Cereals Canada celebrates 50th anniversary

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This article was published 27/07/2022 (1460 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DOWNTOWN

Wheat is a keystone of civilization and a cornerstone of Manitoba, and few organizations know this so well as Cereals Canada, a not-for-profit organization located at 303 Main St. that is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

The organization has its fingers in every level of wheat production, processing and sales — collectively referred to as the “value chain.” It works with farmers, exporters, developers, processors and customers from many parts of the world, as well as lobbying and collaborating with government.

Organization CEO Dean Dias said it all begins with farmers.

“Manitoba farmers are some of the best right now. Our prairie farmers grow the most versatile, sustainable crops possible,” Dias said.

However, Dias said it’s been a tough couple of years for farmers in the province, and it’s still difficult to say how this year’s crops will turn out.

“We had two years of drought, then there’s the amount of snow we got in Manitoba this year,” he said.

Snow melt in conjunction with spring precipitation led to flooding across the prairies, which delayed farmers from seeding their fields on time.

Dias said that the manner in which wheat is sold helps to offset the damage to any one area, at least in terms of overall sales.

“We do not sell wheat and cereals as Manitoba wheat and so on. We sell it as Canadian wheat, and generally there are pockets in different parts of the prairies that have a good crop and some that don’t,” he said. “Based on our conversations right now, there’s a potential of an average crop. But that’s today.”

One of the difficulties of the cereals industry, as it is for agriculture as a whole, is its dependence on weather. The organization can work with consumers but can never provide exact figures on cereal crops until they’re harvested and in hand. So, the organization does much of its work based on its forecasts.

“But for us, our weather patterns have been so strange this year. It makes it really hard to predict anything,” he said.

Dias said inflation and rising oil prices are making it more expensive to produce cereals — costs that must be passed on in some degree to the consumer, to keep producers in the black — but the organization is seeking ways to help farmers produce higher yields without proportional increases in production costs, which could help keep down grocery prices.

For Kasia McMillian, a technician at Cereals Canada who works to ensure the quality of durum wheat and helps develop pasta and noodle products, being at the grocery store can stoke pride.

“We’ve helped people develop products, and when you see it on the shelf, you think, wow, we were a part of that. That’s amazing,” she said.

She said she also loves to see food labels boasting about having 100 per cent Canadian durum wheat.

Dias said he hopes to see the organization continue its work for another 50 years.