Paddock to plate pasta is spiralling

That's what traditional grain grower Jim Maitland did in 2011 when his family launched Pangkarra - a fine food business that created a paddock-to-plate pasta using their own durum wheat.

Pangkarra director Jim Maitland said they dedicated a portion of their farm at Hart in the state's Mid North to meeting the consumer's growing demand for provenance of the food they eat.

Mr Maitland said the family business had a range of products but the durum pasta offering was their best example of a paddock-to-plate item, with traceability direct from their paddocks.

"Some of our other products, particularly the puffs, are manufactured in Melbourne and the chickpeas and beans are procured from within Australia," he said.

"We are essentially trying to meet consumer price points and at the end of the day, doing everything paddock-to-plate, while it might sound good and make you feel good, in a lot of cases it's not the most economic.

"The consumer is price conscious, so to have some sort of some form of financial viability, we need to be meeting the customers price expectations."

He said they process about 30 tonnes a year, sourced from 10 hectares, with the other 2680ha of the cropping program sold to traditional markets.

"We have got export hay, that goes to Balco and we also have pulses, chickpeas and lentils that go to Bowmans' Australian Grain Technologies and other exporters containerising and bulk loading out of Semaphore Container Services," he said.

"The balance of the rotation is mainly hard wheat and durum, which is turned into pasta."

He said the durum was planted using minimum till with a one-pass policy for limited soil disturbance.

"We don't do anything particularly unique with the crop, we just manage the nitrogen, because if we don't get the protein to a critical level, the pasta falls apart while it's being cooked," he said.

"We use Normalised Difference Vegetation Index to balance the biomass by putting higher amounts of N on the lower biomass parts of the crop.

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"Then later in the season, when we're trying to balance the protein, we use NDVI to put more N where the biomass is higher, to try and end up with an uniformed protein."

Once the wheat is harvested, it is stored on farm before being sent to Laucke Mills at Daveyston, where it is processed.

"It's stone milled and that is what makes it unique in the marketplace," Mr Maitland said.

"It's the whole grain - the endosperm, the wheat germ, the outer layer, the inner layers - the whole grain is ground versus white pasta, which is made from just one part of the grain.

"After it's milled, the flour is stored in a temperature-controlled storage in Adelaide to ensure it doesn't get insect infected.

"Then it's essentially drip fed into the manufacturing facility, L'Abruzzese, who take probably one or two tonnes at a time and turn it into pasta."

The Pangkarra brand, which has exhibited at the Royal Adelaide Show, no longer sell through farmers markets or on-farm sales but do have an online shop.

"We have a small team of people based here but we're working with third party manufacturers in Melbourne, and Adelaide, and we've got national distributors that deal with the supply chain," he said.

Jim's brother Sam Maitland works on sales and finance while his wife Katherine runs the public relations and marketing of Pangkarra.

"We are a brand owner, we're not manufacturers," Mr Maitland said. "This is outsourced and we have worked closely with these manufactures for more than a decade.

"It is an artisan, hand-made looking product."

Southern Australia Durum Growers Association president Mark McInerney said Pangkarra had put together a great initiative to educate the public.

"It gives the consumer the opportunity to be able to buy a product with full traceability back where where it has originated from and how it is grown," he said.

"The more people that can initiate things like that, the better SA agriculture as a whole is going to be."

As a pasta manufacturer, L'Abruzzese operations manager Adrian Lustri said there was no better feeling than knowing exactly where the ingredients were coming from.

"Paddock to plate ensures that I have a direct connection to my ingredients and the farmers that grow them," he said. "L'Abruzzese has been supporting Pangkarra's paddock-to-plate initiative by manufacturing pasta made from their durum wheat for them."

He said the majority of people wanted to eat healthier, so were looking for ways to shorten the distance between paddock to plate to reduce costs.

"From day one I have always admired the Maitland family for their hard work and commitment to their vision," Mr Lustri said.