WESTERN PRODUCER — Its promoters laud this nutritious, nutty-flavoured grain as an excellent addition to healthy diet, boasting more protein than chickpeas and oil content similar to cereals — without the gluten.
There’s just one problem: most people think canaryseed is just for the birds.
For Adele Buettner, general manager of the Canary Seed Development Commission of Saskatchewan, the solution was to look to Latin America, where the crop is known by its Spanish and Portuguese name: alpiste.
She said canaryseed and canaries get their name from the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain in the Atlantic Ocean. That the former “just happens to be a very well-known birdseed” is a bit of a coincidence.
“So that is assumed is why we call it canaryseed, but of course it’s because of where it originated.”
Buettner was speaking to the virtual annual general meeting of the Canary Seed Development Commission of Saskatchewan on Jan. 10, part of Crop Production Week held online and in Saskatoon.
Since canaryseed was approved for human consumption in 2016, food and ingredient manufacturers have been experimenting with the crop. For example, CSDCS executive director Kevin Hursh said that InfraReady Products of Saskatoon can supply both raw and pre-cooked alpiste flour and meal. Above Foods, the parent company of Purely Canada Foods, is close to offering a packaged alpiste product to consumers.
To create awareness of the crop and how to use it, Buettner said the CSDCS funded creation of a website, alpistecanada.ca.
Brennan Wiens runs Wiens Seed Farm near Herschel, Sask., with his wife, Cara, and Tim and Jeannine James, where they produce dehulled alpiste. He appreciates the CSDCS efforts.
“I think my efforts in trying to make inroads marketing often led to questions I couldn’t answer,” he said. “So, I think that’s going to enable a lot more and generate a lot more interest and answer specific questions that someone like me with primarily a farmer hat on is not equipped to.”
Getting canaryseed approved for human consumption was a key impetus in creating the CSDCS in 2006, Hursh said. It turned out to be a much bigger job than anyone had anticipated.
“Getting novel food approval was onerous. Composition work, nutrition work, toxicology work, years and many dollars — both grower dollars and government dollars — and I’m not sure if we would have ever got there but for the tenacity of Dr. Carol Ann Patterson to provide the driving force.”
Patterson, a food technology consultant, manages the Diverse Field Crops Cluster, a Saskatoon-based initiative to foster development of seven specialty crops, including canaryseed.
Human food approval in Canada and the United States came in 2016. By this time, new glabrous (hairless) varieties had become available through the program of crop breeder Pierre Hucl at the University of Saskatchewan Crop Development Centre.
Glabrous varieties gave farmers a way to grow canaryseed without its notorious itchiness during harvest and handling.
These varieties accounted for more than a quarter of the 2021 crop, according to markets analyst Chuck Penner with Leftfield Commodity Research in Winnipeg.
The tiny silica hairs on canaryseed also kept it out of the human food market, so processing techniques for the crop are still new.
One challenge is de-hulling the seed, a tricky business of removing the hulls while not reducing the interiors of the seeds to powder.
Over the past year, Wiens Seed Farm has begun to offer a proprietary process to produce high-quality de-hulled product. But being first into the market with a new product has its challenges.
“Our facility is eager to supply when there’s demand,” said Wiens.
“We just struggle with generating demand or chasing down those marketing opportunities.”
In the end, alpiste for human dinner plates is likely to be an add-on to the regular birdseed market. Hursh likens it to barley, where farmers grow for the feed market and some will chase the premium prices of malt with its extra requirements. Alpiste could follow this pattern.
“I suspect some variety differentiation and some IP required and then the market will sort that out,” he said. “If somebody wants to play in this market, there may be requirements that you’ve got pure product.”
In the meantime, there’s much work that needs to be done to develop both awareness and demand for alpiste.
“It’s not like there’s somebody in the market right now demanding it,” Hursh said. “But we hope that it will get to that stage, where there’s a real, live market for the edible portion of this crop.”
