EDITORIAL
Finding your own markets
Prompted by some sour grapes that have absolutely nothing to do with viticulturists and VQA, some reflections on farmers and the roles they do or don't play in successfully marketing the fruits of their labours.A March profile of squab breeder/producer/processor Pascal Vieira raised the ire of two squab producers. Their written, albeit anonymous, sentiments went something like this: How could you do a story on squab when the price they were being offered for their birds by Vieira - wearing his processor hat - was in the dumper! Was it because you wanted Vieira - in breeding hat - to sell more breeding stock to unsuspecting, would-be producers?
Not by a long shot.
Vieira seems to embody the entrepreneurial savvy that has come to define an ever-widening gap between farmers: Those who think and work their product through to market and those who don't. That in itself was worthy of a story, and like assessments of situations prompted stories in this issue.
There's Howard Herrle (page 45), who's grown and farm marketed a variety of sweet corns for some 35 years. Speaking to a farm audience at the recent Ontario Horticultural Crops Conference, he said, "We all know that most farmers are excellent growers but we are told, and we know, that many farmers are not good marketers." He then proceeded to lay out A to Z how acquiring and keeping customers is as important to his business as producing the tasty ears in the first place.
OMAFRA vegetable expert Jody Bodnar crunches numbers on sweet potatoes' potential to provincial growers (page 46), but also advises farmers to approach local supermarket managers about buying direct.
Still more beyond the farm gate thinking comes via the grapevine. On the sheep side, Rockwood sheep dairyers Axel Meister and Chris Buschbeck are making yogurt - and looking at ice cream - with milk that their traditional cheese-making processors don't take.
In assessing hemp's potential as a commercial crop last issue, University of Guelph researcher Gordon Scheifele, based on last summer's on-farm test plotting, lamented that the typical farming paradigm wasn't there for a lot of them. "They're used to commodity-type crops, where you simply take it to the elevator and sell it. With hemp, because of the lack of processing facilities, you have to be prepared to develop your own market."
"Paradigm shift" may be a big buzz word in business seminars and such, but observation suggests it's also a reality. Successful farmers are thinking and working beyond their farm gate or the elevator. But when Vieira suggested to some of his producers that they form an association, as rabbit and emu growers have, to help market squab, he says "Some are interested and some are not."
Where do you think the pen pals fall?
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LETTER FROM EUROPE
By Norman Dunn
Father's crop on comeback trail?
Good news, at last, for the flax growers of northern Europe: A growing technique has been developed in Britain that helps avoid the ruinous late - and usually wet- harvests for this crop in colder climes.Getting the sowing done by mid-March and then desiccating with glyphosate at the beginning of July is the new way. Researchers say the 100-day crop has the best fibre possible, and desiccating at this growth stage leaves lots of time for a sunny August harvest. Ten days after desiccating, mowing takes place, and further drying and some separation of the fibre bundles in the straw takes place in the field before baling.
Why am I starting this diary with a news story? Well, I wanted to pick out the progress of flax in Europe - and I thought I'd start on an upbeat note because after that, there's not a lot of good news to share. This is because the story of flax here is one of total failure to secure an integrated development, growing, processing and marketing chain for the crop.
Flax, by the way, is grown for fibre on about 50,000 acres in the U.K., a little over 100,000 acres in France and Belgium, and around 3,000 acres in Germany. Much more is grown in the deep south, but it has always been the north that has had problems with the crop.
It's not that flax is without political help in the EU. Germany, for example, spent the equivalent of C$28.5 million between 1989 and 1996 on research into breeding, cultivation and processing. Millions have been invested in Britain and Denmark. The crop also attracts subsidies from the EU including an annual C$527 for every acre grown under contract.
Industry has also helped. BMW, for instance, introduced flax sound insulation panels for its cars. Groups such as the British Natural Fibres Organisation and similar outfits in Germany have made it their business to encourage the true integration of the crop from start to finish.
But the happy ending has so far eluded flax. In Germany, a specially designed plant to process flax for its new roles in industry has still not been completed due to teething problems. The car industry has started buying some of its insulating flax from cheaper growing areas, such as the Baltic States and Russia.
Nor is flax the sort of crop that gets older farmers rocking on their heels and saying: "It wasn't always like this...." Maybe if they were 120 years old some could remember when this was a crop worth growing. I recall coming back from college in the '60s and asking my father if he'd ever grown flax. He looked into the distance and, thin-lipped, said "just once." It appears that this was at the end of World War II. Britain was short of fibre, and flax was to save the day. Unfortunately POW labour was being sent home, there was no machinery available, and in those days plucking flax (it was pulled out by the roots) was very intensive labour indeed.
That time, most of the fibre crop stayed in the ground - and my father was still cutting tangles of the almost indestructible straw away from shares and coulters during plowing three years later.
Now, here's a really good example of history repeating itself or, if you like, no one learning from his father's mistakes. Exactly 35 years later flax was hailed again as "a crop of the future" - a saviour to help the depressed incomes of farmers in some parts of Germany, in Denmark and in the U.K.
From Frankfurt am Main to Forfar and up into Danish Jutland, farmers throughout northern Europe were encouraged to try a few acres of the crop. "Contracts' were fixed up with scutching mills in Belgium and other mills as far south as the Austrian alps. Arrangements were made to share out the few harvesting machines that were available - mainly from traditional growing areas in Belgium and northern France.
Harvest came, but the machines didn't. The scutching mills hadn't the planned capacity or suddenly went bankrupt. A lot of the flax never left the fields. Another generation of farmers learned how quickly a rotavator can be jammed solid with two-year-old flax straw.
Maybe, with the help of glyphosate, a better-quality product
will make
marketing easier and contracts more attractive - and sell the
crop to a new
generation of farmers who, once again, haven't being paying
attention to
their fathers.
Norman Dunn is Farm & Country's European correspondent, based in
Germany
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Fiddleheads bring taste of spring
Fiddleheads are the smooth, dark green, curled fronds of the ostrich fern. These perennial ferns can be found in many parts of Canada, but grow most abundantly in New Brunswick.Fiddleheads are known by many names. The Maliseet, early natives of the eastern coast, called them masosiul or mahsos, and French Canadians know them as têtes de violin, fougère or crozier. It was the early settlers of New Brunswick who tagged them with the name fiddleheads because the young fronds resemble the tuning end of a violin - though aficionados may say it's because the taste is music in your mouth.
Fiddleheads mature very quickly and, according to Indian legend, if you listen carefully you can hear them grow! The harvest season lasts about two weeks and usually coincides with the decline in flood-waters April through May. Ostrich ferns thrive in shady areas with plenty of moisture, and usually grow in clusters of four to eight heads in one growth. When picking fiddleheads, be sure to leave at least two heads on each growth cluster in order to ensure the healthy survival of the plants for years to come. If transplanted, plants may take three to four years before producing new, harvestable crowns.
Fiddleheads are most tender and flavourful when young (about three cm in diameter), and are best harvested when they are five to 15 cm high. To pick, snap off the tops, leaving about five cm of the stem attached. Fiddleheads are edible just as you pick them and need only be cleaned off and eaten as any fresh vegetable. At only 16 calories per half cup serving, fiddleheads are a relatively high source of iron, and also contain potassium, niacin, riboflavin, magnesium, phosphorus and vitamins C and A.
To clean fiddleheads, simply remove the dry crown casings that may still cling to the frond. Wash them well, or put them in a strainer and rinse under cold running water, and prepare them as you would any green vegetable in your favourite recipe.
If kept well chilled, fiddleheads may be stored in the refrigerator for about a week. To freeze, blanch them for one minute, soak quickly in ice water, drain, and pack in air-free freezer bags or containers. Their food value expires after eight or 12 months.
Fiddleheads have not yet been successfully farmed as a commercial crop, but a ready market awaits all that can be harvested from the wild. McCain Foods Ltd. of Florenceville, N.B, is the only company in Canada to freeze-process fiddleheads and market them commercially.
This delicious springtime treat will be making its 1999 debut
soon. Check
your grocery store for locally picked fiddleheads and give them a
try. Or
take a look in the woodlot for your very own!
Theresa Whalen-Ruiter operates a leisure riding stable and with
her
husband partners a cash crop and dairy farm near Ottawa
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