More eye-appealing compressed forage.
Straw made into car dashboards and building materials.
These are a couple of goals that will be under study when a $1.4 million research facility at the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute in Humboldt Sask., opens next winter.
The Crops Processing Development Centre will look at ways to add value to crops and components not consumed by humans.
The centre, funded by the Canada-Saskatchewan Agri-Food Innovation Fund, will focus on agro-fibre and feed processing technologies.
Darrell Lischynski, project manager, said PAMI has already been doing work in the area, but all activity had to be done outside because the institute’s facility was not large enough, nor did it have a dust control system.
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Once the facility is complete, perhaps as early as December 1998, Lischynski thinks improved feed processing will be the first priority.
Appearance is important in the compacted forage business. Buyers in the Pacific Rim will pay a premium for product that looks good, he said. Retaining the green color of compressed forages is a goal.
On the agro-fibre side, the new ways of processing fibre from straw will allow its use in a host of products, from car dashboards to building materials.
Lischynski said PAMI will concentrate efforts at the straw collection and primary processing end of the production chain.
“It is a bulky product and transportation gets in the way all the time,” he said.
The facility will look at how to compact straw or process it in the field so that only the components needed for further processing are picked up and transported.
The centre will tie into existing PAMI services. The institute was created in 1974 and is partially funded by the governments of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to provide specialized engineering services. Its tests of agricultural machinery are popular with farmers.
