2017: What are we going to do with our spelt grain?

Various topics

I see that those who access Loomio from a smart phone find it cumbersome, as it loads an entire string of posts from the beginning. This seems to be a design fault of the application, and may be corrected in due course.

In the meantime, Abby has suggested in her minutes

_ Action 6: Grahame please create all new discussions in new threads. Look into taking out the best subscription for us on Loomio. _

so, look out for several new threads, regarding new members, accounts, organisation, and alternatives to Loomio all of which I will get onto in the coming days.

back to "What to do with our Spelt", and the low Hagberg number.

Abby has said _ Now we know that it most likely won’t be used for baking at any scale the previous poll becomes irrelevant and so we need another vote._

I don't think this is quite correct. The poll made it clear that the co-operative has little interest in becoming entrepreneurs of spelt products, and nothing much changes that. Further, there is no use for spelt with its hull on, from the wide range of ideas suggested (biscuits, gin, flakes etc). So I think that _we still need to find someone (probably a mill) who would de-hull our spelt. _

Regarding the test results, it should also be remembered that the grain which was tested was a hand sifted sample of grain that had already dropped its hull. Since Spelt is a grain which naturally has a closely attached hull which does not normally fall off, it seems at least possible that the grain we tested is not representative of the main bulk of what we have reaped.

For all these reasons, I think we can safely proceed to get the grain de-hulled; for which we need to __ research who would carry out that process for us.__

Dear Grahame
Very many thanks for these very useful clarifications. I agree we should get the spelt de-hulled. Thanks also for the information on Loomio. Tony

Hello! Yes thanks @grahamehunter for all those clarifications. There seems to be some agreement that we need to find a place that will de-hull our grain if we don't want to use it for animal feed. Is anyone in the collective keen to do this? We would hope to find someone as close to Weston as possible, or maybe there is even the possibility of a mobile de-huller?

Also different people have been getting in touch about buying the grain for different things, so we are trying to collate them all in the google drive doc posted in the description for this thread...that way anyone of us can follow up on any of the potential buyers and find out more information. And we can all be more in the loop on potentials. (Thanks @wendyalcock for doing this last time around, we think it was a great help!) Here is the link aswell just in case: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s4M54UbIEMO0V-6wSN-XZv0vCenxfKZBbhWDQFqgNLM/edit?usp=sharing

Hi all. I spoke to Andrew at Organic Arable last week and he was very helpful. His farmers grow around 1,000 tonnes of spelt and supply Sharpham Park. Andrew would be interested in trying to grow some of our spelt, as he too has struggled to find a spring variety, and he thinks it would be a good back up for a poor harvest of autumn varieties.

I don’t think we can legally sell our spelt to him though (and he needs a traceable supply chain as he's a rep for a group of farmers). He thought we might be able to lend him some if we take it back at the end of the year.

He also thought it was worth retesting our spelt’s HFN. Is that worth considering?

Andrew kindly gave me the name of someone who might be able to hull the spelt for us (apparently some won’t as our grain is not classified as organic) and I emailed for a quote. To warn you, Andrew told me “It will cost a lot”.

David Hill from R W Hill Farms Ltd near Thetford (80 miles from Weston) has given me this opinion:

“I doubt if it is worth investing money in this lot. I will have a look at it if you send me a 5 kg sample. We would be pleased to let your customers have some of our spelt to try so that they will be ready for yours next year.”

And his quote is £100 per tonne, so £1,500, excluding delivery.

For delivery, we arrange to send to him (est £300) and he can either return all of it to us (est another £300) or he can forward on parts to different buyers. If we want to go ahead he would like to see a sample of 5kg first. @grahamehunter will you be able to send this to David please - I can give you his address.

I think this will take around half of our remaining account balance. And we will hopefully end up with 8-10 tonnes of grain to sell.

However, my back of the envelope maths (completely guessing the price we can sell as feed!) suggests we will need to sell the dehulled grain for around 4 times the price of the hulled grain to make the same return. I’m not sure this is a risk that’s worth taking at the moment and selling as animal feed, so that we can move on to next year’s planning, is looking appealing.

UNHULLED
Account balance £ 4,551.72
Sell as feed (15 tonnes @ £100/t) £ 1,500.00
Final balance £ 6,051.72

HULLED
Account balance £ 4,551.72
Cost to hull £ 2,100.00
Sell hulled (9 tonnes @ £400/t) £ 3,600.00
Final balance £ 6,051.72

Thanks for this brilliant research @wendyalcock - I have tried to call @johncherry and @abiaspen to see if either are able to send off 5kg to Mr Hill but haven't heard back from either yet, not sure if they are at Weston right now or not. Will keep you in the loop.

Dear Wendy,
Thank you very much indeed for all the information. On the basis of the information you have provided I am in favour of the unglamorous and somewhat dispiriting option of selling the unhulled spelt as feed.

If we had an organic product with high spec qualities it would be different. Investing in milling would make sense.
I guess we need a vote.

Hi all, to add another potential option, my husband Matthew and I have spoken to a company called Hodmedods (an online retailer for British grown grains and pulses based in Suffolk) - they are a supplier for our deli in the Cotswolds and we believe Abby may have already spoken to them. Whilst they do not believe they can sell the spelt grain under the Hodmedods brand (as most of their customers are looking for organic), they do believe that if we communicate our story with the right labelling/branding and packaging etc. they would love to help with packing and offering a route to market for the spelt as grain. We make spelt grain sladas and sell them in the deli and they are delicious! Matthew works with a very good packaging designer (http://www.studiodbd.com) who I can contact about the branding and Tamsyn and I (who both have 10 years experience in branding and marketing - but in a different industry) are more than happy to work with the OurField team to develop a brand and package we can sell through Hodmedods. We would obviously need to transport it there but that cost could be factored in to our end retail price.

This is very interesting @tamsynforsyth and would be an amazing way to sell the spelt. My only concern at the moment is that the organising group is very thin on the ground...so I think we should assume that we can't depend on the organising group for any part in whatever path we choose to take moving forward. So I think this is totally viable if we fellow collective members are up for giving some of our time to make it happen! So echoing @johnanthonyallen - Anyone keen to offer help with any part of this beyond the help @tamsynforsyth already offered?

Dear Tamsyn
Thank you for this excellent market research. Especially the branding and marketing know-how. We need volunteer capacity including some to do the accounting and a funding allocation. Another vote?