From Feb. 24-27, the city of Nuremberg, Germany, hosted BioFach, the largest trade show in the world for the international organic foods industry.

The conference received some attention in the Saskatchewan press because, despite being half a world away, the province had a strong presence at BioFach. Agriculture Minister Mark Wartman, accompanied by a host of Saskatchewan businesses, opened the Canadian Pavilion at BioFach.

Why would Saskatchewan take a leading role at the convention? Because our province is the largest producer of organic products in Canada, said Wartman in a recent interview.

"We seeing a growth of about 20 per cent per year in organic production in Saskatchewan," he said. "We already have about 58 per cent of Canada's organic agriculture production."

(The Saskatchewan Organic Directorate itself estimates that Saskatchewan has half, or close to half, or organic acreage in the country.)

Wartman said the main purpose of attending BioFach was "raising the profile of Canada and raising the profile of Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan products."

"The Saskatchewan-Canadian organic products are well-regarded there," said Wartman.

The European Union itself represents the largest market in the world for organic foods. In late February, the Research Institute for Organic Agriculture (FiBL), the "world's leading centre for information and documentation on organic farming," according to their website, released a press statement discussing the growth of the organic foods market within Europe. This information was also presented at BioFach.

Using figures pulled from the end of 2003, the FiBL estimated that roughly 5.8 million hectares were managed organically by 151,000 farms within European Union (EU) countries, roughly a fifth of all the organic farmland worldwide (26 million hectares).

Even more impressive is the value of the market. European sales of organic products were estimated to have expanded by about five per cent in 2003, reaching approximately $10.5 to 11 billion Euro.

By comparison, the FiBL estimates that the market value of organic products worldwide is about $25 billion US, or just over $19 billion Euro (roughly calculated using the value of the Euro as of March 4).

This all sounds well and good, but none of the information presented above should mislead anyone into thinking that Europe is a land of opportunity for Saskatchewan organic producers. There are just too many obstacles for that to happen, the biggest one being distance.

"We're dealing with a global marketplace. There's a lot of countries that are a lot closer than Canada is to Europe," said Robert Galarneau.

Robert and his Alex are the owners and operators of Prairie Heritage Seed near Radville. Alex himself attended BioFach 2005; because they own the exlusive rights to a special type of grain called kamut, they are required to go to Europe and deal firsthand with their customers.

"That's a little different from just going there and looking for opportunities. We've got to go there for our day-to-day business," said Alex.

The Galarneaus were profiled in the Weyburn Review back in 2004 for growing kamut, an ancient type of grain that is roughly 2,000 years old. The main appeal of kamut is that it has been untouched by modern breeding practices and GMO products.

The kamut grain they grow is primarily marketed in Europe, said Robert.

Besides being significantly higher in protein than ordinary bread, kamut produces a sweet-tasting bread and a heavy loaf "which Europeans really enjoy," Robert said.

Robert also notes that people in Italy who live with wheat allergies have noticed pasta made with kamut can be more easily digested.

Kamut represents a niche in the European market that producers there cannot apparently fill. Another example that springs to mind is wild rice; there's only one place in the world to find Canadian wild rice: Saskatchewan.

That said, Alex stresses they do not want to mislead anyone into believing they can go to BioFach, or some other European convention, and come home with a list of new customers.

"It's getting more and more difficult to do business in Europe, in my opinion, because of the competition from all the other countries," said Alex Galarneau.