Wheat Trade Team from Mexico Visits Colorado
July 22, 2011, Fort Collins, Colo. – The Colorado Wheat Administrative Committee (CWAC) hosted a trade team of wheat buyers from Mexico on a visit to Colorado to learn about the production and quality of hard white wheat. All four members of the team were from Grupo Altex, a large flour milling company with six flour mills in Mexico and one in Cuba.
On July 19 the trade team toured Linnebur Farms east of Byers to see hard red and hard white winter wheat harvest. They were then briefed on Colorado wheat production and quality by CWAC Executive Director Darrell Hanavan, and on the Colorado State University (CSU) wheat breeding program by CSU Wheat Breeder Dr. Scott Haley. They then toured the CSU wheat breeding plots located at the Agricultural Research, Development and Education Center (ARDEC).
On July 20 the team visited the ConAgra Flour Milling Company and Commerce City Grain unit train loading facility in Commerce City, Colo.
Pedro Medina, Grupo Altex, said it was the first time he had seen a crop of hard white wheat in the field. He also said he learned about the good baking qualities of the variety Snowmass. As a miller, he spends much of his time trying to understand what the bakers want from the millers, and he said bakers want “good flour with special baking characteristics to make whole grain pan bread, because of the campaign for better health qualities in bread.”
Mexico was the fourth largest buyer of U.S. all-wheat in the recently completed 2010-11 marketing year with purchases of 95.6 million bushels, including 56.9 million bushels of hard red winter. Only Egypt, Nigeria and Japan purchased more U.S. all-wheat than Mexico this past marketing year.
The trade team consisted of Armando Rosales, Fernando Aparicio, Sergio Gutierrez, and Pedro Medina, all of Grupo Altex.
The Grupo Altex Mexican trade team visited Linnebur Farms near Bennett to observe the hard white wheat variety Snowmass being harvested. From left to right, Armando Rosales; Pedro Medina; Tim Burleigh, Markets Division Director of the Colorado Department of Agriculture; Fernando Aparicio, Colorado Association of Wheat Growers (CAWG) Vice President Mark Linnebur, Sergio Gutierrez, CWAC Executive Director Darrell Hanavan, and (front) James Linnebur.
Andrew Linnebur explains the farm’s method for loading wheat into grain storage bins to the Grupo Altex trade team.
