Red Fife wheat

Red Fife is a heritage bread wheat "(Triticum aestivum)" and is a landrace, meaning there is genetic variability in the wheat, allowing it to adapt to a diversity of growing conditions. Red Fife is the name of a bread wheat variety that David Fife and family began to grow in 1842. The kernel was red in colour and Fife the name of the farmer; this procedure for naming the wheat was typical for the time period.

The wheat that became known as 'Red Fife' arrived in Canada at the David Fife homestead in Peterborough, Ontario in 1842. One legend states that a load of bread wheat shipped from Danzig, and perhaps originating in the Ukraine, was on a ship in the Glasgow harbor. A friend of farmer Fife dropped his hat into the red colored wheat, collecting a few seeds in the hat band, which he then shipped off to Fife in Peterborough. The wheat grew. The family cow managed to eat all the wheat heads except for one, which Mrs. Fife salvaged. The seeds from this one head were planted the next season.

Visual description

Red Fife is characterized by three little awns at the top of the head of wheat but otherwise is awnless. The straws can be 3-5 feet tall depending on the nutrients available to the plant in the soil.

Low input variety

Like most ‘heritage’ wheat Red Fife may‘lodge’ or fall over in fields where the nitrogen content in the soil is too rich. It’s is not a ‘Green Revolution’ high input variety. It could be called a low input variety.

Red Fife feeds Canada from 1860 to 1900

By the 1860s Red Fife was distributed and growing across Canada, adapting to a broad diversity of growing conditions. Renowned as a fine milling and baking wheat it set Canadian wheat standards for over forty years (1860-1900).

Red Fife and Marquis and new varieties

Red Fife's son ‘Marquis’ replaced it as the #1 wheat in the early 1900s. ‘Marquis’ was a cross between two landrace wheats Red Fife and ‘Hard Red Calcutta’ created by Charles E. Saunders.

Farmers stopped using Red Fife and Marquis as ‘new and improved’ varieties came onto the market. Different fungal diseases appear and plant breeders and farmers (who are the world’s first plant breeders) try and find varieties that are adapted to the new disease or pest. Landraces have horizontal resistance as opposed to hybrids that have vertical resistance.

Plant breeders have used the genetics of old varieties to develop new varieties. Many of the bread wheats developed in Canada owe part of their genetic lineage to Red Fife wheat.

The export market for wheat has been a factor in how wheat varieties and grading processes developed in Canada. In the 1920s a registration system for all wheats sold in Canada was put in place. ‘Merit’ for variety registration was based on agronomic criteria which developed into supporting high input chemical driven agriculture.

A [http://www.grainscanada.gc.ca/Pubs/GGG/ggg-e.htm grading system] also developed that did not make use of the identification of the farmer and the variety when marketing the wheat. Today there's more interest in 'eating local' the '100 mile diet' and the variety and farmer identification has 'value' to local food markets.

From 1900 to 1988 Red Fife was grown in very small quantities in plant breeders’ seed collections. Then one woman got one pound of seed and an idea to recommercialize the heritage variety. Red Fife came out of the seed closet and began to grow in farmers' fields in Canada again.

The ‘Red Fife Wheat’ Movement begins in a Field

The [http://www.grassrootsolutions.com Heritage Wheat Project] began in 1988 with seed from Agriculture Canada was sent to 1870s historic site, [http://bcheritage.ca/drawings/sites/site12/site12.html The Grist Mill at Keremeos] , B.C. Chief Interpreter [http://www.grassrootsolutions.com Sharon Rempel] wanted to plant the varieties of wheat that might have been milled at The Grist Mill during the 1880s.

She wrote to various Agriculture Canada stations seeking information and seed. Leigh Crowle, a plant breeder from Saskatchewan sent her one pound of each of the seven historic wheat varieties ‘Red Fife’ (1842); ‘Ladoga’ (1880); ‘Preston’ (1880); ‘Stanley (1880); ‘Hard Red Calcutta’ (1880); ‘Marquis’ (1890); ‘Thatcher’ (1930. Dr. Crowle enclosed a handwritten card that read ‘I’m retiring and these seeds are now your responsibility to care for and good luck.’

Sharon was a city kid and had no idea what to do with a pound of wheat. So she called the University of British Columbia and was connected to Dr. Bert Brink, a retired agronomist. He taught her the basics of growing out wheat in little field plots and loaned her small scale equipment when it was time to thresh and clean the seed at harvest time.

Holding back half the seed in case of crop failure, the half pound sample of Red Fife and other heritage varieties were planted in spring 1989. Like a magnet, the Living Museum of Wheat display attracted people who spent hours in the fields telling their friends and families stories about old wheat varieties. “I remember dad talking about Red Fife wheat…”

Site managers Cuyler Page and [http://www.grassrootsolutions.com Sharon Rempel] had a vision; ‘let’s grow these old wheats with the idea that one day Red Fife will be recommercialized in Canada.’

That was 1988 and from the one pound of Red Fife over 500 tons (100,000 pounds) of Red Fife was harvested in Canada in 2007.

Heritage seed conservation in Canada

The idea of conserving heritage varieties of crops was in it’s infancy in Canada in 1989. In the late 1980s it was very difficult to find heritage varieties of vegetables, fruits, flowers and grains.

Canada's [http://www.seeds.ca heritage seed program] had been running for four years under the guidance of Heather Apple and COG (Canadian Organic Growers).

Sharon was a B.C. director of the fledgling Heritage Seed Program and wanted to find a way to bring a large number of people together to share seeds and stories. Her vision was to have a community seed bank develop in Vancouver B.C. Canada. On February 14, 1989 Sharon designed and hosted Canada’s first [http://www.seeds.ca Seedy Saturday] . The Grist Mill and the wheats joined dozens of small seed companies at The VanDusen Botanical Gardens in Vancouver for Seedy Saturday. The seeds sold had to be ‘open pollinated’ and not hybrids. People swapped their stories and seeds at the ‘Swap Table’ and many of these varieties became recommercialized through the small seed companies.

Sharon also invited 'USC Canada' and Vancouver “Nyala” Ethiopian restaurant to the event. Ethiopia is considered the Center of Diversity globally for bread wheat. USC was running a project called ‘Seeds of Survival’ in Ethiopia; they were training people to do ‘on farm’ variety conservation and 'on farm' plant breeding. The farmers were collaborating with the scientists from the country's gene bank. They were developing 'community seed banks' in villages and bringing the old varieties of crops out of the gene bank and back to the farmers' fields.

Other Seedy Saturday people included Dan Jason from ‘Salt Spring Seeds'. His company has offered heritage wheat seed since the early 1990s.

Seedy Saturday events have helped community seed banks for in communities coast to coast and since 2001 in the UK.

Heritage Wheat Project history

Sharon continued to maintain the heritage wheat collection after she left her job at ‘The Grist Mill’ in 1991. She continued to work with old wheats and the ‘ [http://www.grassrootsolutions.com Heritage Wheat Project’] .

The old wheats were grown out at the University of Alberta farm in Edmonton from 1996 to 1999. Joined by wheat technician Kurt Kutschera they hosted information Field Days to introduce people to the beautiful old wheats. Seed from the old wheat was available through [http://www.seeds.ca Seeds of Diversity] . In 1998 Sharon formed The Garden Institute of Alberta which took over the wheat collection administration and did seed bank project work in Canada, Bangladesh and developed the 'Seed Word Nepal' seed literacy project in 2004.

Interest in growing heritage wheat grew slowly in Canada. In 1999 Onoway Alberta farmer Kerry Smith began growing Red Fife and other historic varieties. In 2000, 2001 and 2002 the Alberta Organic Association’s Walter Walchuk and Sharon co-hosted organic heritage wheat field trials throughout Alberta.

In 1998 Jennifer Scott and David Patriquin from Nova Scotia instigated what is now known as the Maritime Heritage Wheat Project. In 2003 the [http://www.heliotrust.ca/ Heliotrust] foundation was formed to run a heritage farm that is an education center and home for heritage wheats. It’s the first land trust in Canada designed to promote agricultural biodiversity conservation and land conservation together. They have shown [http://dp.biology.dal.ca/wheat/ scientifically] that Red Fife can be valuable to shade out weeds in the field.

In 2001 Saskatchewan organic farmer [http://loiselle.ma.googlepages.com/ Marc Loiselle] began growing Red Fife and has been one of the main producers of Red Fife in Canada. 26 farmers have formed the Saskatchewan Red Fife Cooperative in Saskatchewan.

In 2001 Kostas Koutis ( [http://www.aegilops.gr Aegilops Network] , Greece) and Hans Larsson (Allkorn Network, Sweden) joined the Heritage Wheat Project and link artisan bakers and growers of heritage wheats. Kostas and Hans are agronomists who have taken seed from gene banks and brought them back into 'on farm' conservation projects.

At the [http://www.cog.ca/ifoam2002/congress.htm 2002 IFOAM] (International Federation of Organic Movements) Global Organic Congress in Victoria B.C. sixty five people attended the ‘Organic and Heritage Wheat’ session.

In 2003 Slow Food Canada’s Vancouver Island Chapter (Mara Jernigan and Sinclair Philips, co chairs) nominated Red Fife for the Ark of Taste, Canada’s first nomination to the Ark. The [http://www.fondazioneslowfood.it/eng/arca/dettaglio.lasso?cod=547&prs=PR_1192 Red Fife Presidia] was created. On [http://members.shaw.ca/oldwheat/vanislandslowfoo.html September 14, 2003] Red Fife wheat had it’s first public taste testing event in the west thanks to the Slow Food movement and Wildfire Bakery. Ms. J. Sushil Saini was hired to coordinate a Red Fife Wheat Presidia to link Red Fife wheat to artisan bakeries.

In 2003 in India, inspired by the Red Fife movement, Mr. Kranti Prakash took heritage wheats to the Punjab, where the Green Revolution started in India. He continues his work with Dalit farmers in Bihar.

In 2004 at the Slow Food Terra Madre and the Salone del Gusto celebration in Italy, Red Fife wheat was one of the stars of the event. Wildfire Bakery, Victoria baker Cliff Leir baked bread each day allowing the world a taste of one of Canada’s oldest living artifacts – Red Fife wheat in sourdough artisan bread. Taste has never been a consideration of ‘quality’ in the Canadian wheat grading system yet is of significant ‘value’ to people in the Slow Food movement.

Tons of Red Fife harvested coast to coast in Canada

Farmers right across Canada are now embracing heritage varieties. They are finding they are getting good yields without the high costs and environmental problems that result from the use of chemicals, fertilizers, herbicides.

With the large diversity of heritage varieties to choose from farmers can find varieties that thrive in their bioregion. They can then produce high quality grain without costly imputs. With some research into what varieties did well in the region in the era before high input agriculture farmers can start their search to find varieties suited to their bioregion and their customers' taste, nutritional and quality requirements. Red Fife is not an ideal wheat for all growing conditions but it did feed Canada until it was displaced by Marquis in the early 1900s.

Today Red Fife wheat is the newest taste sensation in the Canadian artisan bread world. Described by bakers as ‘full of aroma and golden reddish color crust”, the oldest named variety in Canada has come out of the gene bank and back into cultivation. Conservation of heritage varieties is becoming popular; varieties that have a ‘story’ have ‘value’ in local food markets. And conservation of heritage crops expands the agricultural biodiversity growing in fields, providing more genetic variability in the field.

Projects like this are happening in other parts of the world, keeping heritage varieties of wheat alive and also allowing researchers and farmers to assess the ‘value’ of the old varieties in today’s growing conditions. http://www.heliotrust.ca/projects.html, http://www.aegilops.gr/wheat.php?lang=2 and http://www.growseed.org/ are sites of heritage wheat projects in Nova Scotia, Greece and the U.S. respectfully.

So what is ‘Red Fife’?

‘Red Fife’ is a landrace; there's genetic diversity in the seed population and in the case of Red Fife the seed heads are uniform in appearance. Called ‘folk seeds’ or ‘farmers’ varieties’, landraces have been feeding people since wheat became domesticated about 10,000 years ago. Landraces provide excellent insurance for subsistence farming populations; there is always something in the field at the end of the season.

They offer built in ‘horizontal resistance’ within the plant group. Many old varieties are able to adapt to a diversity of growing conditions and are called ‘landraces’ due to the genetic diversity. Without the intervention of human hands landraces offer the farmer a guaranteed harvest and the ability to save seed year after year. Red Fife is a landrace.

There is diversity in the form of the wheat in a landrace; some wheat may have awns, some might be awnless.

On the west coast Red Fife wheat may actually be more white in color because of the genetic interaction with the environmental conditions. Red Fife grows as a spring wheat on the prairies and can be grown both as a spring wheat and a winter wheat on the temperate west coast. Red Fife seems to develop a more robust ‘red’ characteristic when grown where it can be stressed by temperature during the growing season and a more white delicate flavor when grown in more temperate conditions.

In 2003 and 2004 a diversity of samples of Red Fife were sent to the Canadian Grain Commission for protein banding. This technique gives indication of how a variety is changing genetically each time it grows in a field. Of the three samples of Red Fife in the Canadian Gene Bank, only one sample was identical to the undated lab sample at the Grain Commission, and these accessions had no background data.

Red Fife's growing 'value' in Canada is due in part to its mention in the '100 Mile Diet' book, as well as its recognition by the Slow Food movement. Red Fife, like all old varieties, does not need high inputs of chemicals to grow and produce a good crop. Its 'green' value based on carbon credits add even more to its value to people purchasing the wheat.

Taste has never, and still isn’t considered a ‘merit’ quality characteristic in [http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/plaveg/variet/vartoce.shtml Canadian variety registration] . Red Fife is ideally suited to traditional sourdough baking methods, where subtle differences in the wheat quality will be embraced by the artisan baker. Artisan bakers coast to coast are using Red Fife wheat in their breads.

Red Fife wheat was used by wheat breeders from the early 1900s onwards to develop hybrid varieties. A list of Canada'sHeritage Wheat Varieties shows the dates of formal recognition or registration in Canada.

References:

HARLAN Jack R., Crops and man, American Society of Agronomy, Madison 1975

SCOTT, Jennifer. New Respect for Old Wheat. Reclaiming heritage varieties requires culinary as well as agricultural expertise. Rural Delivery, October, 2004. http://www.heliotrust.ca/projects/wheat/oldwheat.html SYMKO, Stephan. Research Branch. Agriculture Canada. 1999. From a single seed, tracing the history of Marquis wheat success story in Canada to it's roots in the Ukraine. http://www4.agr.gc.ca/AAFC-AAC/display-afficher.do?id=1181224838769#contents

WITCOMBE J. R.; JOSHI A; JOSHI K. D.; STHAPIT B. R. Farmer participatory crop improvement. I. Varietal selection and breeding methods and their impact on biodiversity. Experimental Agriculture (Exp. Agric.) 1996, vol. 32, no4, pp. 445-460 (19 ref.)http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=3249915