Bio-Oz | Australian Grown Buckwheat
Sovereign Foods receives the majority of its Buckwheat products from Bio-Oz also known as Buckwheat Enterprises in Parkes, NSW and have done since 2014. We originally started sourcing from them due to the extreme difficulty in sourcing Australian buckwheat, with the vast majority of it coming from China. Once we received our first batch, we realised the quality was unlike anything we had ever had before and have been sourcing almost exclusively from them since (except for a short time when droughts had a heavy impact on the crop's availability a few years ago).
Buckwheat Enterprises has been processing and exporting buckwheat since the 1970s. Today, they process Buckwheat Flour and Kernels and ancient wheats for the Australian and export markets in their purpose-built facility at Parkes, central west NSW. The facility was built in 1992 with segregated sealed silo storage and conveyors to minimise contamination between grains. These specialised sealed silos can be either aerated or refrigerated, ensuring the buckwheat remains, contamination-free, pest free and at its freshest.
To maintain gluten-free integrity, all the Australian-grown buckwheat is processed in a segregated facility and buckwheat flour is milled in a separate mill, with the final product tested for gluten content.
Bio-Oz exclusively sources from experienced buckwheat farmers that practise Sustainable Farming. Their farmers use no-till farming methods to control weeds. The Sustainable Farmers of Australia is an initiative of Bio-Oz. After years of experience in the industry, having sourced from both organic and non-organic farmers located across eastern Australia, Bio-Oz has experienced many different farming practices and has developed guidelines for their farmers to ensure that Australia's soils are protected. These guidelines include:
- No detectable chemical residues in harvested grain
- No-till farming system
- 100% Australian grown
- No in-crop spraying with any herbicides, insecticides or fungicides
- No stubble burning
- Soil testing for nutrient levels and safe fertilisers (heavy metal free) used
For a more detailed explanation of each of these guidelines, you can check them out on their website, here.
