b'A Six-Step ProcessBattle River Seed Cleaning Co-operative is a registered seed establishment approved by the Canadian Seed Institute for pedigreed seed cleaning, and handles around 900,000 bushels of seed a year, a little over half of which is pedigreed seed. It can clean and treat coarse grains, oilseeds and peas using a six-step process.First, the grain goes through a debearder that removes hulls or beards from grains making it easier to clean. It is like a stationary threshing machine, says Kaese. There are rub bars in it that rub off the hull and when you put barley through it, it knocks the beards off the ends so its easier to clean up.The seed then goes though a nine-roll Carter Day indent machine. The indent machine has a cylinder with rolls that have different sized indents, so it takes the good heavy seed up and the light chaff and broken seeds fall out of the indent and go into the screenings, says Kaese.Next, the seed runs over a 525 Ultrafine Carter Day Air & Screen, which blows away any lighter chaff still remaining and sorts according to seed size. There is air going through the machine that pulls off any light material we missed earlier, then it flows over round-holed screens that let grain of a certain size through, says Kaese. We size it for the larger material, so if there are stalks or anything, they will go into screenings. The seeds drop onto different-sized, slotted screens, depending on the size of the good grain we want to end up with.The next step is the LMC Gravity Table Marc Model 500, which uses specific gravity to move heavy kernels up an inclined shaking screen and discharge them into the colour sorter, which is the final cleaning step.A new colour sorter allows the Battle River plant to provide a better product to its Seed Treatment has Come a Long Way customers.Battle River also has a USC 2000 automated seed treater, whichso years, including the continued release of new hybrids and offers the option to add a seed treatment before the customervarieties, but isnt sure how the adoption of proposed royalties picks the seed up. Kaese says thats probably one of the biggestto fund cereal wheat development, which are still under changes hes seen in the business over the past few years. discussion, might affect the industry. However, Kaese strongly The quality of seed treating equipment has come a long way overbelieves its important for growers to continue to have the ability the past five years or so, and its easier to put precisely the rightto clean their own seed. amount of seed treatment on each seed, he says, adding when heWith other seed cleaning co-operatives close by to the north, first started in the industry in 1983, there werent too many farmerssouth and west, Battle River has always focused on serving treating seed, and nowhere near as many products available asits local market well, and to do that they are committed to there are today. That has changed a lot and has been driven by theupgrading to the best and latest equipment as it comes available development of higher yielding varieties. and staying ahead of industry trends. Back in the 80s, if farmers had a 40-bushel wheat crop, theyWhen anything new and better comes along on the market, had a bumper crop. Now if they have a 40-bushel wheat crop,we look at it and if its going to be better than what we have, they think its a crop failure because the yields are up in the 80-we install it because we are always striving to be proactive to 90-bushel per acre range on average in this area, says Kaese.rather than reactive to what the consumer wants, says Kaese. Now, pretty well everybody treats their seed because farming hasOur board always has in mind that our customers are also the become a business and farmers want to protect that yield as muchowners. We want to operate as cost-effectively as we can, while as possible. taking care of what we need to do to be viable and up to date with everything, so we can give something back to them at the Staying Up to Date end of the day. Kaese says he sees some changes coming in the next 10 or Angela LovellSpring 2020 33'