Farmers in southern Alberta may soon add poppies to the list of crops they grow.
Thebaine poppies are used to make pain killing medications. API Labs president Glen Metzler said there is strong demand for them with Canadians filing 26 million prescriptions each year, 10 percent of them for pain management.
“Tylenol-3 for example would be one,” said Metzler. “Oxycodone, a lot of the medications that we use for prepping people for surgery by the anesthesiologists are also opioids, which is the classification of medications that are derived from poppy.”
API Labs is working with government and industry to develop a poppy industry. If approved, farmers will grow thebaine poppies for a processing plant it plans to build in southern Alberta.
Thebaine poppies provide two revenue streams for farmers. They produce alkaloids for medications and poppy seeds for bagels and other food.
“In Australia,” he said, “you’re looking at crops that are probably three to five times more pay per hectare to the farmer than the crops we see in Canada today.”
Metzler said southern Alberta’s hot days and cold nights increase alkaloid levels in poppies in the same way they increase sweetness in Taber corn.
He’s pleased with the response poppies are receiving from producers.
“Canadian farmers are very quick to adapt to new technology so we see the latest and the greatest techniques in agriculture and also you see the farmers wanting to try new crops, seeing the potential that’s there.”
API Labs will do more field trials in southern Alberta this year. If approved, commercial production might start in 2015.
“What we would like,” Metzler said, “is to have a processing plant here that would be able to supply the Canadian market for the materials they need in the pharmaceutical side.”
John McFayden, who is helping design the plant, worked for a company in the U.K. that manufactured over 100 tonnes a year.
“It proved to be a quite popular crop for the farmers that worked with us,” he said. “It was a good break crop for them in the wheat cycle and for our side it was very important to start using raw materials that we were actually manufacturing ourselves, on site.”
API Labs is working with Health Canada, Public Safety, Agriculture and others to develop a crop that would create jobs, expand agriculture and bring new industry and benefits to southern Alberta.
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