BUNGE MILLING
- BEING SMALL STILL WORKS!
by Lynn Van Ma'anen, University of Guelph

On Richmond Street in Chatham, a small corn miller has been providing a premium market for corn growers in southwestern Ontario for the past 32 years. Now known as Bunge Milling, this mill is carving itself a niche in the markets for non-GMO and organic products. Like most premium markets, careful management and testing is required to satisfy the customer. Challenges and opportunities abound for both Bunge Milling and its corn-producing suppliers.
Bunge Milling, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, is the world's largest corn dry miller. Processing between 5,000-10,000 bushels of corn each day, the Chatham facility is the company's smallest and only Canadian mill. This small size, according to Scott Moir, the plant's General Manager, is a definite asset. Once a month, the entire mill is cleaned and organic corn is processed for a few days, followed by a few days of non-GMO corn processing. Conventional corn processing then takes over the plant, until the next month's cleanout. The American plants, which are up to 20 times Chatham's size, cannot offer the same segregation. Now that multinational food companies are offering organic product lines, Moir sees the organic market as a growth opportunity. In fact, the Chatham plant has doubled its organic output in just the last 2 years, and the anticipation is that the plant has the potential to be running at 50 per cent organic and non-GMO products in the next 2 to 3 years. Premiums for corn supplied to Bunge Milling are based on test weight. The higher the test weight is, the higher the premium. For high test weight conventional varieties, the premium is usually 10-15 cents per bushel over the local cash price. Non-GMO corn fetches an additional 25 cents, on average, over conventional. Organic corn is priced only according to local supply and demand, and can be as much as 2 times the conventional cash price. It is more difficult to mill organic corn, says Moir, mostly due to lighter test weight. He admits, however, that with the growth of the organic corn supply, quality is also improving. Thus, he expects that in the next couple of years, Bunge Milling will be selecting for high test weight organic corn too.

Roger Rivest, an organic corn grower near Comber, Ontario, admits that organic corn is tougher to grow. Fertility, especially nitrogen is a limiting factor. Rivest used to rely on the previous year's clover crop for the nitrogen supply, but now there are organic livestock producers that can supply organic compost. He finds compost can add 40-50 bu/acre to a corn crop. Organic growers can achieve yields of 100-140 bu/acre (at a premium of twice the conventional price) and have lower input costs than conventional corn growers.
Bunge recommends that all its corn suppliers (conventional, non-GMO or organic) grow varieties with CHU's 100-200 less than suggested for their area, so that the corn is fully mature and test weight is as high as possible. Air drying, or drying the corn at low temperatures is preferred. Before a load is delivered, growers bring in a sample for moisture, test weight and vomitoxin testing. Since many of Bunge's products, such as corn grits, meal, flour, bran and oil go to the food industry, vomitoxin is of real concern. The limit for vomitoxin in corn food products is currently 1.2 ppm, but Bunge rejects any corn loads over 0.8 ppm, and would prefer its corn supply to test at 0.5 ppm or less. Bunge can do these tests in their lab on the Chatham site and employs a full and a part time technician to perform all quality checks. The vomitoxin tests alone require 2 to 3 hours in the lab for a set of 6 samples and cost Bunge $15.00420.00 per sample for materials. If a producer's corn sample passes all of the above tests, Bunge then makes a contract with the grower to ship the corn in 5,000-10,000 bushel lots. On delivery, each load is retested for moisture and test weight, as well as for StarLink. While it can be done quickly at the scale, each StarLink test costs $7.00-$8.00. If the corn is destined for the non-GMO or organic market, the same tests as above are performed but 4 more tests (next year there will be 5) are done to determine the presence of GMO corn events. These quick strip tests can be done in about 30 minutes in the lab and cost between $7.00-$10.00 each. All organic corn must be from a certified organic grower. Organic corn is purchased from local suppliers and usually 75 per cent of all Bunge's corn is bought directly from local growers. Bunge Milling typically buys from dealers in the later part of the marketing year, if individual growers' supplies are out. However, 2003/04 was (hopefully!) an exception. Due to high vomitoxin levels in samples from all over southwestern Ontario, Bunge had to turn down 70 per cent of the corn they sampled. Thus, they are currently using corn from the U.S. This is only the second time in the plant's history that they have brought corn in from the U.S. Bunge is an associate member of Fusarium Action Canada, a group of researchers and industry leaders that formed in 2003 to research and share information on fusarium, which produces toxins. So far, Bunge is the only miller that is part of this organization. As Roger Rivest observes, Bunge Milling is a company that "wants to do business and make it work." Roger notes that with a small company like Bunge, he can deal directly with each of its staff to solve any issues. Whether it's positioning themselves in a growing organic corn products market, or trying to find solutions to reduce vomitoxin levels in corn, Bunge Milling in Chatham is proving that being small still works!

**photo 2 shows Quick strip tests for identifying GMO corn events.