IS ETHANOL?
Ethanol, or grain alcohol, can be
produced with sugars from fruits and
sugar canes, but more often the
starches of grains are converted to
sugars by enzymes. Those sugars are
then fermented, a process which
produces the alcohol found in bever-
ages as well as in ethanol.
Grain alcohol, however, has been
put to industrial use. In recent years,
the tetraethyl lead component of high-
octane gasoline has been judged a
damaging pollutant, and efforts are
underway to eliminate it from fuels.
Grain alcohol or ethanol is
chemically similar and is being used
more and more as a replacement for
tetraethyl lead. With minor engine
adjustments, ethanol can even be
used alone as a motor fuel.
Denatured alcohol is also grain
alcohol to which another substance
has been added to make it undrinkable
or to adapt it to industrial uses.0
The milling quality of wheat is
specific to variety; a good bread wheat,
for example, would make a poor pastry
flour, and an untested variety mixed in
could ruin either.
It turns out, in fact, that there is
between 2,500 to 2,800 acres of an
imported red winter wheat called Adam
being grown by Canadian Agra, a
Wingham-based company with exten-
sive land holdings and interests in
several other agriculture -related busi-
nesses. But as Helmut Sieber, presi-
dent of Canadian Agra, notes, "Not
even one little packet of seed has been
of wheat in order to assess their value
for the proposed ethanol plant.
Until Adam is licensed, Sieber
added, it will be grown only on
Canadian Agra land by company per-
sonnel. When the ethanol plant near
the Bruce nuclear plant is in produc-
tion and the wheat is licensed, the
company will seek contract growers.
Until then, the crop will be stored.
According to Sieber, a plant pro-
ducing only ethanol is not profitable,
but by extracting high quality protein
as well, such a plant is quite feasible.
(cont'd)