Oats As “Rice Of The Prairies”

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Scott Sigvaldason has rented out his farm at Arborg, Man., to concentrate his efforts on marketing Rice of
the Prairies, a rice alternative made from Gehl variety hulless oats.

Scott Sigvaldason knew Gehl was something special right away. She was unlike any other he had seen come through his feed processing plant near Netley, Man. She was truly hulless and completely hairless. He likes that kind of thing — especially in an oat. “This isn’t pigfeed,” he said at first sight.

Instant love can make you crazy. It can make you abandon the quiet safety of your old comfortable farm. It can take you places you never thought you’d go. It can make life fun again. That’s the way it has been for Sigvaldason and Gehl, a hulless oat variety bred by Vern Burrows at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s centre in Ottawa. In the past year or so, Sigvaldason has taken his hulless oat food product — Cavena Nuda or “Rice of the Prairies” — to 42 hotels and restaurants in Winnipeg, as well as a few Manitoba food retailers. The Toronto Maple Leafs’ team nutritionist has bought some for team meals. And October 14, Sigvaldason will be on CBC’s Dragon’s Den pitching “Rice of the Prairies” to the show’s panel of venture capitalists. Did they buy in? We have to watch to find out.

Sigvaldason’s farm, Wedge Farms, near Arborg, Man., has been in his family since 1903. The past decade or so has been a struggle, with so many wet years on the cropping side and a “horrible” experience in hogs. He had built a bunch of pig barns from 1999 to 2001. He started with finishing, but couldn’t get enough weanlings to keep the barns full. So he got into farrowing. Then things started to fall apart. He first sold off the finishing barns and kept his 280-sow farrowing operation. Then it collapsed when all the people buying his weanlings went bust. “Hogs are a horrible business,” he says.

In the meantime, he had bought the old elevator at Netley and converted it into a feed mill. He started processing hulless oats for pig rations in 2006. “Hulless oats can bring baby pigs back from the dead,” he says. When looking for a new variety to replace AC Belmont, he discovered the special properties of Gehl. In the time since then, Sigvaldason has leased out the farm so he can concentrate his efforts on the feed mill and on building a food market for Gehl.

“I worked on the farm for 20 years living like a pauper,” he says. “I’m putting that same energy into this project and having a lot more fun. This is incredibly difficult work, but I can at least see light at the end of the tunnel.”

WHY RICE OF THE PRAIRIES?

Sigvaldason came up with “Rice of the Prairies” as a marketing angle in the middle of a typical long day at the feed mill. The other name he uses on the packaging is Cavena Nuda. “Cavena” is short for Canadian avena (the Latin name for oats) and “Nuda” for naked — signifying the hulless trait. He and three partners set up Wedge Farms Nutrition Ltd., to run the food oats business.

Sigvaldason chose to market a rice alternative because he knew he couldn’t compete with Quaker in the rolled oats market. “They’d crush us like a bug,” he says. Of course the rice market isn’t small, either, but hulless oats has many nutritional advantages over rice and “oats as rice” is a new concept. “There is nothing on earth like this,” he says.

Vern Burrows likes the idea. “Rice of the Prairies has huge market potential,” he says. Canada imports $300 million worth of rice every year, and we don’t produce any of it. “By getting people to replace some of their rice with oats, we can move some of the production to Canada, and also move oat consumption from breakfast only into lunch and supper,” he says.

The 79-year-old oat breeder has registered 30 oat varieties in his

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