The new superfoods: Big market potential but challenging to grow

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Rapidly growing demand for exotic crops like quinoa, amaranth and hemp offer opportunities to Ontario growers but the problems they are encountering are not always the ones expected

by MARY BAXTER

Once upon a time, crops like hemp, amaranth and quinoa brought to mind images of fringed ponchos, songs about California and foods that were eaten to commune with nature. Today, these and many other crops that were previously unknown to most Canadians – sea buckthorn and goji berries, for example – are making their way into everyday, mass-produced staples or even standing on   their own on supermarket shelves. Manifesting extraordinary proportions of the right kind of fatty oils, proteins and vitamins, they're celebrated as 21st-century superheroes: foods that add a huge nutritional boost, possibly benefit our health, add variety to our diets – and taste good, too.  

With growing demand comes opportunity and that's what attracted Reuben Stone when he returned to farming near Cobden after a stint in Ottawa as an engineer.

If he could crop 1,000 acres of corn, "life would be a lot easier, I'm sure," the 29-year-old says. But Stone is not satisfied with a 10-cent share of a box of Corn Flakes, the figure often used to describe the farmer's portion of food industry profits. "I want to take a bigger share of that piece," he says. "I'm not going to do that with corn. I'm not going to build myself an ethanol plant, so what else can I do it with?"

It was easy to perceive the opportunity in superfoods. Several members of his family are gluten intolerant, and he has paid attention to the food products he sees in the grocery aisles. He anticipated that growing such crops would present a whack of complications and challenges – and they have. What Stone and other growers across the province are finding out, though, is that the challenges are not always where one might expect when developing a specialty crop. Neither are the easy parts.

Hemp was the crop in which Stone first saw potential, and the one that led him and his business partner Marc Bercier to establish Valley Bio, a company that is developing new varieties of soybeans, hemp and oats and contracting growers (including Stone) for food-grade crops that they clean, condition, package and quality test at their Cobden plant to sell to food processors.

You might say that hemp followed a typical niche crop development curve when it was reintroduced to Canada in the 1990s. Every component of its value chain needed development. There were two visions for the crop. Ontario growers and would-be processors focused on its potential as a fibre for bioproducts; in Manitoba, it was grown as a specialty food.

The Manitoba approach won out, says Stone, a board member of the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance. Over the past five years, the hemp food market has grown at an annual rate of about 50 per cent and is forecast to hit 100,000 acres across Canada next year. Demand for hemp is steady enough now that Stone can specialize in hemp seed production.

Food-grade hemp's success took years to foster. The same can be said for the quinoa that Stone has also been growing, first on his own and then, last year, as part of a cross-province trial. Unlike hemp, though, much of quinoa's crop development happened on another continent. The saga of how it ended up in Ontario soil is in many ways typical of superfoods' crop development in the province.

Grain of the '90s
Quinoa is a South American relative to lamb's quarters, which is also a member of the same plant family as sugar beets and spinach. The broadleaf's seed (not a grain) is typically what's consumed. Most of the world's supply is produced in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Northern Quinoa Corporation in Saskatchewan was one of a handful of early champions of growing the seed in North America. Joe Dutcheshan, with the aid of other producers and businessmen near his hometown of Kamsack, Sask., spearheaded the establishment of the company in 1995. Quinoa "was supposed to be the grain of the '90s," recalls Joe's son, Michael, who also works in the business.

The quinoa seed has a naturally occurring coating of saponin, a chemical compound that is sometimes used in organic agriculture as a pesticide. The chemical makes the seed taste bitter, but it can be washed off. Dutcheshan established a processing facility in his hometown, realizing that being able to clean quinoa and provide some ready-to-eat products would give the business an edge over its South American competitors, who had the advantage of being able to offer organic quinoa at a much lower cost.

But it took 15 years before interest in North American-grown quinoa took off, Michael Dutcheshan says. In the meantime, the family diversified into other specialty grains, seeds and legumes.

The Dutcheshans target the commercial market where the ability to demonstrate quality control gave them a competitive advantage over South American growers. Michael Dutcheshan declines to name companies who buy their product because of competition concerns. They are also looking at retail.  

Demand is enough to merit investment in a new facility in Saskatoon to reduce their freight costs and ease the challenges of finding labour. They have also expanded the amount of land they contract and have added growers in Alberta to mitigate weather risks. "We can compete" with the South American producers, he says.

So can Ontario growers, according to Nick Betts, applied research co-ordinator with the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA), when he spoke at the association's annual meeting in February. "The price of quinoa has gone up 200 per cent in the United States, 1,800 per cent in Canada and 33 per cent in Germany," he told meeting delegates, noting that Peruvian exports of the crop that earned $1,300 per tonne in 2007 were earning $3,200 per tonne by 2011.

Over the phone, Betts enthuses about quinoa's market potential. Sourcing from South America "can get into political and into ethical issues, depending on what kind of involvement things like drug cartels have in plants down there." Ontario product means better quality control and an opportunity to market products as locally grown.

So when Jamie Draves approached Betts three years ago with a proposal to create Ontario-grown quinoa as well as amaranth (a colourful South American plant that's related to pigweed, whose grain was a staple for the Aztecs), Betts realized all that stood in the way of seizing the opportunity were agricultural practices and logistics.  

Draves says he recognized the market potential of locally grown superfoods after he used them to manage his health following a 2007 bout with pancreatitis that left him unable to properly absorb food. The former national sales and trade director for Bayer Diabetes Care, he established a company, Katan Kitchens, to market prepared foods made from the recipes he credits with helping him regain his health. But he found he could only source the ingredients as imports. He became concerned about their purity and safety.

"I wanted to look at starting to grow and produce these in Ontario," he says, so he approached both the association and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Growing them in Ontario would not only offer the advantage of quality control but also the ability to capitalize on the buy-local and gluten-free trends (both of which are the top-rated trends on this year's Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association's chef survey list).

Working with Draves and the province, the association obtained a $35,000 grant from the federal Sand Plains Community Development Fund to research whether the crop could be grown here.

Jim Todd, a transition crop specialist with the province who works from Ontario's Simcoe resource centre, and his colleague there, Evan Elford, the province's new crop development specialist, were involved in the initial trials in 2011. Three of the five quinoa varieties they planted grew satisfactorily. 

With a total budget of $301,550 that includes a $242,710 Canadian Agricultural Adaptation Program grant, the association and Draves have been working on ramping up production. Last year, trials took place in five locations across the province. This year, the goal is to work with 10 farmers to grow 200 to 250 acres of quinoa and amaranth, says Betts.

The CAAP funding will help pay farmers land rent. (They will also receive payment for harvested seed.) The association will contribute a dedicated agronomist and hire a consultant to look at transporting and pre-processing. Also on the to-do list is establishing an advance payment program, crop insurance and even seed certification.  

Eager clients
At the same time, Draves is developing a processing plant with the goal of having it operational by the end of this summer. If all goes well, the province could boast the largest North American production of quinoa.

He claims potential clients have told him they are eager for the product. "I have a letter of intent from a company that purchases a million pounds of quinoa a year – imports it. Also the, I believe, largest quinoa processors in Canada are interested in starting a local line of products."

He estimates the plant will cost $2 to $3 million. It will be used to process amaranth as well and, in the future, other superfood crops. In early April, two locations were in the running: Tillsonburg and North Bay. Draves noted the North Bay location comes with a lot of community support, the potential for funding and a number of local farmers who would commit to quinoa production.

Betts says he'd like to see the establishment of quinoa production used as a model for developing other locally grown supercrops. Not everyone is convinced, however, that Ontario-grown quinoa will easily succeed or is even worth pursuing.

In Saskatchewan, the Dutcheshans encountered weed competition and uneven yields. Heat, though, by far is the greatest challenge for this crop that originated in the cool climate of the Andes.

Ralph Baumlisberger, who farms near Grand Valley, raised that very issue at the OSCIA annual meeting. He grew the crop for the first time last year. It grew fine, he says, but the seeds failed to set. "I think it was just too hot and dry," he says. "It was pretty severe last year, so I'd like to try it again. But that's a pretty scary scenario if you have a field of it, and you get that situation."

Mike Milinkovich, mayor of Black River-Matheson Township near Kirkland Lake, says quinoa grew well in his area but the growers failed to harvest the crop because of steady rain in October.

Milinkovich spearheaded his area's involvement in the cross-province trials organized by Draves and OSCIA last year. He says he'd like to see another quinoa trial take place this year "but I'm wondering if it's practical." In mid-April, the area was still covered in about two feet of snow.
"I think the farmers are going to have to wait until June before they can plant," he says. That said, the advantage of quinoa is that it's not susceptible to frosts. Last year, "we had two or three frosts after the quinoa sprouted and it had very little impact."

Each of the three times Stone has tried to produce the crop, "the plants have all aborted." He wonders if it's the seed source. And, indeed, seed supply is difficult. Betts explains that South American imports are food grade so the seed's coating of saponin, essential if the seed is to be used for planting, is removed. Moreover, sourcing unprocessed seed direct from South American countries is challenging because of Canadian Food Inspection Agency requirements. They had to resort to an Internet search for North American seeds to use in the trials, he says.  

Overrun by weeds
There have been other problems, too. Because the plant is related to a common weed, there are no conventional or control products registered that would work on the weeds without affecting the crop. "It sort of caught us off-guard how quickly the plots could become overrun with weeds," Todd recalls. "We had a student weeding all day long, every day, both plots (of quinoa and amaranth) and we still got behind. And that was because we didn't get right on top of it at the start."

An added headache is that quinoa looks like its weedy relative when it first emerges. Disease pressure is anticipated to be similar to lamb's quarters too. And then there's harvesting.

If quinoa is left to dry on the field like wheat and "if you get any sort of rain after it's dry, within 48 hours you'll get little tails on all of those quinoa seeds and they don't store nearly as well then," says Betts. Potential solutions are harvesting the crop green and drying it in a barn or harvesting it more rapidly.

There are also some troubling marketing and ethical issues. Dutcheshan notes that, although South American growers did not put enough acreage in this year to meet world demand (the crop was harvested in May), government programs will kick in next year to encourage more growers to take up the crop. "So that will be scary for us," he says, noting that with more growers comes more production and lower prices. Moreover, other countries are looking at growing the crop, too. Retail trade stimulated by interest in local foods may help buffer a price drop, he says.

Over the past year, there has been extensive media coverage of how the craze for quinoa has created havoc in South America as farmers literally fight to obtain land to grow the crop and communities that once counted on the seed as their main staple can no longer afford it. For Baumlisberger, the South American situation was a big motivation for trying to grow the crop here to help relieve some of those pressures.

Stone, on the other hand, sees a more complex situation. Third World production means Third World jobs, even if they're low-paying ones. In 2011, only about 80,000 tonnes was produced for the global market. Yields of 1,500 pounds of seeds per acre have already been achieved here in Ontario. What if one Canadian farm figures out how to produce quinoa really well and puts thousands of labourers in South America out of work, he wonders. "That brings up another whole conversation."

Finally, there's the spectre of foods that have seen the wave of demand crest and leave them far behind. "As fast as a trend comes, it can turn around," acknowledges Garth Whyte, president and CEO of the Canadian Restaurants and Foodservices Association. He's not sure quinoa is here to stay. "I think so; I think people are enjoying it. I think it's becoming more mainstream."

There's no hesitancy, however, about the broader-based trends that drive demand for individual foods. He says demand for locally inspired dishes and sustainable foods – not to mention the push towards healthy living, which has sparked greater interest in food ingredients, as well as demand for gluten-free and allergy-conscious products – are going strong. Canada's role could be pivotal. Whyte points to the now-commonplace uber-healthy California sushi roll.  A Canadian invented it, he notes.

Then again, Canadians also invented the trend-defying institution of poutine. Perhaps, if we find a way to add quinoa without losing all of that artery-hardening taste, we will have forever saved the fledgling supercrop from a fate worse than Tang's. BF

Amaranth: fields of purple and gold

When Cobden farmer Reuben Stone planted amaranth on land next to Highway 17, little did he realize he was planting a head-turner – literally. As the South American plant whose seed was once a prized food for the Aztecs matured, its striking purple and gold colours drew the interest of passers-by, that is until the crop "got frosted off."

Stone planted the crop as part of a cross-province trial to see if it could be grown commercially here. He's become a fan.   

"Amaranth is very easy to grow. It's a very good starter, good producer, good competitor," he says. Where the crop becomes tricky is during harvest because it lacks frost tolerance. "The stems all go to mush, so the plants all fall over as soon as it gets its first frost," he says.

The plant also flowers continuously, which makes it difficult to gauge when to harvest. "The plants don't seem to dry down either," he adds, noting that's why its North American relative, pigweed, poses so many problems during harvest.

Amaranth presents some of the same challenges as growing quinoa. The seed is tiny, necessitating the use of some sort of bulking agent to get it through a regular planter. There are no weed control products that can be used with it, so weeding must take place by hand. It's unknown whether it could become a weed nuisance in other crops.

Mike Milinkovich, mayor of Black River-Matheson Township near Kirkland Lake, found out about amaranth's susceptibility to frost the hard way.

Milinkovich arranged for the crop to be planted in his township as part of the same cross-province trial in which Stone was involved. The planters went in late May and there were two frosts after planting took place. About 30 per cent of the crop didn't germinate.

"So bottom line is that we're not going to be trying amaranth in this area at least," Milinkovich says. BF

Goji berries: demand is high, even at $30 per pound

Former tobacco grower Mary Szucsko decided to add goji berries to her family's farming operations south of Tillsonburg after reading about a plant breeder in Saskatchewan who was looking for growers. She had read about the berries' nutritional properties in magazines. "At the time, I was a breast cancer survivor, so I was always reaching out to find out what can I be doing differently or eating differently to make myself healthier," she says.

Goji is a shrub that is in the same family as tomatoes, potatoes and tobacco. Its oblong red berries are a popular fruit in China. A juice product from the berry achieved a dubious popularity when it was sold in the early 2000s under a multi-level marketing scheme on the Internet. In 2007, CBC's Marketplace revealed the juice's health claims to be unsubstantiated. The berry itself has undergone some preliminary nutritional testing and has been found to be high in micronutrients and phytochemicals. Health claims associated with it have not been proven.

Szucsko says she is the province's largest grower. She acquired the commercial shrubs from the Saskatchewan breeder using money from the federal tobacco quota buyout. She bought 2,000 plants which cost $15 each plus half the cost of transport. "It was very expensive to get into." She planted the shrubs in 2008. "They take off right away. They're quite hardy; they literally grow like a weed in China. They're like a wild plant there," she says.

The shrubs can grow up to three metres tall, so require a lot of pruning. Pest and disease pressures are "challenging."

The plants mature in their third year, yielding, in ideal circumstances, five to seven pounds, she estimates. They're harvested by the offshore workers hired for the asparagus that grows on about 90 acres of the family's farm operations.

There is no research on how the crop grows in the province and Szucsko has had to take information about how it grows in China and adapt it to the growing conditions here. She's had some help from provincial crop specialists. "They're pushing for registrations on different pesticides as a subgroup under tomatoes for me," she says.

Demand is high, even at $30 per pound of fresh berries. She's sold out every annual crop with the exception of her first year, and sells off the farm and at a local farmer's market. But she's not making a profit yet. "I'm probably still paying for my shrubs, basically." BF

Sea buckthorn: a hardy shrub with a promising future

Ten years ago, Marlene Wynnyk introduced sea buckthorn to her farm near Teeswater.
She found out about the fruit, popular in many European and Asian countries but relatively unknown in Eastern Canada, while visiting a Newfoundland winery that was growing them. After some research, she decided to order 1,000 plants, enough for about an acre and a half.

Wynnyk owns The Healing Arc, a company that focuses on alternative nutritional products and private counselling. She says sea buckthorn is the third superfood she's tried out on her farm with the goal of finding an easy-to-grow crop that provides benefits, particularly to seniors. She's also tried marigolds and oregano.

Sea buckthorn is a hardy shrub that's native to Europe and Asia and grown throughout the world for fruit production, erosion control and ornamental gardens. It grows in arid environments, tolerates frost well and will also tolerate flooding. The plant fixes nitrogen efficiently, so does not need fertilizer. It's widely used on the Prairies for shelterbelts.

Wynnyk says establishment is tricky because sea buckthorn is dioecious, meaning that there are male and female trees. She's learned that two males are actually needed for six females, not one, which is commonly recommended. Pruning is necessary to maintain crop volume. Today, Wynnyk and her partner, Rodger Schankland, use their now-seven acres of the plants as a pick-your-own operation. They charge $6 per litre and have also set up equipment for people to make juice.

People come from all over. "Our primary people are coming from the Hamilton/Toronto area. We've had them come from Montreal. But we do get a lot from Kitchener and Waterloo area now because that's where I've been doing a lot of promoting."

Awareness of the plant is growing and Wynnyk is in the process of trademarking two varieties. She says they have sold rootstock to many other farmers and even to Jamie Draves, who is spearheading the commercialization of Ontario-grown quinoa and amaranth.  

The market "is not small anymore," she says. "The response at times has been so overwhelming that you almost would need a full-time marketing person."

Wynnyk cautions would-be sea buckthorn growers that it's important to confirm that the variety is intended to produce food rather than control erosion.  

She'd like to see a concentration of growers in her area and the creation of an annual sea buckthorn festival like one established in Quebec's Eastern Townships.

She also envisions that in the next couple of years a co-operative will need to be established to meet the growing demand. BF

Haskap berries: popular with winged consumers

This year, a berry that looks like a blueberry, but not quite, will appear in some farmers' markets. It's a Haskap berry, a popular fruit in Japan.

Evan Elford, Ontario's new crop development specialist, says the University of Saskatchewan has worked hard to develop commercial varieties of the perennial bush berry for use in Canada. Studies suggest that the berry is higher in antioxidants compared to other berry crops, he says.

It's an early-maturing crop that piques the interest of fruit growers because it could be available as a fresh market product before strawberries. Wineries are interested because it produces "a very deep burgundy fruit wine."

Government and University of Guelph trials are taking place in Simcoe and Elora, respectively. Elford is aware of only one grower near Harrow who sold the fruit last year but anticipates five growers this year will be selling sizable crops.

He says last year's yields at the research plots were variable and suspects it had to do with the unusual spring.

They've also found that when berries appear ripe, they still might be sour. If a thin green line is found on the inside of the fruit when it's cut open, then it's not quite ready for harvest and he recommends waiting at least five to seven days.

Another challenge for the crop so far is its popularity with birds and he recommends bird netting. The first year the bushes produced at Simcoe, "we ended up having the entire trial just decimated by robins," he says.

Winged consumers might be fans of the crop but it's still largely an unknown for the cash-carrying types. Elford therefore strongly advises any growers considering adding haskaps to invest first in marketing and consumer awareness. BF