The relentless marketing, alternately promoting weight loss drugs and foods that lean toward making us fat, wasn’t aimed at the elite athletes strutting their stuff on the world stage. It’s a safe bet they didn’t achieve the peak of human fitness on a diet of pizza and french fries. It’s equally doubtful they require injections of the GLP-1 class of drugs to manage their weight.

Nope, those commercials are aimed at the couch potatoes back home, subjecting us to both temptation and a shortcut to redemption as we bear witness to these feats of human endurance.

These athletes deserve our admiration and respect, but to be fair to the rest of us, most working stiffs don’t have the time, the drive or the resources to devote full-time to the pursuit of extreme fitness.

So we’re left swinging between food-culture extremes, the effects of which filter back through the food chain to the farm. Consider for a moment how the food industry is twisting itself into a pretzel trying to understand how these drugs will affect consumer demand.

Firstly, these products reduce appetites, which means people eat less — so much so that it’s more difficult for them to meet their nutritional needs. It’s also now known that one of the unintended consequences of rapid weight loss is a loss of muscle.

Lately, the focus has shifted to how to support consumers in their post-GLP-1 phase as users move away from the drugs due to factors such as costs or side effects. Recent studies are indicating the weight they lost bounces back four times faster than weight lost through traditional diet and exercise.

That has shifted attention to creating low-calorie, nutrient-dense foods, with a particular emphasis on protein.

How does this affect farmers’ bottom line? Some analysts have pointed to the protein craze as one reason record-high beef prices haven’t had the same dampening effect on demand that they might have in the past.

It’s also creating some longer-term shifts in pricing and production.

A recent Farm Credit Canada analysis outlined how this plays out for dairy farmers, to cite one example. A decade ago, they were told they needed to produce milk with a higher proportion of butterfat, which led to shifts in pricing, genetics and feeding strategies to accommodate.

Now, demand is tipping back to protein, leading marketing boards to once again adjust pricing formulas to incentivise a higher ratio of protein in the milk supply. Change comes at a cost, and those costs eventually find their way into the price of food.

“Does this protein craze have staying power? It will take years and successive generations of breeding to shift the herd towards higher-protein-lower butterfat-producing animals,” FCC economist Graeme Crosbie asked in his article.

That’s a good question. Looking back over the countless extreme approaches grabbing headlines in recent generations — the Atkins Diet, keto, low-fat, high-fat, cabbage, carnivore, meatless, vegan, California, intermittent fasting, anti-ultra processed — to name a few — many have caused food-sector pivots, but ultimately, most had limited staying power.

Remember the Atkins Diet of the early 2000s? Industry statistics show that at its peak, pasta consumption dropped eight per cent and bread by up to 40 per cent.

Meanwhile, food manufacturers responded with a major investment in hundreds of low-carb food products, many of which flourished only briefly.

The jury is still out on the plant-based protein craze, touted as healthier for people and the planet. However, many of the early plant-based products are languishing in the marketplace because of their high cost and blah taste. That industry is reportedly regrouping in a bid to up the flavour profile and rebalance costs.

There are already signs that the GLP-1 drugs are losing their shine. They no doubt still have a place but many are discovering they aren’t the panacea those advertisements make them out to be.

Farmers busy with the day-to-day business of growing food ingredients can’t afford to farm the fads. But it’s still wise to monitor these changing consumer behaviours to find the common threads — such as protein, nutrition and a move away from ultra-processed foods.

Understanding how the middle ground between the different extremes might be shifting gives farmers the upper hand when making strategic investments in their operations.

The post Producers must tread carefully when food fads come calling appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

OK, I really don’t know if I am any smarter than before this event. This conference brought together about 400 ag industry players ranging from primary producers to processors to educators, agricultural and environmental organizations and major food retailers. It was a very broad and interesting cross section of people and organizations involved in some aspect of the agriculture industry.

There were a few grain farmers and beef producers in the crowd while elsewhere in the main conference room were prominent food industry executives such as Galen Weston, chair of Loblaws, and Michael McCain, chair of Maple Leaf Foods.

Nutrien and Calgary Stampede were a couple of the main sponsors and partners of the food summit, along with some other familiar organizations and companies such as Alberta Grains, Pulse Canada, Farmers for Climate Solutions, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, BASF, FCC and Olds College to name a few.

So what were they all gathered for? I’m not really sure. It was the first of what is expected to become an annual conference. GLOBE, which is a well-established event planner that organized the conference, said “by connecting farmers, innovators, retailers, policymakers and investors in one space, we hoped to align on shared priorities and elevate the collective voice of Canada’s agriculture and food sector.”

READ MORE: Leading with transparency in a risky world

I might not have described it in those terms, but again, I was only there for part of a day. It certainly was an event that brought together a cross-section of the agriculture industry. Along with keynote speakers, there were plenty of breakout sessions and roundtable discussions intended to provide people with ideas or inspiration to take home and change their lives or at least do things differently.

One farmer I spoke with after the conference described it as two days of a lot of buzzwords, and a chance for companies to track down programs, services and practices they could align with to make themselves look more “green.” He might have been a tad cynical, but not totally wrong.

The summit was certainly an opportunity for the various sectors of the agriculture industry to connect with one another. Who knows where that networking might lead to in terms or partnerships and alliances down the road.

Quebec meat processor

One unexpected encounter for me involved meeting with Indira Moudi, president and CEO of a small federally-inspected meat packing plant in southern Quebec. Moudi and business partner Guillaume Pham are both engineers by training with no direct experience in the meat packing business.

A few years ago they bought a third-generation meat processing facility — Viandes Lafrance — at Shawinigan. That’s a Quebec community on the north side of the St. Lawrence River about halfway between Montreal and Quebec City.

The founder of the business, Louis Lafrance, started out in 1929, providing butchering and meat cutting services for farmers on their farms. He eventually opened an abattoir that expanded services and remained family owned for many years. In 2008, the business relocated to Shawinigan. However, with no option for family succession, the owners eventually sold the business to Moudi and Pham.

The federally-inspected slaughterhouse is the first facility to obtain multi-species accreditation from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The company is also HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point)- and halal-certified. The HACCP certification means they have a food safety management system in place for identifying, controlling, and preventing food hazards.

READ MORE: ‘Sustainable’ beef pilot a success, but the job isn’t done yet

They slaughter, process and sell wholesale sheep, cattle, veal, lamb, goat, bison, llama and other specialty livestock. Moudi said their business focus is on producing “responsible meat products.” They work with local Quebec producers who follow sound environmental practices and raise their livestock under humane production practices. Eventually they plan to sell branded meat products.

I thought it was an interesting story for a couple reasons. First, Moudi and Pham are a couple engineers who got out of their comfort zone and put their energy into learning to operate a well-established family business, with a commitment to carry on values of supporting local producers, providing good service and quality products.

And perhaps it’s a model for meat processing that could work in other parts of the country. Many times over the years I’ve talked to livestock producers who often cite business limitations include finding a qualified butcher or accessible abattoir, and/or not having access to a federally-inspected facility, which makes it possible to sell products outside their province.

What else did I learn on this memorable day? I had never been to the newly renovated and expanded BMO Centre at Stampede Park. Parking was good for a start. What a beautiful big building. If you want to get in your 10,000 steps a day indoors, it is a great place for that. Everything about the building following the half billion-dollar expansion is big. A 50,000-square foot ballroom, and at 70 feet tall, the world’s largest fireplace. And getting to this conference that was on an upper level involved a ride on what is described as the longest free-standing escalator in Canada at 110 feet. I was just extremely grateful it was an escalator and not stairs.

The post The great food summit adventure appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

By separating “the good stuff” (protein, starch and dietary fibre) from faba beans, a University of Alberta researcher has improved on a process that minimizes human flatulence from eating them. That issue has long been a deterrent to mass acceptance of the pulse.

But that’s just the start of the story. Brasathe Jeganathan’s work is also driving more efficient and sustainable improvements in the process of extracting protein from faba beans. The end result is a very pure protein with possible food applications.

And for the researcher, it’s a crucial drop in a very big ocean.

“One of the biggest challenges we are facing now, as food scientists, is feeding 9.7 billion people by 2050,” said Jeganathan, who earned a PhD in food science and technology for her research. 

“We can’t completely rely on animal-based proteins because it’s not sustainable in the long run. So we need to explore other alternative protein sources, because we definitely have to figure out something that could work.”

On a more micro level, there’s potential to create food products from the extracted bean protein.

Just using plain faba beans might not work to obtain certain traits, “like the ability to form a gel,” the researcher said. “

You need high pure protein fractions to produce high-protein food products,” with desired techno-functional properties, she added.

The research is good news for a crop that has been slowly increasing in acreage across the Prairies. Alberta produced 50 per cent of Canada’s total faba bean production in 2021, followed by Saskatchewan with 41 per cent and Manitoba at nine per cent.

“I would say faba bean could be an attractive crop, especially because they have many environmental benefits. They get involved in symbiotic nitrogen fixation similar to soy,” said Jeganathan.

The researcher used a common food industry process called fractionation. In the case of faba beans (also known as fava, broad and horse beans), fractionation is a process used to separate pure protein from the bean’s less desirable compounds – those that cause gas.

There are two types of fractionation: wet and dry. At its most fundamental, wet fractionation can be compared to the brewing process for coffee or tea, she said, in which grounds are brewed in hot water to extract desired compounds. But wet fractionation is a chemically- and energy-intensive process.

For traditional wet fraction, “You need lots of water energy, so it’s not sustainable in the long run,” said Jeganathan. “And when you use a lot of chemicals, people don’t like to consume them as much as consuming something that is chemical-free.”

Dry fractionation employs a process of grinding and sieving, similar to handling flour in the kitchen. However, wet fractionation is generally preferred in the industry because dry methods only produce protein concentrates, which are not pure versions of protein.

“You can only achieve modest enrichment in the protein content if you use (dry methods),” she said, but it’s also considered more sustainable due to lack of water or chemical use.

By experimenting with hybrid methods using both wet and dry fractionation, as well as a chemical-free extraction method using only water, Jeganathan was able to isolate and extract protein from the bean. The chemical-free methods resulted in higher quality protein (up to 94 per cent pure) compared with other methods.

“I would say with the hybrid method, where I used dry and wet methods together, the water consumption was much less compared to using just the water extraction method alone,” she said.

Through a process called pearling, the research also revealed that the protein in faba beans is more highly concentrated in the bean’s external layers. Fractionation is usually accomplished by grinding the entire bean, but Jeganathan took it down a notch by pearling.

“Instead of grinding the whole bean, by pearling we ground only 60 per cent of the outer layer of the bean, which is high in protein.”

Jeganathan’s research isn’t done. She is working as a postdoctoral research assistant at Washington State University, where she’s investigating how her proposed water-based extraction method carries over to a variety of beans as well as sea algae. “Definitely we are seeing a huge potential.”

The post Faba bean research means high protein, less gas appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

There’s been nowhere to sell it. The sole Winnipeg refinery closed in early 1997.

Owned by Rogers Sugar at the time of closing — the same company whose employees are currently on strike at its cane sugar plant in Vancouver — the Manitoba Sugar Company facility was built in 1940 and was the heart of the Keystone province’s sugar beet industry for decades.

By the 1990s, the plant was feeling the pinch. A 1997 article from the Western Producer in the wake of the closure announcement pointed fingers at a one-two punch of greater domestic competition and trade pressures from the U.S.

The company was fighting for market share with Eastern Canada’s Redpath sugar, which had recently expanded, while a U.S.-introduced 22,000-tonne quota on Canadian sugar had put the proverbial nail in the coffin, said then-Rogers Sugar president David Elliott.

The same article noted the Winnipeg plant was the oldest and smallest of the company’s holdings.

Why it matters: Alberta’s sugar beet growers say a domestic sugar policy would help kickstart the Canadian sugar industry rather than relying on foreign supply.

Today, the Manitoba Sugar Company is a red-bricked relic standing in the shadow of five concrete silos. It’s grounds, which once shipped 50,000 tonnes of refined sugar (half its production) annually to the U.S., is now occupied by other businesses, according to the Manitoba Historical Society.

If Canada’s remaining domestic sugar producers have anything to say about it, that might not be the last word on the province’s sugar fortunes.

The Alberta Sugar Beet Growers organization wants a national domestic sugar policy, which it says could lay the foundation for an eventual resurgence of the sector.

Such a policy would regulate the amount of sugar imported into Canada from cane sugar-producing countries like Brazil and India. Instead, the group says, there could be a focus on home-grown sugar beet production and processing.

“We’re the only G7 country that does not have a domestic sugar policy,” said Jennifer Crowson, the grower group’s executive director.

“A sugar policy would protect the sugar beet market and the ability for us to expand the industry.”

The group says its growers produce only eight per cent of the sugar sold in Canada, and the remainder is imported cane sugar.

The immediate goal of a domestic sugar policy, as laid out by the Alberta group and its national counterpart, the Canadian Sugar Beet Growers Association, would be to double sugar beets’ market foothold to 16 per cent of national sugar consumption.

This would drive new investment in refineries and open grower opportunities.

“Other provinces like Manitoba used to produce sugar beets. If there was a sugar policy, we would be able to expand the market and potentially have other provinces start growing sugar beets again,” said Crowson.

Corporations have expressed interest in building beet sugar infrastructure if there was a policy in place, she added.

“Other industry people and corporations say that, in the event that there was a policy, they would come and build another processing plant.”

There’s still at least one major hurdle: federal approval of the policy. That process is coming along slowly but surely, Crowson said.

“It’s been a work in progress for a while, but we have recently been able to have a few meetings with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada,” she said. “We’re creating a working group going forward to look at some of the pieces of what domestic sugar policy could look like.”

Sugar shortage

Canadian sugar has featured in the news recently due to the ongoing strike at the Vancouver sugar refinery.

Although having a policy wouldn’t affect the chances of similar strike action, industry growth could create more supply chain options in the event of disruption, proponents say.

“With the strike right now, the biggest factor is they’re just not operating, not that their source of sugar is not there,” said Crowson. “So as far as domestic sugar policy, it would secure that Canada has a more sustainable product right here that’s 100 per cent Canadian.”

The sugar beets under irrigation in southern Alberta and processed at the Lantic plant in Taber represent almost the entirety of sugar production in the country, said Crowson.

Rogers Sugar is the holding company of Lantic Inc., formed when Rogers Sugar Ltd. and Lantic Sugar Limited merged in 2008.

“There are beets that are grown in Ontario, but they’re exported to Michigan to be processed, so that doesn’t stay within Canada,” she noted. “So, we are the only source of 100 per cent Canadian sugar in Canada.”

Almost the entire sugar beet market is comprised of 200 farm families who harvest about 840,000 tonnes of sugar beets to be refined every year.

There are three other sugar refineries under the company’s banner (Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto) but they are dedicated to processing cane sugar sourced from countries such as India, Brazil and Vietnam.

Today, the Canadian sugar beet industry operates under a supply managed, quota-based system, said Crowson.

The ASBG manages these producer quotas from its permanent quota of 28,000-33,895 acres per year, depending on capacity of the Taber refinery. That facility issues notice of reductions in advance if it’s unable to process the permanent quota that year.

“The processor tells us how much we can grow each year and usually what happens is we end up with a 17 to 20 per cent reduction from our permanent quota,” she said.

“What that means, going into next year’s system, is out of that 33,895 acres, we’re going to have a 17 per cent reduction. That will be the maximum amount of acres our growers are able to grow.”

Any beets that don’t make it to the plant become a storage challenge for producers, she added. They have no options to market them.

“The beets are stored in piles outside so as winter carries on, the beets do get frozen. That’s OK, but they can only stay frozen and still be a good product for so long. So, come the end of February or beginning of March … those beets will start to deteriorate.”

It’s not uncommon in southern Alberta to get sudden stretches of warm weather, which hastens beet deterioration.

The latest harvest in November brought in 856,636 tonnes, at an extractable sugar rate of just over 17 per cent.

Those yield numbers were high, considering that the number of planted acres were down. Due to weather conditions and lateness of the processor contract, producers grew 26,000 acres as opposed to the typical 28,000, Crowson noted.

– With files from Alexis Stockford.

The post A return to Manitoba-grown sugar beets? appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Food & Beverage Manitoba (FaBMB) is working hard to establish a food-development centre to help small and medium-sized processing businesses bring their products to market.

“We’re working on developing a support ecosystem for small- and medium-sized businesses,” said Michael Mikulak, the group’s executive director.

Why it matters: The industry group argues that when the Food Development Centre in Portage la Prairie shifted towards a more protein-specific mandate in 2021, it left a gap for local processors wanting to test and commercialize products.

Mikulak said they want to target businesses developing new products, but don’t have access to the knowledge and equipment needed to get them to the next level.

“It’s for businesses looking to scale up,” he said. “It is to help companies going from a couple of retail stores — maybe a few farmers’ markets — and [who are] looking for a path to get into maybe dozens of retail outlets, or to start thinking about interprovincial trade and maybe even export outside of the country.”

According to a food ecosystems study commissioned by FaBMB, there’s a dearth of this type of support in Manitoba.

“There are currently very few pathways to support food SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] from startup to scale-up to commercialization and consumer engagement and uptake,” the report read.

It suggested that other jurisdictions aren’t facing the same issues. Other provinces boast “well-financed food development centres” that work with burgeoning processors, it found, pointing to sites like the Leduc Food Processing Development Centre in Alberta or Saskatchewan Food Centre.

“Those facilities offer expertise in agri-food and process development, production and processing capacities, skills development, food safety education and training, quality assurance and technology transfer,” the report authors said.

The local toolbox

There are resources in Manitoba providing some of that support, such as commercial kitchens and co-packaging facilities.

The FaBMB report argued, however, that while these facilities are excellent resources, they often “lack the necessary equipment, food safety and health certifications, sufficient space and on-site or multi-day shared storage, transportation, processing and distribution capacity to adequately support SMEs.”

Red River College has its Prairie Research Kitchen, which was established in 2019 and offers a long list of services to its customers. But they don’t quite bridge that gap either, in the industry group’s view.

“It is a great facility. They work with a lot of our members to do all sorts of things, but they have nowhere to send people after they’re done with their tests,” said Mikulak.

Historically, the Food Development Centre in Portage la Prairie provided some of those supports. Two years ago, however, the centre reduced its mandate to focus mainly on protein processing. According to the FaBMB report, when that mandate changed, local food processing startups took a big hit.

“It was a valuable starting point for product development in the burgeoning food sector,” the report read, adding that the centre “now focuses on larger companies closer to the stage of commercialization — at the expense of small-scale innovation.”

That shift left small-scale food processors scrambling. Without the Food Development Centre in their corner, the choice was between setting up a processing facility or going out of province for scale-up services, FaBMB argues.

“This is why we’re working on this,” said Mikulak. “Building your own plant is very expensive. You need to have a plan; you need specialized equipment; you need staffing and all that kind of stuff.”

Businesses that have a good recipe, “don’t have access to the capital,” to get it market ready, “but they also don’t have enough understanding of what the market is like. And that’s what these incubation centres do; that’s the role they play,” he said. “They de-risk a lot of that for people, and it allows [businesses] to begin that scale-up process and build up those skills before they invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into a plant.”

While the Food Development Centre has shifted out of that incubation space, Mikulak said he’s still been working closely with them to ensure FaBMB isn’t duplicating services already offered by the facility.

“They’re still trying to figure out what they’re going to be doing moving forward. So what we’ve suggested to them is that we focus in on these kinds of micro-enterprises,” Mikulak said.

The effort to avoid duplication of services applies to all the other facilities in the province as well.

Progress

FaBMB says they have made a lot of progress towards establishing the new centre since the Portage facility’s shift.

“We’re a fairly small team, but I think we punch above our weight in terms of what we can do,” said Mikulak. “We’re way past the advocacy stage.”

The group has secured significant funding for their project, including a promise of $3 million from Winnipeg-based economic development firm CentreVenture Development Corporation.

Mikulak estimates the final cost of the project will be around $15 million.

“We have to get into a little bit more details and work with the architect to figure out the different components, but it’s in that ballpark,” he said.

While they have a long way to go to raise those funds, Mikulak remains optimistic.

“We’ve got a lot of the funders very interested and wanting to go to the next step,” he said

They also have a location picked out: the Marketlands development on Princess Street in Winnipeg.

Mikulak says he hopes to put shovels in the ground for the new facility by the fall 2024. Marketlands is a cluster development, and there are two other projects going into the south site where FaBMB intends to build.

The first two are scheduled to break ground this fall. The food-development facility is the smallest of the three.

Historically, Mikulak noted, the site has long had a connection to Manitoba’s food production industry, being the location of Winnipeg’s first farmers’ market.

Also, he said, “We’d be working with Red River College and their programming at the prairie research kitchen. That’s one of the reasons we’re really excited about this location… it is literally across the street.”

Red River College’s culinary arts and food safety programs are located on the college’s downtown campus on Princess Street.

Mikulak said the new facility will bring the potential for work-integrated learning with the college.

“So imagine you’re a small company and you’re trying to figure out how to scale up and get to that next phase. It can be really difficult to hire the kind of qualified staff that understands food safety because you only need them for 10 hours a week,” he said. “If we’re in partnership with Red River, we can actually have a pool of qualified students looking for that work experience who have already been trained and who can provide that support to those entrepreneurs.”

But Mikulak said the location in Winnipeg’s Exchange District also positions the facility to open other doors in the surrounding community.

“You have opportunities to work with equity-seeking groups, so you can work with things like newcomer agencies and Indigenous groups to promote careers and entrepreneurship opportunities there,” he said.

All of this is still tentative. Without the funding fully in place yet and with an election looming, funding delays could become a reality, and Mikulak recognizes that the process could be years in the making.

That said, he argued that there is awareness of the need for such a facility among the project’s major funders.

“It it’s really about figuring out the details of what we do and who’s going to pay for what,” he said.

“The trick is always that very few grants pay for buildings,” he added. “They’ll pay for build-outs, but bricks and mortar is trickier to fund. So our next step is to figure that out.”

The post Dreaming of a Winnipeg-based food development centre appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Burcon NutraScience Corporation, which focuses on plant proteins and ingredients for the food and beverage sector, says it will offer start-to-finish product development services for processors.

“We saw that gap in the industry and we’re offering what we feel will fill that gap,” said Martin Schweizer, Burcon’s vice-president of technical development.

Start-to-finish product development is important for Manitoba agri-food processors to limit the costs of generating new products.

The services will fill “that gap between the bench level and the commercial-scale production where you can try out things on a pilot scale,” Schweizer said. “It’s hitting that sweet spot where process and scale-up validation don’t have to be cost prohibitive and oversized.”

Burcon’s Winnipeg Technical Centre comprises 10,000 square feet of lab and pilot-scale production space.

The company hopes to attract food processors looking to upcycle byproducts, develop end-to-end processes or validate and ramp up a process. Customers will be able to leverage Burcon’s infrastructure and food processing expertise, along with its team of scientists and engineers, to develop and deliver new products and solutions, the company has said.

There are other food product scale-up services that can take a new product idea and work with the processor on ways to commercialize it.

However, Burcon doesn’t delve into commercialization. It has instead hung its pitch on the promise of technical expertise, particularly in the plant protein space.

“There hasn’t been a facility where companies can test their ideas on a pilot level that offers our whole spectrum of protein technologies,” said Schweizer.

While Burcon is known for its work on plant protein, Schweizer said the company isn’t afraid of moving outside those lines.

“We’re not limiting ourselves to plant proteins only,” he said. “We have a huge knowledge base in protein processing and can build off of over 250 years of combined experience. We’re happy to apply that to whatever challenges are out there.”

There are different ways that Burcon could work with a company, he added.

“Probably the most straightforward is when somebody who has an idea about developing a certain product or process comes to us and says, ‘I want to try it out using your pilot plant and produce some product that I can then use to do testing’.”

In this case, the customer is paying for access to Burcon’s equipment.

Another approach involves a customer with an idea for a product who doesn’t know how to proceed.

“That’s where we can use our technology and our expertise and then work with the customer to develop a solution,” he said.

Michael Mikulak, executive director with Manitoba Food and Beverage, said he thinks Burcon is providing an important service.

“It seems like they’re focused on providing services for companies looking to create a new product,” he said. “That is very expensive and difficult. It requires research scientists and it requires very specialized equipment.”

Though Burcon isn’t limiting itself to plant protein and may fill a niche in the industry, Mikulak said it doesn’t fill the gap his organization has identified.

“At Burcon, these are people who have really significant scientific chops, and that doesn’t come cheap, but we’re working on more of a general kind of support ecosystem for small and medium-sized businesses as they’re looking to scale up,” he said.

The post Burcon adds processor scale-up services appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“I would say those streams of funding are absolutely crucial for stimulating growth and supporting innovation in the sector,” said executive director Michael Mikulak.

Why it matters: Access to funding could help food processing businesses ride out difficult economic challenges.

The two funding streams for Manitoba food processors include the Capital Infrastructure and Investment Program to fund equipment purchases and the Market Development Program to increase trade and grow markets. Both were announced April 21 under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (S-CAP).

Capital Infrastructure and Investments Program

The Capital Infrastructure and Investments Program offers non-repayable, cost-shared funding to small and large businesses in Manitoba’s food processing sector. Depending on the size, projects are eligible for funding from $50,000 to $2.5 million.

The program is divided into four categories:

• Capital assets, processing equipment: capital investment purchases that enhance efficiency, productivity and environmental sustainability.
• Capital assets, enterprise resource planning software: implementation of software that will increase efficiency and profitability by integrating company operations.
• Quality control capacity building: increasing quality assurance capacity to monitor and manage product safety.
• Co-packing capacity building: to help entrepreneurs scale up food businesses by increasing funding for co-packing services.

Market Development Program

The Market Development Program is aimed at improving domestic and international trade access for the sector. The program will provide a 50 per cent cost-share toward eligible expenses for a maximum per-project grant of $30,000.

This program is also divided into four categories:

• Market information and research: to help identify a product’s viability in a new market.
• Market development, planning and training: to increase export capacities and address non-tariff-related market-access barriers.
• Product commercialization: commercialization and enhancement of new and existing products.
• Domestic and international development activities: actions to expand into new markets, like business-to-business trade shows.

Good timing

Mikulak noted the benefit of both programs in light of the sector’s recent difficulties.

“I talk to members every day who are on the edge right now because of all the different pressures,” he said. “I’m worried that a lot of businesses are just going to say, ‘it’s not worth it anymore.’”

According to Farm Credit Canada’s recent food and beverage report, the national sector’s manufacturing sales increased 10.6 per cent in 2022, but margins were much tighter as manufacturers navigated increases in the price of raw materials, labour shortages and supply chain disruptions.

“This is where programs like S-CAP are vital,” Mikulak said. “They’ll help companies invest in automation, which can help with the labour shortage, and they’ll help companies invest in marketing so they can expand their operations.”

Mikulak encouraged members to use these funding streams. To help with that, his organization has launched programming to walk members through the grant-writing process.

“We’ve held a couple of grant writing workshops and offer one-on-one support targeting small and medium-sized enterprises who typically don’t have the capacity or the budgets to hire a grant writer.”

More funding needed for shared-use facilities

Mikulak said the Manitoba food processing industry could thrive, given the right mix of entrepreneurship and government support.

“Manitoba is very well positioned; we have a green electricity grid and we have an opportunity to become exporters, not only of raw commodities but also of value-added goods,” he said.

“Programs like this move in the right direction by incentivizing investments in these kinds of processing facilities. We have to take a co-ordinated approach to it. Otherwise, we are going to miss a huge opportunity for Manitoba to emerge as a global leader in this space.”

Mikulak said government support falls short on funding for shared-use facilities.

“This is something that we’re heavily involved in advocating right now,” he said.

The S-CAP announcement includes funding for co-packing initiatives, but Mikulak said it doesn’t go far enough.

“We need a food development centre, an incubator space that can act as an accelerator. Every other province has multiple of these. Manitoba has really fallen behind in that.”

Until recently, the Food Development Centre in Portage la Prairie filled that role, but in 2021, the province scaled back operations and shifted focus away from helping small processors scale up their operations and toward research and product innovation.

According to Mikulak, the sector was left with a gap.

“We call it the missing middle,” he said. “I think the province is starting to realize that we’ve kind of underinvested in that.”

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The first year, they grew a crop of gluten-free organic oats, cleaned them and tested products. The next year a flood kept them from planting oats on their Interlake farm.

The third year, they grew another crop, found someone to clean it, retrofitted an old barn into an approved processing facility, purchased dehulling, milling and packaging equipment, designed and printed 10,000 packages, paid for nutritional analysis and shelf-life testing and purchased UPC codes.

“Three years into our project, having worked full time for an entire year, and putting tens of thousands – many tens of thousands of dollars into a business, we then brought our first case of oats to a retailer,” said Nikkel.

“The retailer kind of looked at it, like ‘Hmm, I don’t know. It’s pretty risky. Would you sell it to me on consignment?’”

Why it matters: On-farm processing can be a challenging and rewarding road to travel.

That’s the ugly side of on-farm food processing, Nikkel told her audience at Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon on Jan. 18. She and her family own Adagio Acres, a small farm and grain processor. The good side is the possibility of capturing a far greater portion of the consumers’ food dollars, Nikkel said. It can increase farm stability, even out the peaks and valleys of crop prices, and provide more diverse work tasks, potentially adding more jobs for family members who want to farm.

Analyzing potential

Drawing on her experience, Nikkel offered several considerations to prospective on-farm food processors.

Identify the product: Nikkel suggested farmers consider what crop or variety isn’t available locally (e.g. organic, gluten-free, naked oats), or if a feature of the farm might be valued by consumers but undervalued by the commodity market.

They should also consider how many levels of processing they want to add. Each layer can increase profit share but also complexity and risk, she said.

Identify infrastructure needs: Farming offers potential advantages for processing such as outbuildings and machinery (e.g. a front-end loader for moving pallets). Since farming is capital-intense, it could provide helpful leverage or it could be a burden.

Nikkel suggested talking with food health and safety inspectors before building or buying equipment.

“That was probably the best thing that we did in our entire business startup,” she said.

The inspectors helped evaluate their options, such as whether existing buildings could be retrofitted.

“I think if we had started without asking for that input from the health inspectors, we probably would have started by building our own building, and it really was not required at that point,” she said.

Identify skillsets and labour needs: Some, but not all, skills needed for farming and processing overlap, Nikkel said. Processing doesn’t require skill in agronomy, for instance, but it does require certain mechanical and repair skills, as well as the ability to analyze markets.

Farming requires far less consumer relations, but both require creative problem solving.

Identify your market: Direct to consumer, grocery retailers, food service and restaurants, and export sales all come with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Identify your business structure: A processing business has similar structural options as farming, Nikkel said. For instance, it can be a sole proprietorship, partnership or corporation. It can be separate or combined with the farm.

“Don’t take advice from a farmer,” she said. Talk to an accountant or tax advisor.

Counting costs

Nikkel added a few cost considerations. While farm buildings may be used to set up processing, retrofitting and upgrades are almost inevitable. Other expenses may include capital and maintenance costs for machinery and infrastructure; regulatory costs like third-party audits (e.g. HACCP); material handling and packaging costs; and insurance costs.

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Once a farm has done an inventory and it’s time to make decisions, Nikkel suggested talking with someone who is already doing something similar.

She also suggested taking time to reflect on goals. What do you hope to gain? Is that realistic?

Competitive advantage

Despite its challenges, being both a farmer and a processor comes with competitive advantages, a panel of farmer-processors said.

Paul Spenst of Spenst Bros., Hailey Jeffries of Prairie Fava, and Lawrence Warwaruk of Farmery discussed value-added processing after Nikkel spoke.

Being their own supplier of beef was an advantage for Spenst during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when uneven supply had consumers looking elsewhere for meat.

“You can really fill a need, and then you also create a new customer because they, for the first time out of necessity, must buy your beef,” he said, adding some customers kept buying.

While Prairie Fava is a separate business from the farm, Jeffries said the two work synergistically.

Processing is her business and the farm is her husband’s business. However, the farm produces their preferred variety of fava seed, which they can sell to farmers who contract with Prairie Fava.

Connections with farmers and their supply chain has also been a competitive advantage, Jeffries added. Some companies want to work with them because they want a closer connection with the farmer. They want to know where their ingredients come from and promote that on their packaging.

In Warwaruk’s case, making beer from barley and hops grown on-farm adds value to those products and makes a difference in the community.

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