With harvest levels in decline, farmers and scientists hope to revitalize the grain from sprout to table

Wild rice, the only cereal native to Canada, has been used by Indigenous people for thousands of years. These plants are on Nemeiben Lake near La Ronge, Sask., where Marty Ratt is harvesting it by boat.

Globe and Mail: Phyllis Smith has been working with wild rice for more than 30 years. But in the Métis community where she lives near Pinehouse Lake, Sask., the Canadian industry is facing unprecedented challenges that have her and her colleagues paddling to stay afloat.

Not only have they seen a decline in the volume of their yields, but the work force is aging. Places that process the rice are few and, come harvest time, overloaded.

Wild rice is the only cereal native to Canada and has been used by First Nations across North America for thousands of years as a culinary and cultural staple. In Canada, most wild rice – which is technically a grass that grows in lakes – is found in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. It had a commercial bump in the late 20th century, but it has faced challenges since.

Ms. Smith’s own experiences harvesting wild rice in northern Saskatchewan are illustrative of the current problems that dog the industry in Canada. Around four to five years ago, Ms. Smith said she made about $66,000 off of roughly 40,000 pounds of wild rice – the most she’d ever picked. Last year, despite it being a bumper crop in the current climate, Ms. Smith made around $19,000 with about 16,000 pounds of wild rice.

With harvesting happening at 10 per cent of historical levels – owing to economic and climatic factors currently being researched – the work force doesn’t have the volume to keep up in today’s market, said Bruce Hardy, founder of the biotech company Myera Group.

Ms. Smith said a lot of harvesters’ yields last year were either used for reseeding, which doesn’t pay anything, or sold to a new harvester as seed for a lower price than they’d get from a processing plant. Add to that the fact that the average Canadian wild-rice harvester is 60 to 70 years old, according to Mr. Hardy.

If nothing changes, Mr. Hardy, who is Cree-Métis, said, “Indigenous knowledge of over 4,000 years is at complete risk of being lost in less than 10 years. And I don’t see people understanding that.”

Ms. Smith is trying to ensure that something does change. Since 2022, she has been part of a group working to both increase processing capacity for wild rice in northern Saskatchewan and train the next generation of Indigenous harvesters to preserve traditional knowledge about the plant. The team also hopes to see harvesters benefit from Indigenous data-sharing and strategic marketing.

Until now, she said, the aqueous plant has been overlooked by the research community. “What we’re doing now, as a team, it’s never been done,” Ms. Smith said.

Together, Tim Sharbel, a plant sciences professor at the University of Saskatchewan; Blaine Chartrand, research chair for the BioScience Supplied Research Centre at Saskatchewan Polytechnic; and Pankaj Bhowmik, a senior research officer at the National Research Council, have been making regular trips to northern Saskatchewan to visit Ms. Smith, engage with Indigenous harvesters, collect plant samples and record the characteristics of the lakes the samples were drawn from.

Different lakes have different biotic and abiotic characteristics, such as microbes, animals, mud and geology, which could affect the size, colour and nutritional content of the rice, Prof. Sharbel said.

In his preliminary research using the samples, he said he has found that wild rice has a healthier nutritional profile than other rice, such as white or brown, or wheat, owing to its higher omega-3 fatty acid content and more than two times the amount of B vitamins.

Wild rice is also known to be a great source of protein, Prof. Sharbel added, which is particularly important because it opens up the possibility of it becoming a competitive alternative protein source, alongside the likes of pea or soy protein.

“It becomes another money maker and, furthermore, an important source of very healthy food for the world,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bhowmik is using a handheld device called an “electronic nose” to study the unique volatile compounds of wild rice and better understand how they contribute to its flavour. The eNose, as it’s called, has 32 different chemical sensors that respond to the volatile compounds in the air and use them to provide a flavour profile of the rice.

This data can serve as a tool for harvesters to understand the nuances of their plants and communicate this to buyers in a way that effectively emphasizes the value of their product.

Wild rice isn’t the only food that can be identified by its geography, Mr. Hardy said. Consider champagne from the wine region of Champagne in France, or camembert from Normandy that is made with milk from specific cows. Both of these products are protected under Geographical Indications, a type of intellectual property used to tie a product to its region of origin. In Canada, the Okanagan Valley, Prince Edward County and Niagara Escarpment are protected Geographical Indications.

To a consumer, the Geographical Indication shows that the product they’re buying has characteristics unique to where it’s manufactured, which often carries economic or cultural value.

If Canadian Indigenous wild rice could be granted Geographical Indications, Mr. Hardy said, harvesters would have an advantage in promoting and defending the uniqueness of their product, thus increasing the value. He aspires to have enough data on the nuances of the rice that a flavour wheel can be designed specifically for it, similar to those used to guide coffee, wine or whisky tastings.

While the work to revitalize this Canadian industry is still under way, Mr. Hardy said the accomplishments thus far are evidence that their dreams of turning Indigenous wild rice into a coveted Canadian good are realistic.

“We’ve had enough proof in the pudding to say, ‘Is this a crazy idea or is it plausible?’ And we’re past that plausible point. We know it can be done,” he said.

Currently, the group of researchers is working with a grant of $280,000 from the government of Saskatchewan under one of its Agriculture Development Fund Crops Projects of 2023.

In the next six to eight months, Prof. Sharbel said he will submit an application for a grant of between $5-million to $10-million from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Alliance Society fund.

If he’s successful, he said the money will go toward training young people in the marketing and harvesting of wild rice in the summer months. In the winter, he’d like to train them in horticulture and tissue culture so they can apply this knowledge to growing fruits and vegetables indoors, which would help ensure their communities can be healthy and food secure.

“Part of it is protecting this traditional knowledge by giving young Indigenous people the tools of biotechnology, but then letting them integrate that into their world of traditional knowledge,” he said.

Already, to spark interest in the industry, Mr. Bhowmik has been showing local high-school students from Pinehouse and La Ronge how to study the rice harvested in their communities.

“Our plan is, eventually, they will be the resource person to train or show other students in the community who are interested in wild-rice harvesting,” he said.

There are about 10 wild-rice harvesters in Pinehouse, all of whom utilize one processing plant, two hours from Ms. Smith. As it is, come harvest time in a good year, the volume exceeds the plant’s capacity.

“When we flood the plant, meaning when we overload the plant with wild rice, they stop buying it. So, you’re stuck with wild rice because you have nowhere else to send it,” she said.

A new processing plant is something Prof. Sharbel and Ms. Smith are working on to increase the number of options for harvesters looking to sell their yield. Ideally, Ms. Smith said it would be further west than La Ronge, to increase options for harvesters on that side of the province.

Ms. Smith dreams of a store dedicated exclusively to selling wild rice, with the perfect meal pairings detailed on each packet. She said she has a good feeling about where things are headed for the wild-rice industry in Canada, thanks to the work being done by the team she’s a part of.

“It’s going to take time and a bit of work, but I think we’re heading down the right path,” she said.

“It will only get better from here.

By Pippa Norman
Photography and video by Heywood Yu