The governments of Canada and Saskatchewan are investing $4.5 million in two industrial oilseeds they feel will be crops of the future for Western Canada.
Prairie Gold, a project led by Genome Prairie, will use the money to develop improved lines of camelina and Brassica carinata that will be used to make lubricants, greases, polymers and other high-value industrial products.
Promoters say the crop is destined to become one of Western Canada’s top three oilseeds.
In a recent report, Biomass Advisors forecast 13.1 million acres of the crop in North America by 2025, including 3.2 million acres planted on the Canadian Prairies.
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Others are less boosterish.
“Fifteen years from now maybe we’ll see a couple hundred thousand acres, but I don’t see it going faster than that,” said Rex Newkirk, the Canadian International Grains Institute’s research and business development director.
“I’m not sure it will be the next canola.”
Camelina is one of several new crops prairie farmers could be growing in the future.
In some cases, the new crops will be familiar but different, such as stress tolerant canola or short season corn and soybeans. In other cases, the crops will be completely different, such as Brassica carinata, otherwise known as Ethiopian mustard.
New crops such as camelina are expected to suffer the same agronomic and marketing growing pains as more established crops.
It wasn’t long ago that lentils and chickpeas suffered devastating disease problems, although new varieties are more resilient. Some growers have already dabbled with camelina. This will be the fifth consecutive fall that Midale, Sask., farmer Colin Rosengren has seeded a crop.
Rosengren wasn’t impressed with the 20 to 25 bushel per acre camelina yields he harvested from 320 acres seeded last fall “It was quite a dud,” he said.
The fledgling crop didn’t cope well with this year’s excessive moisture conditions.
“It was full of disease.”
Farmers are also upset with the lackluster marketing performance of one of North America’s two main camelina firms.
Great Plains – The Camelina Company failed to pick up much of the 2009 crop it contracted with Canadian growers because of botched sales in the financially troubled U.S. biodiesel industry.
“That has left a lot of farmers with a bad taste in their mouth,” Rosengren said.
It hasn’t helped that growers were unable to participate in this fall’s oilseed rally because they locked in all of their production at lower prices.
The only reason Rosengren planted another 320 acres of the crop this fall is because he’s part of a closed-loop marketing system with two other farmers.
They jointly own Canpressco, which crushes their camelina into an oil rich in omega 3 and vitamin E.
“We’ve got an oil that has got all those desirable traits of flax and then some. And we’ve got a shelf life of two years on the product,” Rosengren said.
Eric Johnson, an Agriculture Canada weed biologist, said the crop still has agronomic issues to overcome, such as weed problems and susceptibility to downy mildew.
He agreed that seeded acreage will likely drop in 2011.
“Just about with every new crop, that happens. There is too much hype and it’s not quite ready agronomically,” Johnson said.
However, he said the long-term potential for the crop is tremendous. The big growth will start in another five to 10 years once the agronomic problems have been solved.
“I think we could get to one million acres in Canada by 2025.”
He said canola didn’t become a Cinderella crop overnight.
Rosengren said the future of the crop hinges on its economics. Camelina is uncompetitive with other oilseeds, with 2011 contracts offering half of the value of flax.
“This stuff would have to be bringing in a premium to canola, probably similar to a flax price, before you’re going to get any significant acreage in Canada,” he said.
