It’s been a busy few weeks for the team here at Milling and Grain with visits to Europe, China and now the USA.
Our flour and feed milling sectors are truly global industries and this past month’s travel has taken us to multiple companies giving us unique insights into how today’s industry functions across borders.
Keeping up to date with the developments surrounding the introduction of tariffs by the USA – which have seen a start and stop strategy as politicians persuade each other of the implications and/or benefits involved – has destabilised trade with inevitable consequences when business confidence is shaken.
If tariffs lead to trade wars between countries, which could be the outcome following the introduction of these current widespread tariff proposals, then there may be longer term consequences.
I can recall, when joining the UK feed industry in the early 1980s, there was still pain being felt following a US-EU dispute that halted American soybean reaching Europe. Up until then the USA had been the preferred supplier. Cutting essential protein supplies to Europe led to the greater production of soybeans in countries such as Argentina and Brazil.
I was also reporting from China when the then American Soybean Association began developing that market for its soybeans. That has been a massive success and achievement by US soybean farmers and one that both China and the USA have enjoyed for some 30-plus years.
Another trade war now has the potential to disrupt this important supply of protein.
Using food as a weapon is unacceptable. I’m sure we can all agree on that.
However, down through the centuries cutting food supplies to a community or a population has been a tactic that has brought about surrender and/or negotiation.
That tactic has been most recently demonstrated with Russia attacking crops, grain silos and restricting grain movements from Ukraine to countries unconnected with this war yet remaining largely depend on supplies from Ukraine.
Our food industry today is global, and we should have a mechanism that allows us to keep food and its movement outside of inter-country disputes, in the way we have kept sport out of politics.
We should not overlook the importance that food supplies need to be maintained globally for us to support and develop communities everywhere.
Swisca Sifto
Our cover image this month highlights continued innovative within the milling process.
It shows that companies with a questioning mindset and attention to detail can being about improvements to long established processes to deliver greater efficiencies to millers.
On Wednesday April 30th – the first day of the three-day 2025 IAOM Conference and Exhibition in Oklahoma, USA – the Swiss company Swisca unveiled its latest transformation of a milling component, that of the plansifter.
The Sifto is an all-stainless steel ‘stack of elegant trays’ locked together to form connected towers of ingenious art with advanced yet practical functionality.
Our May edition – published online on May 1st, 2025 – carries a full article (see page 40) with multiple pictures showing this unique plansifter’s advantages.
This is yet another significant statement by a young Swiss company that follows the launch of its innovative roller mill at last year’s IAOM in Salt Lake City; and once again it attracted the largest crowd of visitors to any of the six on-stand presentations.
Don’t overlook our interview with Jonas Schär the head of SIFTO Development at Swisca on page 120.
From scales to rollermills and now to plansifters, what’s next I hear you ask? Whatever it is it will be exciting, of ultimate design and quality and well worth the wait.
Our congratulations go to Swisca for bringing new thinking, reasoning and concept designs to global four milling.
Published in the May 2025 issue of Milling and Grain.
