Brad Wieler tries to sound optimistic about the future of buckwheat, but the trend of recent years offers little inspiration.
A few years ago, Canadian farmers planted 35,000 acres to buckwheat, with much of that in Manitoba. This year only 17,000 acres were seeded and as few as 12,000 acres might have been harvested due to difficult growing conditions.
“We’ve really been struggling with this,” said Wieler, Manitoba Buckwheat Growers Association president. “We thought in the last couple of years things would sort of pick up again.”
A lack of frost tolerance, the difficulty in controlling weeds and the potential for large swings in yield from one year to the next have made farmers leery of the crop. On Wieler’s farm near Morden, for example, yields have been as high as 50 bushels per acre and as low as five.
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“If you can get decent yields, like 25 bu. or something like that, it’s a good crop to grow,” said Stan Skrypetz, pulse and special crops specialist with Agriculture Canada. “But it’s very hard to get that.”
Breeders are addressing the crop’s shortcomings, but Wieler is not sure whether improved varieties will reach farmers’ hands soon enough to pull buckwheat out of its slump.
“That’s the million dollar question,” he said, when asked about the prospects of a buckwheat rebound in Manitoba. “If it continues to go the way it is, it definitely won’t be around much longer.”
Skrypetz sees glimmers of hope, however. He has been impressed with the efforts of the North American Buckwheat Promotion Committee. It promotes the use of buckwheat and its products by raising awareness of the nutrition and health benefits.
And with fertilizer costs rising, farmers may give the crop a closer look because buckwheat is a low input crop, he said.
Skrypetz said Manitoba used to account for more than 70 percent of the buckwheat acres grown in Canada. That percentage is now 57 percent.
The United States and Japan are the main buyers of Canadian buckwheat. There are also several small processors in Canada, according to Agriculture Canada.
Buckwheat flour can be used to make several products, including noodles, bread rolls and cakes. The groats and grits can be eaten plain or roasted as a snack. They also can be eaten as porridge.
Agriculture Canada forecasts an average producer price for all grades and markets of $340-$370 per tonne, similar to the last three years.
The department said that with no carry in from last year, supply this year will total only about 6,000 tonnes. Of that, about half will be used domestically and half exported, leaving no carry out at the end of the crop year.
