Finding the cream of the canola crop
Farms creating unique oils based on seeds’ ‘terroir,’ just like wine or coffee
Manitoba farmer Bruce Dalgarno is pumped. He’s preparing to plant a whopping 485 hectares of canola — the crop that turns fields a brilliant yellow — on his farm, an hour north of Brandon.
His crop will cover the equivalent of about 900 football fields. That’s a lot of canola.
However, it’s a relatively tiny portion of the crop — one football field’s worth, perhaps — that has him the most excited. That’s the part he’ll dedicate to helping advance a new cold-pressed, premium canola oil initiative called XV Canola (XV means extra virgin).
It’s designed to distinguish canola oil from his farm and others in his immediate region, from canola grown elsewhere in the province.
And all this is made possible, Dalgarno says, because heart-healthy canola has been found to have its own terroir.
“It’s exciting,” the farmer says. “If consumers want a distinct canola, we can deliver a terroir product.”
Really? A terroir, like wine, coffee and chocolate ... from the canola fields of Manitoba? It’s true. Terroir is the way the geography, geology and climate of a location interact with plant genetics. The mingling results in distinct biochemistry and characteristics, especially taste and colour.
Terroir is the talk of cocktail parties. It’s usually the domain of highvalue food and beverages, not a widely grown commodity like canola.
But Ellen Pruden, director of the Canola Eat Well program for the Manitoba Canola Growers Association, had a hunch that the oilseed would present different characteristics depending on where it was grown.
Plus, she thought a terroir label might help personalize canola, and help it capitalize on the local, authentic food movement.
So she and her colleagues at the association worked with food innovation company NuEats, the commercialization arm of the Manitoba Agri-Health Research Network, to take the idea of canola terroir for a test drive.
They gathered canola from farmers in three different areas of the province, about 400 kilometres from each other.
They had it cold-pressed into highquality oil and ran it by 12 taste testers, including experienced chefs and culinary teachers. The results were clear. Oil from Delgarno’s farm, furthest west of the lot, was bright yellow and had a nutty aroma. Oil from the north was more orange, and had what Pruden describes as “grassy notes.” And finally, oil from the Win- nipeg area had a strongly intense fresh canola aroma and flavour, owing perhaps to the soil’s high iron content.
Vive la difference! said the canola association. And it proceeded to bottle the oil in 500- and 250-millilitre containers (as well as four-litre jugs for the food-service sector) and sell it online, where consumers gobbled it up.
Buoyed by this initial reception, 17 canola farmers, including Dalgarno, are joining forces this year to create a company that will sell terroir canola by three newly named areas: Northern Lights (the north), Big Prairie Sky (central) and Heartland (south).
Prices haven’t been firmed up, but it’s expected to fetch farmers up to 20 times the price of regular canola oil.
No wonder farmer Dalgarno is excited. Owen Roberts is an agricultural journalist at the University of Guelph. Follow him on Twitter