Confronted by a lackluster response to the 2007 hard white wheat contract program, the Canadian Wheat Board is reassuring growers it still believes in the product.
“Growers should have absolute confidence that this is a class of wheat that has a long-term potential for them,” said Earl Geddes, the CWB’s vice-president of product development and marketing.
“They should not at all be afraid of engaging in a contract with hard white spring wheat.”
He said the board might have inadvertently sent the wrong message to growers when it sliced its Canadian Western Hard White Spring wheat program in half last year to 500,000 tonnes from one million tonnes in 2005.
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That was perceived as a death knell for the crop, a warning that hard white wheat was a class on its way out.
The six grain companies handling the 2007 identity preserved contracts say growers have been reluctant to sign up acreage.
“They’ve been telling us that it hasn’t been an easy sell for them,” said Geddes.
If uncertainty over the future of the class is holding producers back, they need not worry. The wheat board still feels there is significant potential for the crop.
In fact, the board hopes that by 2008 or 2009 it will have its own initial and final payments that will be at a premium to Canada Western Red Spring, a class with which it is now priced on par.
“We maybe haven’t done a good enough job of getting this message out that there is a bright future here,” said Geddes.
The downsizing of the program was due to back-to-back quality problems in 2004 and 2005, resulting in complaints from Asian noodle manufacturers about Snowbird, the variety that comprises about 90 percent of hard white wheat acreage.
Geddes said the board came to the conclusion that with all its marbles in one basket, the class was too susceptible to the weather problems that caused the quality difficulties.
But that isn’t the only reason the CWB has cut its marketing program to 500,000 tonnes and plans to keep it at that volume for the next four or five years.
The board has changed its strategy for the hard white wheat class, starting with a refocused breeding program.
The class was initially developed as part of a two-pronged effort, in conjunction with Canada Prairie Spring White wheats, to loosen Australia’s stranglehold on the Southeast Asia white noodle market.
However, leading Canadian varieties like AC Vista and Snowbird have fallen short of expectations. None of the varieties has broken the colour barrier, said Geddes.
That’s because Canada’s white wheats contain high levels of polyphenol oxidase. The enzyme that causes an apple to turn brown does the same thing to noodles, an undesirable trait for the white noodle market.
“Our Canadian germplasm still has no real stars in it,” said Geddes.
There are also problems on the marketing front. Ocean freight rates to places like Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, that were $16 to $20 per tonne when the class was first developed, are now $42 to $50 per tonne, making Canada less competitive with Australia into those distant markets.
Australia has also boosted hard white wheat production and has released improved varieties.
The good news is that in the last few years a new high-value market for white wheat has emerged in the United States and Latin America, where the product is used to make whole-grain white breads that are high in fibre and nutritional value but maintain the colour kids enjoy.
“That’s a fair shift in where we’re trying to position this product from where it was initially developed for,” said Geddes.
Breeders have been instructed to create new varieties free of the polyphenol oxidase gene and with improved protein strength to tap into that new market.
Those two attributes will appeal to both noodle manufacturers and bakers but ultimatelythe varieties will be judged on their bread making merits because that is the new focus of the board’s hard white wheat sales program.
Geddes expects it will be four or five years before the new varieties will be commercialized.
In the meantime, the board will be busy rebuilding grower confidence in the class and trying to generate a pricing premium out of what it considers a more manageable marketing program that requires about 500,000 acres of production.
