Communications
A few cups of wheat randomly spill into an orange plastic contractor’s bucket under one of four dusty pipes extending down from the ceiling at WSDA’s Longview office.
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| Measuring out wheat for inspection. |
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| WSDA staffer Benjamin Baxter, parses out a sample of wheat. |
This small sample weighs just a few pounds, but it wields tremendous power.
It could validate a multi-million dollar contract. Or it could bring a 124-million pound shipment to a standstill.
Even more than that, the inspections conducted every day by the 75 commodity inspectors and technicians at the four Washington loading docks along the Columbia River carry the responsibility of protecting a large slice of the U.S. agriculture export economy.
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| Grain Inspection Supervisor Colleen Butcher explains WSDA commodity operations. In the background are hundreds of samples saved as a record |
Grain Inspection Supervisor, Colleen Butcher, oversees operations at the Columbia River field offices.
She’s there to make sure the quality of the grain going onto the ship matches the specifications listed on each load order.
Her teams inspect the grain for impurities, moisture content, and overall quality or grade, comparing those findings with the specifications on the load order. They also inspect the facilities for sanitation and proper handling.
It’s all about quality control and consumer confidence, she says.
“There have been issues in the past of selling product and what they are receiving on the other end is not what they thought they were going to be getting,” Butcher said. “This is the United States’ way of guaranteeing that the grain that is being requested is the grain that they will receive.”
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| A Panamax vessel bound for Asia is loaded at a Longview, Washington grain elevator. |
WSDA staff inspects, logs and sets aside portions of the samples in case of a future dispute at the same time the trainload of grain floats down sealed, air-cushioned conveyor belts onto a giant Panamax freighter at the dock.
"This whole operation is functioning on receiving that grain, that way they can export it," Butcher said.
Mountains of wheat from Eastern Washington arrive by river barge and train each year, but the grain, mainly wheat, corn, soybeans and sorghum, comes from all over the West including Idaho, Oregon, the Dakotas, Montana, Colorado and beyond.
For Midwest grain, Longview and the other grain facilities along the lower Columbia River are the gateway to Asia.
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| WSDA Grain Inspector Laura Gould monitors the pathways of grain as it is unloaded and transferred to the ship. |
"We receive grain twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, all year long," Butcher said. "In most cases, the grain’s final destination will determine which part of the United States it’s exported from.”
A different kind of continental divide
Flowing much like water on divergent paths from the Continental Divide, grain heads in one of two directions from western grain country.
In most cases the grain goes east to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico, bound for Europe and Africa, or West to the Columbia and the Pacific Ocean, with Asia and the Middle East as its likely destination.
For grain headed for Asia, “It will come through the Columbia River," Butcher said.
Linchpin for the industry
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| Benjamin Baxter, separates a wheat sample. |
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| A series of vibrating trays separate wheat from other seeds, stems and other impurities. |
If a producer can’t assure the buyer that what they send is actually going to be up to the specification that the buyer wants and has agreed to, the whole market could be damaged, Butcher said.
More information about WSDA commodity inspections is available on our website.