GrainsWest Spring 2021

Spring 2021 grainswest.com 37 this year, is high in protein and has very good baking attributes suitable for the bread market. FP Genetics then picked up BW402, also from Cuthbert’s program. Wehrle said the variety is suitable for the baking and noodle-making markets. When AACWhitehead came onto the market, FP Genetics was immediately interested. “It’s a total agronomic game changer,” said Wehrle. “Its yields are right up there with CWRS wheats.” Wehrle believes the world market for hard white wheat is quite large. Much of it is served by Australia, though availability has diminished as that country’s farm production has been affected by drought and wildfire. Quality attributes such as protein, gluten strength, extensibility and stability of the dough, will be the determining factors for success with millers, bakers and noodle processors, said Wehrle. FP Genetics is now engaged in product tests with end-users for all three white wheats. Wehrle is clearly optimistic about the potential of CWHWS, but he’s also cautious. “There is less than 20,000 acres of production in Canada today, so it’s pretty small,” he said. “We need to be very, very careful we don’t overbuild this market on the front end until we have the demand from the end-users. If we have demand from end-users, we will have a business here for sure,” he added. Getting farmers on board to grow the variety is the least of Wehrle’s concerns, though. Farmers, he said, will grow it if there’s demand, which is often followed by a pricing that is competitive with other crop options. GROWING CWHWS Lethbridge farmer Ryan Mercer of Mercer Seeds said he enjoyed growing CWHWS. It is similar to CWRS, agronomically speaking, but there is no risk of bleaching with CWHWS, he said. “You can get one rain event on a CWRS crop and you’re downgraded. Whereas with CWHWS you don’t have that.” Early CWHWS varieties were prone to lodging and difficult to thresh, he said. Yield was also an issue. “I think he’s really onto something if he can increase the yield by that much,” he said, referring to Randhawa. “That would be a desirable thing for growers to grow, and then it would be a matter of developing the market.” Nicole Rogers, founder and CEO of Agriprocity, has developed an agri-food trading model that focuses on longer- term, transparent and direct relationships between farmers and food processors. She helped Lomond area farmer Glenn Logan to container ship CWHWS wheat to an end-user in the Middle East. Rogers said buyers like CWHWS because it’s very functional, but not too expensive. In underdeveloped markets, the navigation of delivery logistics can be a challenge. Rogers pointed to containerized shipping as a tangible and practical solution for farmers who want to direct export. Functional logistics hubs do exist, she said, pointing to Manitoba as a good example. "All the containers come into the centre of Canada, and most of them leave empty," she said. Consumers are drawn to small-batch production and anything that makes the end product stand apart from its mainstream counterparts, such as GM-free or regenerative farming, said Rogers. “Consumers will pay a premium for boutique wheat,” she said. “It really comes down to a good marketing story.” Like Rogers, Logan believes container shipping is the best option for farmers just getting into this class. Initially, it’s a good way to move product to a smaller volume market where the farmer has control over quality, he said. Once it becomes mainstream, bulk shipping appears to be a little more economical. “But the supply has got to be there,” he said. “If the supply is not there, the market will look elsewhere.” Back when CWHWS was in its early days, Logan multiplied seed for two years, but sold very little and wound up using a lot of it in his own feedlot. “It doesn’t make any money when it’s in storage,” he said. “And elevator companies in Western Canada weren’t really inclined to tie up their space either, so there were few delivery opportunities, other than selling into the feed market.” He admitted, though, that AACWhitehead does sound promising. “I think farmers will be really attracted to the yield increase,” he said. “Twenty per cent is really substantial.” “I’d grow it again if I thought I could sell it,” he said, adding he believes other farmers are open to new opportunities, too. “They’ll certainly take a look at it. If all the stars line up, they’ll buy into it,” he concluded. “But it will take a lot more effort this time to try to revive it.” Poor weather impacted CWHWS harvest in the early 2000s. In combination with market factors, this led to a decline in acreage fromwhich the class did not recover. Photo:Courtesyof theCanadian InternationalGrains Institute