It all starts with good seed

The quality of the food you enjoy – from peas to pizza to beer – starts with the quality of what goes in the ground. Just ask these seed growers.

Ever wonder why your favourite pizza chain’s deepdish crusts taste just as good in Grande Prairie as they do in Edmonton or Medicine Hat? Marvel why a freshly-poured stein of your signature beer tastes as good as ever? Love the way that package of yellow split peas produces an exotic-looking twist in your great aunt’s recipe for green split-pea soup?

As consumers, we Albertans are used to getting what we pay for. That’s why most of us spend almost no time thinking about how we get the foods we want. Mark Kaun is different. A pedigreed seed farmer and president of the Alberta branch of the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association (CSGA), this Penhold-area farmer is one of the approximately 800 Alberta farmers who grow the seed Alberta’s farmers need to produce top-quality crops.

Canada’s 100-year-old certified seed system has a proud history in quality crop production. But “blue tagged” seed, which is sold with guarantees of varietal purity, weed counts and germination rates is the cornerstone for crops with desired agronomic traits like high yields, early maturity and disease resistance.

“A growing number of food and industrial-use processors pay premiums for cereals, oilseeds and pulse crops grown from certified seed,” explains Kaun.

All seed is not created equal

Henry Vos, a certified seed grower from Fairview, adds, “Whether it’s peas of the same size and colour, malt barley that produces a particular kind of beer or wheat with specific milling qualities to make bread or pasta, certified seed gives commercial farmers a better chance to deliver exactly what processors want.

“We call these Identity Preserved or IP markets. Processors rely on certain characteristics like protein or consistency and we help farmers deliver product with exactly that. While the market is consumer-driven, it’s based on a sophisticated network of food processing research and variety development.”

It all comes down to the quality in/quality out principle, says Kaun. “The IP system gives farmers a way to produce what their customers want and a way to keep out the elements they don’t want.”