Five things I learned touring lentil farms…
Mike Kostyo, Menu Matters Vice President
I don't think I've ever been on a farm tour where I didn't end thinking, "How does every agricultural product not cost a million dollars?" (And that food waste should be illegal.)
Last week I had the opportunity to head up to Saskatoon to learn about lentils from the local farmers and processors who are passionate about this pulse. At one point we were standing in farmer Chad Doerksen's field, learning about everything he has to deal with: kochia, an invasive plant that chokes out lentil plants from above and below; rain (they've had so much rain they want it to stop now); wildfires; choosing the exact right moment to harvest when the lentils on a single plant are at various stages of maturity; soil health (lentils are always rotated with options like wheat, canola, other pulses); equipment purchases (every piece seems to cost $1.5m); etc. Chad was open about how stressful it is.
That tech and equipment is incredibly advanced, as anyone who has been to a farm recently knows. We talked a lot about AI, from using AI to predict the needs of a particular piece of land to breeders using Apple Vision Pro goggles to look at a greenhouse and tell which plants are at the perfect stage. Breeding has its own set of challenges: manually crossing every plant (it takes about 5 minutes per plant because they are so tiny), achieving the perfect color, developing plants that are nice and tall so they can be cut easily, etc. It takes 10-12 years, on average, from test to farm.
We also learned so much from the Lentils.org team and Pulse Canada teams, too. I loved hearing from Tanya Der, Director of Diversification and Market Insights, on the diverse range of applications for lentil flours they are testing and developing - I want to try breading fried chicken in lentil flour, which gives it a deep brown color.
It all gives you a new appreciation for the food that we are lucky to have access to. And we were fortunate enough to try so many delicious meals and products from local producers and chefs during the trip. With lentils being so common to the area, there are plenty of inventive uses for lentils on store shelves and menus. I was particularly impressed by the use of lentils in beverages: a refreshing lentil beer from Rebellion Brewing that has become their most popular option, a lentil whiskey from Stumbletown Distilling that had a wonderful earthiness to it.
We talk about connecting with our food and who grows it so often that in some ways these concepts have lost their meaning. It goes beyond just putting the picture of a farmer in some marketing materials and instead involves telling the story through every step of the process. A lentil bowl may only cost $12.95, but based on the work and passion that goes into it, it's worth millions.
Overall, here are five things I learned during the trip:
1. Every new lentil variety is bred naturally, with humans hand-crossing each one. It’s such tiny, exacting work that it takes 5 minutes for every plant, multiplied by the hundreds and sometimes thousands of plants they cross. The process is getting more advanced, though, with the team experimenting with tiny vacuums instead of tweezers and even using virtual reality goggles to easily gather information about an entire greenhouse; AI is able to show in the headset which plants are ready, for instance.
2. Uniquely, Canada has a final government certification process for new plant varieties, which adds about 2 years to the development process (which is already about 8-10 years long).
3. One thing that many consumers don’t appreciate is just how experimental farming still is, just on a larger and more advanced scale. Every farmer and their team is constantly making hundreds of decisions and pivoting based on each one: from which million-dollar equipment to invest in to when to tweak the combine settings (you will have a different setting in the morning, when there is dew in the fields, vs. the afternoon). Agriculture inherently breaks the nutrient ecosystem (when we eat something and poop it out elsewhere, we’ve removed the nutrients from that field), so fertilizing becomes an entire decision matrix: what to use, what you have access to, what it means for the types of labels consumers want to see (regenerative, organic), pricing, run-off and waste, etc.
4. Lentils don’t require much rain (they aren’t irrigated at all). This year the farmers have had plenty of rain, to the point where they would prefer it stops. If it keeps raining, lentil plants will keep producing lentils and you’ll have a plant with lentils at different stages of development, which makes them hard to harvest and sort.
5. From Top Chef Canada winner Chef Dale Mackay I learned there is a world stuffed cabbage championship. He won the Americas championship judged by Chef Jacques Pepin this summer and heads to Limoges in November to compete in the world championships.
