INNOVATIONS I FOOD
Someday quinoa may be grown close to home.
SEVERAL YEARS AGO on a cycling trip from Alberta’s Jasper National Park to Santa Barbara, Calif., I met a fellow rider who had a number of peculiarities, one of which was riding with a six-foot-long Australian musical pipe called a didgeridoo strapped to the back of his bike. Amusing to me, but to drivers, not so much.
Each night he would cook up a batch of curious beige grains — each with a whimsical little tail protruding outwards — that he called “keenwa.”
Even as a dietitian, I had never heard of it (let alone being able to pronounce it), but he was adamant that this South American grain gave him the power to pedal hard every day.
At the time, I was satisfied with my campsite quick-cook pasta, but it turns out that my riding partner, whose name has now slipped from my memory, was at the cusp of one of North America’s hottest food movements.
Indigenous to the Andes of South America and considered sacred by the Incas, quinoa was nearly wiped out by the conquering Spanish conquistadors. Yet it survived to become the “it” grain as word spread about its nutritional might, versatility in the kitchen and speedy cooking time.
Furthering quinoa’s cachet is the fact the mighty grain is gluten-free, helping satisfy the needs of a burgeoning population that has sworn off wheat and other glutencontaining victuals.
In fact, the United Nations declared 2013 the International Year of Quinoa. Canada imported about 20 million pounds of the stuff last year.
Now, one local farm is taking part in a pioneering agricultural experiment that could see this so-called superfood grown closer to home.
For five decades, Herrle’s Country Farm Market in St. Agatha has been a gathering place for shoppers on the hunt for cobs of sweet corn, sprightly asparagus and tart rhubarb pie. Nearby, Trevor Herrle-Braun farms 376 hectares (93 acres) of fertile soil where a sizable amount of what is displayed in the market is grown.
And now quinoa can be found among his corn husks and ruby beets. Last August, standing under a blue-bird sky among two hectares (five acres) of white, yellow and red flowering quinoa plants, Herrle-Braun was enthusiastic about being involved in a forward-thinking project to gauge whether growing quinoa thousands of miles from the Andes is a viable undertaking. His involvement in the project kicked off after he noticed a tweet from the Thames Valley Soil and Crop Improvement Association.
“Our family eats a lot of quinoa for its health benefits, and it’s something we sell in the market already, so the idea of trying to grow it really piqued my interest,” says Herrle-Braun, whose family has farmed the same land for 150 years.
It just happened that with the cold, wet spring of 2013, Herrle-Braun had some extra land available that he could devote to a quinoa test plot. The seeds were sown in June and Herrle-Braun says that there weren’t too many initial growing pains. “Once it germinates, quinoa grows like crazy and seems to do a good job at discouraging weed growth,” he notes, >>
>> adding “it just might be the lowest-maintenance crop we grow.” Quinoa has long been lauded for being adaptable and able to flourish in cold, drought and other harsh conditions such as those found in the Andes Mountains. Still, he says, this is an ongoing learning process. “A neat thing I learned is that the quinoa leaves are said to be more nutritious than spinach,” Herrle-Braun says. He foresees a potential to retail them as an alternative to items like kale. The driving force behind growing quinoa in Ontario has been Katan Kitchens, a Georgetown-based company specializing in superfoods like quinoa. “They donated the seeds to us and will be handling the processing of the grain once harvested,” explains Herrle-Braun. Quinoa requires special processing equipment, including machinery not yet available locally that is needed to strip off a bitter coating and mild digestive irritant called saponin. The North Bay area has been targeted as a place to build a worldclass quinoa processing facility.
An agronomist working with Katan Kitchens assured Herrle-Braun that his first unsprayed quinoa plot was in really healthy shape. With quinoa selling for $3,500 to $4,000 a ton compared to the $220 a ton that wheat brings in, he believes there will be increasing interest in growing the grain among Canadian farmers if initial plots are successful.
Currently, Herrle-Braun is one of only 15 growers experimenting with quinoa.
“I’m super excited to be on the ground floor of an emerging crop in Ontario. There is increasing need for alternative crops in Ontario as dietary requirements are changing and it’s our duty as farmers to try and satisfy the desires of the public with the best from our fields.”
Still, these are just the baby steps in bringing Ontario grown quinoa to the marketplace.
“A lot of research, testing and questions have to be answered before any of this quinoa can be sold to the public,” HerrleBraun says referring to the heavy regulation of farm crops in Canada. This includes assuring there are no diseases in quinoa plants that could spread to other cash crops or that they don’t attract new worrisome pests. Initial tests have indicated that Ontario quinoa may actually be more nutrient-dense than its imported counterpart, possibly due to differing soil conditions.
Herrle-Braun’s initial quinoa crop was harvested in November and overall the affable farmer and Katan Kitchens were pleased with the amount of seed gleaned from his land. “It was exciting to see the crop get combined and then to hold some of the first Ontario grown quinoa in my hand,” Herrle-Braun says.
He plans to grow quinoa again this year and if everything goes well hopes his quinoa could be ready for sale to the public in a couple of years. And then we will surely be one step closer to the reign of grain.