Miller Magazine Issue:114 June 2019

52 JUNE 2019 “The difficulty we have with millets, sorghum, chia, amaranth and the others is that we lack specialized machinery to process them, or it is not wide spread. Even sorghum and canola, which have a huge industrial value and are grown worldwide, cause a lot of headaches. If you load canola in a truck designed for the conventional grains, you could (depending on the design) slowly miss a sizable portion of the shipment. How do we dry chia, if it escapes through the perforations of our conventional dryer? How would we even harvest it, using our standard combines?” The problem with alternative grains Prof. Gustavo Sosa Industrial Mechanical Engineer Licensed Grain Inspector MBA Project Management SOSA – Engineering Consultants ing.gustavo.sosa@gmail.com As I understand it, alternative grains are the ones less consumed by the general population. The big three gra- ins are wheat, corn and rice. The second tiers are sunf- lower, oats, buckwheat, and rye. I don’t list sorghum here because it is mostly grown for animal feed and alcohol production. So, alternative grains are sorghum, millets, and the exotic grains like quinoa and amaranth. There is no doubt that “the other grains” have many benefits, for the health and for the economy. They inc- lude nutrients that have been lost in major grains beca- use of the emphasis on energy content through starch. In the process, we have also made these grains much easier to handle. Maize is the most striking example. The difficulty we have with millets, sorghum, chia, amaranth and the others is that we lack specialized machinery to process them, or it is not wide spread. Even sorghum and canola, which have a huge indust- rial value and are grown worldwide, cause a lot of