Flax proponents say the crop is getting a facelift that will transform it from a humdrum oilseed to a glamorous model, a makeover mirroring what happened to canola in the 1970s.
“We are going to develop a new Cinderella crop and we are going to anchor the development of the bioeconomy,” said John Oliver, co-chair of Flax Canada 2015, a national initiative to uncover new markets for an old crop.
A steering committee has been established to more than quadruple the worth of flax over the next 10 years. If all goes as planned, it will be generating $1.5 billion in annual farmgate revenue by 2015, up from today’s contribution of about $350 million.
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“Flax could well become the big new crop of the early 21st century,” said Oliver during the official unveiling of the initiative.
The idea is to develop more non-food uses for the crop, a scheme that has the backing of the Flax Council of Canada, the Saskatchewan Flax Development Commission, the three prairie provinces and the federal government.
Ottawa contributed the lion’s share of a little less than $1 million in cash and in-kind contributions for the first part of a multi-phase project.
Working groups are already well into the process of devising strategies for the total use of flax for feed, fibre, health and industry.
“We don’t want to just focus on seed. We want to focus on the whole crop,” said Oliver.
Flax Canada 2015 project co-ordinator Kelly Fitzpatrick said it will be “wonderful” to see five million acres of flax by the end of the project, up from today’s average of 1.5 million acres.
“We truly are where canola was 20 years ago,” she said.
But while canola positioned itself as a commodity replacement for soybean, flax is attempting to blaze a different trail, carving out niche markets in the human health, animal feed and industrial products sectors.
“We’re not going after replacing anybody,” said Fitzpatrick.
Edmond Aime, director of the Saskatchewan Flax Development Commission, has been dabbling in the new bioeconomy for a few years, selling flax straw from his farm in Redvers, Sask., to Schweitzer-Mauduit Canada, a company in Winkler, Man., that turns it into cigarette paper.
“I guess what has held back flax production in a lot of ways is what you do with the straw,” he said.
Flax is often the last crop off so the straw stays out for the winter and has to be burned in the spring, a costly nuisance for many growers.
Turning straw into pulp and paper is only the first step down the road to converting a bothersome waste material into a moneymaking byproduct, said Aime.
“I would like to see more value added to it. At this point we get paid $5 per tonne, which isn’t a lot.”
Fitzpatrick said there is no way to more than triple flax acreage without dealing with the straw issue because burning five million acres of residue is neither feasible nor environmentally sustainable.
Other areas that need to be addressed are breeding and agronomy constraints, like resolving problems with inconsistent yields and variable farming practices.
Phase 1 of the project, the strategy planning, is almost complete. The next phase entails attracting businesses to exploit some of the opportunities that have been identified.
Fitzpatrick anticipated the group will need another $10 million in private and government funding to fully finance that phase.
