Saskatchewan: A Province Looking Forward to the Future - Food ...

Every region has its local celebrities, and right now Saskatchewan is singing the praises of Rui Song. 16 year old Song, an eleventh grader at Walter Murray Collegiate in Saskatoon, took second place at the 2012 Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada (SBCC) for her research in developing a stronger and more nutritious strain of lentil, making it her second major SBCC award to date. With a $4,000 prize at stake, Song has every reason to celebrate ? and as a fresh face representing the future of biotechnology in Saskatchewan, the province is celebrating as well.

Agriculture is a very big deal in Saskatchewan,and for good reason ? the province is Canada?s foremost crop producer,exporting over $10 billion in agricultural products ? many of them organically grown ? out of the province every year. Wilf Keller, CEO of Saskatchewan-based non-profit organization Ag-West Bio, is soft-spoken yet cheerful while listing the myriad crops for which the province is responsible.

?We?re a big producer of peas,? he lists. ?We?re the world?s leading site for export of mustard seeds, so if you buy Dijon Mustard where it will say it?s made in France, indeed it was made in France but they imported seed from Saskatchewan to make that mustard. Saskatchewan is the main producer of flax in Canada, we have about 75 percent of Canadian production, and we share almost 20 percent of the world trade in flax. We?re producing some three-quarters of a million metric tons of oats ? maybe close to 40 percent of Canada?s acreage is in oats, and of course when you get to granola bars, oatmeal, oatmeal cookies, and high fiber oats for diets, there are all kinds of opportunities for oat products. Barley is another one, we?re a major player and we have probably close to a third of Canada?s production in barley.?

Then there are Saskatchewan?s main attractions: canola and lentils. ?Canola was invented here in the western Canadian prairies,? Keller notes with pride. ?This crop came from nowhere ? it was grown in WWII for a marine lubricant that could not be used for human consumption, and between 1950 and 1975, there was a lot of backbreaking work with very limited budgets by public labs to develop canola as a highly nutritious vegetable oil. It was the first crop to become biotech crop, [and] biotech canola now represents about 98 percent of all the canola grown in Canada. The canola industry?s worth about $15-16 billion dollars in terms of all the production, the processing, margarine manufacturing, the byproducts, so it?s a very big industry.? ?

Lentils are much newer on the scene than canola, but Keller sees similar growth patterns for the rising star crop. ?Lentils are not a crop that were grown at all here 25 years ago,? he notes, to contrast the fact that today the province produces 2 million metric tons per year, representing 98 percent of Canadian lentil production and 43 percent of the world?s lentil supply. Rui Song may be devoting her high school career to perfecting the lentil, but she?s not the only one ? Saskatchewan has a program in place working to imbue the legume with boosted levels of zinc, selenium, and other micronutrients.

According to Keller, Saskatchewan trades in such a diverse amount of crops for a number of reasons, all of which also make its crops more desirable. ?People are looking at healthier products and a good balance between meat and vegetarian-type sources of protein,? he explains. ?We have a highly efficient production system, we?re known for producing high quality products, and we have an advantage of our cold winters ? it kills off a lot of the diseases and insect pests, so compared to Europe or the southern United States we use far less chemicals to control diseases and insects so we have a pretty clean product.?

Still, even such a clean product is not entirely without controversy. As evidenced by canola and the programs in place to reinvent the lentil, biotechnology ? in other words, genetic modification ? is huge in Saskatchewan, to the degree that businesses from all over Canada have gravitated to the province to conduct research and development, like British Columbia?s Okanagan Specialty with their non-browning Arctic Apples. It's a sensitive subject, especially as debates rage over GMO labeling. Keller attributes these debates to a lack of education.

?Humans have manipulated food crops since the dawn of civilization,? he exclaims. ?There?s a range of tools that plant breeders use and keep adding as science becomes more available, and gene transfer is indeed one of them. That?s the one that has caught the eye of a number of people, but seeds have been irradiated with x-rays and changes have been made, but we?ve got beautiful sunflowers with excellent oil out of that process. That is definitely genetic modification, but that doesn?t seem to bother many of the concerned parties because they feel that that?s traditional. But there is no such thing as traditional ? you keep adding tools to the toolbox. When Luther Burbank developed hybrid varieties in California at the turn of the century, he wrote a memo and said: I don?t know what we?ve done, we?ve really created a revolution here and I?m not sure which way it will go. He himself was worried, but now many crops are hybrids crops ? they?ve been accepted and we?ve moved on, but education is required.?

Incidentally, education is exactly where Saskatchewan?s agriculture industry is putting a strong focus right now ? Rui Song may represent youth in agriculture, but the industry won?t grow on single standouts alone. Keller sees capturing the attention of Saskatchewan?s youth as vital to the future of its agriculture industry. With a culture that?s often far removed from food production, fostering interest isn?t as easy as it once was, but Saskatchewan is finding ways.?

?Agriculture is sometimes viewed by urban kids as about farming as opposed to about food,?says Keller. ?Our college has worked very hard to change its name from College of Agriculture to the College of Agriculture and Bioresources, so that it covers environmental aspects of agricultural production: processing, nutrition, the development and use of renewable products such as environmentally friendly fuels and biomaterials and industrial products from crops. I think the college is finding that enrollment has increased.?

Keller also points to attempts to reach out to high schools. ?We have a program called Ag in the Classroom, where there is heavy engagement with teachers to try and build a better understanding of agricultural science,? he explains. ?Then of course there?s the BioGENEius Challenge.? Other youth outreach programs include Saskatchewan?s 4-H Council, summer camps at the university that aim to expose teens to agriscience, and in-school programs like Agriculture in the Classroom.

It?s hard to see concrete results right away, especially the province?s more recent social media tactics ? Keller asserts that it?s the type of thing that has to be measured in five-year periods, not from year to year. ?It?s an area that requires a lot more work, but our organization Ag-West Bio is now getting more involved,? he says. ?Things are happening on a number of levels.?? But as the years pass, Keller ? and indeed the province on the whole ? are optimistic that the next generation will find themselves taking interest in the industry on which Saskatchewan was built.?

Source: http://www.foodanddrinkdigital.com/production/saskatchewan-a-province-looking-forward-to-the-future

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