Heritage Wheat Project

The Heritage Wheat Project (HWP) began it's life in 1988 as an orphanage of obsolete varieties of bread wheat abandoned by the world in favor of Green Revolution hybrids and new and improved varieties. Government research centers that were shutting down field trials sent their seed to the orphanage. 

Sharon collected wheat on Crete in the mid 1990s and trialed and evaluated the collection with the mentorships of Kurt Kutschera, retired wheat technician from the University of Alberta. 

Kurt and Sharon bulked up the wheats and gave seed to anyone who asked. The varieties were unregistered or deregistered, therefore illegal to sell by Canadian law, so they gave seed away for the cost of postage. In the mid 1990s Sharon imported (very legally) a collection of USDA wheats. A young Alberta farmer, Kerry Smith from Onoway, got interested in the collection and grew them out on his farm. Sharon hosted field days at the University of Alberta until 1999.

The Heritage Wheat Project had few friends and very little interest until Red Fife wheat, the champion of heritage wheat revival in Canada, became of interest to two chefs, Mara Jernigan and Sinclair Phillip. Over dinner in Mara's home on Vancouver Island, Sharon told them the story of keeping the old varieties alive. She mentioned giving Red Fife wheat seed to Marc Loiselle and Walter Walchuk, both of whom bulked up the seed.

Mara and Sinclair nominated Red Fife wheat to the Slow Food Ark of Taste. This gave it global recognition. Unfortunately the Red Fife movement in Canada was not honored, only a token farmer and baker. But the heritage wheat movement was into a new phase. 

Eventually media became interested and Red Fife, a variety that never was registered in Canada, was (and still is) being sold coast to coast and around the world. Other heritage and landrace varieties deserve to be grown out and evaluated but people want the easy route.

It takes six years to bulk up a packet of seed to having enough seed to resow and then start selling. Farmers cannot afford to do this work, and most don't have the small scale equipment to handle the growing quantity of grain. Society hasn't yet embraced the need to pay for conservation of agricultural biodiversity and keeping quantities of grains in community seed banks.

The 'On Farm Research Guide' is a free download in 'books' on this site and will give you lots of information about old wheat, growing wheat etc.