My interest in this topic was piqued by the fact that I purchased a pound of poppy seed at an Edmonton grocery outlet and it cost me more than $10. I checked the internet and the literature on poppy seed growing and was surprised to find that Australia, Turkey, the Czech Republic and even Britain were significant growers of poppies for either seed or narcotics or both.
Tasmania, an island state of Australia, is the world’s largest producer of narcotic raw material (NRM). This NRM or drug extract is used in morphine and codeine as a pain relief formulation and thebaine and oripavine for pain relief and addiction treatment products.
Alberta packers were buying fed cattle on a dressed basis in the range of $425-$428/cwt delivered in mid-August. Live…
I initially had visions of Australians, men and women, cutting poppy heads and scraping off the brown residues, but not so. In fact, the poppy crop is harvested before maturity just after flowering and while the seed heads are still developing. The poppy straw is cut, dried and harvested, and the two tons of straw per acre is processed, yielding 2.5 to three per cent alkaloid (opiate) assay.
Tasmanians have been growing such poppies for more than 50 years on many thousands of acres. In recent years, poppy drug production has moved to mainland Australia in the states of Victoria and New South Wales.
Poppy seed is an oilseed produced by the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum). The tiny seeds, true of all poppies, have been cultivated for thousands of years as a significant food crop in central Europe and Asia.
The poppy seeds themselves are 40 to 50 per cent oil. The opium poppy, P. somniferum (French for sleeping pill), is unlike wild and other poppies in that the seed capsule stays closed. In other words, the sealed capsule remains shut and retains all of its seeds. An excellent way of harvesting all of the seeds prior to crushing the actual pods to extract the seeds.
With controlled poppy growing permits given by the government of Canada under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, there have been many small-plot trials in Alberta and Manitoba over the last 30 or so years. In other words, “no licensed dealer shall cultivate, propagate or harvest opium poppy other than for scientific purposes.”
At the present time, world production of poppy seeds consists of around 80,000 tons grown for international trade. Turkey produces 35 per cent of the total but significant amounts are grown in Spain, France, Hungary, the UK and other countries.
In poppy seed trials conducted on the Prairies many years ago, yields at Morden, Man. ranged from 15 to 50 bushels an acre.
Poppy seed itself has a nutrient value of approximately 525 calories per 100 grams and is made up of primarily around 40 per cent oil and 20 per cent protein. Sprouted wheat has only 200 calories per 100 grams, pea has 81 calories and canola seed has 124 calories per 100 grams. The seed itself, unlike the pods and stems, contain little or no opiate.
In recent times, plant breeders have developed strains of the opium poppy that are high yielding and the whole plant contains very low levels of opiates. This kind of research is similar to that of hemp. Hemp has been bred so that it contains very low levels of cannabinoids. The hemp plant’s first cousin is the beer hop, which provides flavour and various soporific drugs for beer-drinking pleasure.
Although it is now legal to grow marijuana, few people bother to grow this plant. A similar situation exists with tobacco. It’s legal to grow tobacco plants in this country but I do not know of any tobacco growers despite the fact that a packet of 20 cigarettes is around $20.
As far as the legal or licit growing of opium poppies, I would think it could be a crop that can be grown well in the Prairies. Illegal drugs, such as fentanyl and heroin, result in thousands of deaths in Canada annually. Considering the newer low-opium poppies for seed and the harvest of immature poppy stems for opiates, growing poppies in Canada could be a win-win situation. In other words, poppy seed or licit drug production could become another small but significant crop for Prairie Canada.
For further information on the potential for growing licit poppies for seed or opiates look up “Regulations Amending the Narcotic Control Regulations (Opium Poppy),” June 3, 2016. It is 11 pages of reasoning why Canada should not need to grow its own poppy seed or opiate supply. This document should now be revised in view of our present climate and understanding of illegal and legal drug use.
If Canada needs help in this poppy-growing endeavour all we must do is to emulate the planting, harvesting and processing systems available in Australia. At $100 million or more annually Canada pays for poppy alkaloid, we should get growing with this opportunity for our farmers to provide an additional profitable crop as well as diversifying our crop growing rotations.
Canada presently imports around 1,200 tons of poppy seed annually, but what are the needs of the United States and other countries? Potentially, Canada could become a major grower and exporter of poppy seed as we do with mustard crops or, perhaps, we could explore its oilseed and feed or food potential for the Prairies.
The world remembers November 11 as “Poppy Day,” immortalized during the First World War in Flanders Fields (Belgium) by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae of Guelph, Ont. We could grow fields of red poppies alongside the blue flax and yellow canola fields in Western Canada. Those red Flanders poppies were P. rhoeas, which like the opium poppy contained alkaloids.
Remember, do not trust everything that you see or hear, since even salt looks like sugar.
