With the 2026/27 harvest now underway, Bunge reminds farmers to prioritise food safety and quality management practices as they begin to deliver to its sites.
Strong quality management practices throughout the whole supply chain help protect the reputation of Australian grain and maintain market access by ensuring end use customer and importing country requirements are met.
Maintaining good hygiene when harvesting, storing, handling and transporting grain is essential, and farmers are reminded to inspect and thoroughly clean all equipment before use and between commodities.
In particular, equipment brought out of storage which has not been used for some time such as augers, bins, harvesters and trucks should be checked for old grain, pests, fertiliser, chemicals or other contaminants that may compromise grain quality and food safety.
Farmers using carriers remain responsible for the quality of grain delivered on their behalf, and should ensure carriers’ trucks are clean before loading, including the tarpaulin.
Accurate delivery declarations are also essential in helping Bunge maintain quality and meet market requirements. Farmers should ensure all declarations correctly record chemical application, season of production, variety and genetically modified (GM) status.
Accurately declaring the variety and GM status is particularly important for canola deliveries. Bunge manages GM and non-GM supply chains separately to meet end use customer requirements, and accurate declarations are crucial to support this.
Farmers also play an important role in ensuring there is no GM contamination of non-GM canola by maintaining strong hygiene practices when storing, handling, transporting and harvesting canola.
To maintain market access for farmers’ grain, food safety and quality management is integrated into all of Bunge’s operations. Bunge’s processes involve routine testing for GM canola contamination, nil contaminants, chemical residues, and varietal purity to ensure grain from its supply chain meets end use customers’ needs.
Farmers can find more information about delivering to Bunge’s South Australian and western Victorian sites, including food safety and quality requirements, at bunge.com.au.
