There’s a new crop you might want to try. It’s called taehw (pronounced tay-who), an ancient cereal grain that should work well in our existing rotations.
The market is well established, so producers shouldn’t have to worry about getting paid. Based on extensive trials, taehw is well adapted to all regions of Western Canada with yields expected to be in the same range as canola most years.
No specialized seeding or harvesting equipment is needed.
Taehw is a lower input crop than canola, but market prices will also be lower. Current prices are 10 to 11 cents f.o.b. farm for top quality product. If you’re able to produce better than average yields, you might be able to make a bit of money, although it’s unlikely to match the profitability of oilseeds or pulses most years.
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A variety of downgrading factors often drop the value of taehw by as much as several cents a pound, but markets do exist for lower quality product.
Unfortunately, disease can be an issue, including a fungal infection that can cause toxic compounds in the grain. Fungicides applied at the right time help limit disease but are not always entirely effective.
Weed control is straight forward with similar herbicide options to other crops in the grass family.
Customers have their own quality preferences. In fact, marketers have found that this crop requires a great deal of interaction with customers to keep them happy.
Numerous grades and classes and segregation by small protein increments means taehw will be a challenge for the grain handling system. However, companies are expected to compete vigorously for business once production becomes well established.
Value-added processing within Canada is expected to be limited because importing nations typically want to do their own. Taehw is ground and sifted for use in many food products.
So, would you like to try growing some taehw? As you may have guessed, you’re probably already growing it. It isn’t a new crop. It’s the old original crop for Western Canada. Taehw spelled backward is wheat.
More than a 100-year history of production, investment in new varieties and decades of fighting over how we should market it means wheat is strongly ingrained in the culture of agriculture in Western Canada.
In fact, we can’t stop bickering about it. The upcoming modernization of wheat classes is an even more confusing matrix of protein contents and gluten strengths. Wheat variety registration has often been a battle royal.
You’d think we would have stopped arguing over the Canadian Wheat Board by now, but some producers just can’t let it go, and the media gives this left wing fringe much more attention than it warrants.
So if wheat (taehw) was a brand new cropping option for the Prairies, would you grow it when the price is a mere 10 or 11 cents a pound? Durum makes more sense in the region, where it’s well adapted with a current price of around 13 cents, but it has many of the same grading and disease issues.
Wheat has the longest production history of any prairie crop but some of the least value-added activity, so even that isn’t a redeeming characteristic.
My guess is that if wheat wasn’t already ingrained in our production practices and marketing infrastructure, most producers would say that it’s far more trouble than it’s worth. As a new cropping option, it would be a non-starter.
