Wheat organizations gather to see how North Dakota does wheat

GRAND FORKS, N.D. — Wheat growers from across the United States got an education on North Dakota spring wheat production and processing during a leadership training session organized by the National Wheat Foundation.

Thirteen men and women attended the training held April 2-5, 2024. During the event, the officers and committee chairs of National Association of Wheat Growers, National Wheat Foundation and U.S. Wheat toured the Arthur Companies greenhouse on the North Dakota State University campus and the Northern Crops Institute in Fargo, North Dakota, and the North Dakota Mill in Grand Forks. The wheat organization leaders also learned about parliamentary procedure and public speaking.

The combination of learning about the wheat industry through tours and learning skills like public speaking is beneficial when wheat industry leaders talk to congressional leaders, especially this year, when a farm bill is being drafted, said Anne Osborne, a National Wheat Foundation project manager and a Sibley, North Dakota, wheat farmer, who organized the tour.

In 2023 Osborne organized a similar tour in Kentucky and the year before that, in Oklahoma. Farmers in those two states grow winter wheat.

Keeff Felty, National Association of Wheat Growers president, visited North Dakota for the first time during the tour. Felty, a hard, red winter wheat farmer had never been in a mill as large as the North Dakota mill, he said.

The North Dakota mill cleans and mills more than 130,000 bushels of North Dakota spring wheat daily.

The tour for the leadership group led them through the milling process from cleaning the wheat, to turning it into flour to packing it and putting it on freight cars.

“This mill tour is really interesting,” Felty said.

Seeing the way the wheat is milled puts into real-world perspective what the wheat industry members learned during a milling class they attended in Kansas, said Frank Wong, who works for Bayer Crop Science.

“After taking the Kansas City wheat course, all of this makes sense,” Wong said.

Felty also learned about hard, red spring wheat production during the leadership event. Raising hard, red winter wheat in arid southwest Oklahoma, where he rotates it with cotton, and occasionally, sesame, is much different than in North Dakota.

His crop in Oklahoma is starting to head out. Harvest will begin at the end of May, about the time farmers in North Dakota are wrapping up their planting season.