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 Ukraine, was on a ship in Glasgow Harbour. A friend of farmer Fife dropped his hat into the red-coloured 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 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).

Marquis wheat was developed from crossing Red Fife with Hard Red Calcutta. A history of Marquis and Red Fife has been posted on the Agriculture Canada website.

Red Fife and Marquis and new varieties

A Red Fife-derived variety, Marquis, replaced it as the number one wheat in the early 1900s. Marquis was a cross between two land-race wheats, Red Fife and Hard Red Calcutta, and was created by Charles E. Saunders.

Most commercial 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 try to find varieties that are adapted to the new disease or pest. Land races 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 wheat 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 grading system also developed that did not make use of the identification of the farmer and the variety when marketing the wheat. Today there is more interest in eating local (the 100 mile diet) and the variety and farmer identification has value. The Red Fife loaf being sold in Superstores is an example of mainstream food suppliers recognizing this trend.

From 1900 to 1988 Red Fife was grown in very small quantities in plant breeders’ seed collections. Then one woman, Sharon Rempel got one pound of seed and an idea to recommercialize the heritage variety. Sharon planted the wheat at the Keremeos Grist Mill Historic site in a Living Museum of Wheat. You can read the history of Red Fife's revival in a book 'Demeter's Wheats' written by Sharon Rempel http://www.grassrootsolutions.com/books.html

Red Fife came out of the seed closet and began to grow in farmers' fields in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. You can now source Red Fife wheat from many farmers including http://www.ehnesorganic.com/faith-red-fife.html and farmers in all provinces of Canada. You can find farmers by contacting artisan bakeries who will be buying their Red Fife from various farmers.

The ‘Red Fife Wheat’ Movement begins in a Field

Grass Roots Organics Farm & Flour Mill in Desboro, Ontario, has been stone milling the Red Fife Wheat into flour since 2008. Demand for the flour has been very strong and has helped set the mill apart from other Ontario flour mills.

The Heritage Wheat Project began in 1988 with seed from Agriculture Canada that was sent to 1870s historic site, The Grist Mill at Keremeos, B.C. Chief Interpreter Sharon Rempel wanted to plant the varieties of wheat that might have been milled at The Grist Mill during the 1880s.

Sharon 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), and 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. Brink taught Sharon the basics of growing out wheat in little field plots in a way that would ensure that there would be no cross pollination between varieties.

Holding back half the seed in case of crop failure, the half pound sample of Red Fife and other heritage varieties were planted in the spring of 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…”

Grist Mill site managers Cuyler Page and Sharon Rempel had a vision: "Let’s grow these old wheats with the idea that one day Red Fife will be recommercialized in Canada." (page. 52, 'Demeter's Wheats. available http://www.grassrootsolutions.com/books.html)

That was 1988 and today you can find Red Fife in organic fields coast to coast and in many parts of the world. Yet the variety remains unregistered in the Variety Registration system of Canada.

Heritage seed conservation in Canada

Red Fife wheat is a pioneer for helping people put value onto heritage varieties of food crops in Canada. Varieties will be conserved if they can be sold and have value for the farmer. The revival of Red Fife in the Canadian food scene is helping bring variety and farmer identification to food crops.

Heritage Wheat Project history

Red Fife made a return to Ontario 2008 where it was first originally seeded. In 2008 Sean McGivern an organic farmer and grain miller grew the Red Fife seed and has been milling it for flour. McGivern's seed was from the strain being grown by Marc Loiselle of western Canada.

The Heritage Wheat Project has been run through The Garden Institute of Alberta, now BC since 1998.

A diversity of old wheat varieties were grown out at the University of Alberta farm in Edmonton from 1996 to 1999. University wheat technician Kurt Kutschera and Sharon Rempel hosted information Field Days to introduce people to the beautiful old wheats.

Seed from the old wheat was available through Seeds of Diversity.

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 Heliotrust foundation was formed to run a heritage farm that is an education centre 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 scientifically that Red Fife can be valuable to shade out weeds in the field.

In 2001 Saskatchewan organic farmer Marc Loiselle began growing Red Fife and has been one of dozens of producers of Red Fife in Canada.

In 2001 Kostas Koutis (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 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 Red Fife Presidia was created. On September 14, 2003 Red Fife wheat had its 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 artefacts — Red Fife wheat in sour-dough 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. Red Fife is not adapted to grow in all regions of Canada but it's the name that's selling 'heritage wheat' in Canada in 2009.

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 inputs. 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.

Red Fife is a landrace; there is genetic diversity in the seed population and in the case of Red Fife the seed heads are not uniform in appearance. Called "folk seeds" or farmers' varieties, land races have been feeding people since wheat became domesticated about 10,000 years ago. Land races 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 land races due to the genetic diversity. Without the intervention of human hands land races offer the farmer a guaranteed harvest and the ability to save seed year after year. This diversity may be expressed in the awns (or absence thereof), the two filament projections from the hull which propel the seed into the soil.

On the west coast Red Fife wheat may actually be more white in colour 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 or east coasts. 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 flavour when grown in more temperate conditions.

In 2003 and 2004 diverse samples of Red Fife were sent to the Canadian Grain Commission for protein banding. This technique indicates 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 to its value to people purchasing the wheat.

Taste has never, and still isn’t, considered a merit quality characteristic in Canadian variety registration.

Red Fife is ideally suited to traditional sour dough baking methods, where subtle differences in the wheat quality will be embraced by the artisan bakers who are now 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's Heritage 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 its 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