OAK BLUFF, Man. — With the decision to deregister Grandin, farmers are demanding to know how the mess was created in the first place.
For prairie seed growers, the immediate concern is what to do with the estimated three million bushels of certified seed in their bins. That’s in addition to an estimated two million bushels of noncertified seed.
Certified Grandin seed was selling for more than $7 a bushel prior to last week’s announcement. Now it is worth whatever the seed grower can get for it as commercial grain, unless he breaks an agreement between the SeCan Association and North Dakota State University and sells it back into the United States.
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For other farmers, the question is more fundamental.
“How political was the decision not to register Grandin or how political was the decision to bring it in,” asked Domain area farmer Paul Rempel.
He wants to know why Grandin made it as far as it did into Canada’s production system.
“It’s an indication of a system that almost got ahead of itself … and you can see the result,” Jack Murta, a commissioner with the Canadian Grain Commission told farmers meeting here.
From the time Grandin first slipped into Canada from its birthplace in North Dakota three years ago, it has pressured the Canadian system on several fronts.
Although industry officials say the first Grandin seed came onto the Prairies illegally, one of the first farmers to import it says Agriculture Canada officials told him how to do the paperwork.
“They told us we didn’t have to use a variety name, we could use a lot number,” Manitou farmer Arnold Wiebe said.
However it got here, it took off like a prairie fire. Prior to last week’s decision, the Canadian Wheat Board estimated Grandin could make up 15 percent of this year’s spring wheat production.
For farmers, the variety seemed to be the answer to long-standing complaints over Canadian hard red spring varieties. It is a high yielding, short straw variety that is viewed by U.S. millers as an excellent milling wheat.
“When we started bringing Grandin into Manitoba, we did it because it was considered a high quality wheat,” said Wiebe. “I guess we goofed.”
Plant breeders liked it
Even Canadian plant breeders were excited about it.
Fred Townley-Smith, a scientist with Agriculture Canada’s Winnipeg research station, put forward the motion at last year’s registration recommending committee meeting to have it registered on an interim basis — an unusual move, but not unique in the Canadian varietal registration system.
“It was because of this superior agronomic performance that it was considered,” Townley-Smith said. At the time, the only outstanding issue was whether its quality characteristics were a close enough match with other CWRS varieties.
Although Grandin’s stronger gluten strength was well-known, researchers hoped it would perform differently under Canadian growing conditions. It didn’t.
But once the interim registration was granted, the SeCan Association, which had exclusive sales rights in Canada, began to market it aggressively.
For SeCan, Grandin represented a short-term solution to long-term revenue problems, said managing director Larry White. At SeCan’s annual meeting in February, White projected a $200,000 operating loss next year if Grandin was cancelled.
It has all led to a situation where even though it’s been deregistered, Grandin isn’t gone, and it won’t be forgotten.
