Canary seed becomes official grain Aug. 1

Jun 10, 2021

The designation means the crop receives the same protections as wheat, canola and other grains

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

A new crop will be designated as an official grain under the Canada Grain Act in the coming months.

The Canadian Grain Commission (CGC) announced canary seed will join its counterparts like barley, lentils and wheat as an official grain on Aug. 1.

This decision comes after grain company ILTA Grain filed for creditor protection in July 2019. The situation left canary seed producers unpaid for $2.1 million of grain deliveries.

At the time, canary seed was not an official grain and therefore producers didn’t quality for payment protections.

Designating the crop as an official grain means producers are ensured payment.

“After successive licensee failures where canary seed growers were left empty handed, it was clear we needed to extend regulatory safeguards to the sector,” Doug Chorney, chief commissioner of the CGC, said in a statement. We’re very pleased to be able to offer canary seed growers the rights and services provided by the Canada Grain Act and help ensure they are fairly compensated for their deliveries.”

Saskatchewan is a major canary seed producer.

The province accounts for more than 95 per cent of Canada’s total canary seed production and is the world’s leading producer and exporter of the crop.

Growers began working towards having the crop designated as an official grain after the ILTA Grain situation in 2019.

Canary seed growers are pleased with the CGC’s decision to protect their grain deliveries, said Darren Yungmann, chair of the Canary Seed Development Commission of Saskatchewan.

“We put forward a motion at our 2020 annual general meeting to solicit the CGC to include canary seed as an official grain,” he told Farms.com. “This is great news because now it means our crop is protected by the commission. You can’t have farmers losing $2 million.”

A majority of canary seed marketing opportunities is for bird feed.

But in January 2016 Health Canada approved the grain for human consumption.

This opens up new revenue streams for farmers, but multiple hurdles are in the way, Yungmann said.

“We’re working to bring down barriers like registering herbicides for human use,” he said. “We’re doing research trials on the stability of the flour and we’re trying to get the seed into grain companies’ hands to do more research.”

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”