Organic farming businesses meet to discuss the industry at Organic Grain Buyers Forum

Organic farming businesses gathered virtually to discuss some of the latest events in the market, and how some sectors look to move forward.

One of those businesses is Bioriginal, which provides organic and nonorganic specialty crops for consumers and businesses.

Derek McDonald, director of bioagronomy and vendor relations, says he found the year was tough for getting contract work.

"What we found this year was we contracted for the first time in many years, I want to say since COVID hit, was little to nothing. We would typically contract quite a bit of seed with a lot of different growers. But when the markets went wonky we noticed a lot of growers really became hesitant to lock in any sort of pricing and for that, I won't blame them."

As well he's also seeing some market changes in terms of what organic crops are being asked for.

"We still do quite a bit of Borage, we contract a few thousand acres of borage each year that are unique to us, it's not a common crop ... years and years ago we used to grow probably 1/4 section of organic borge and that will last us the entire year for supply. It was unique because it went into unique organic formulas where it was required. But it's such a small market for that now that  I want to say we would maybe use 300 Kilograms of organic borge over the course of the year now."

Other crops do have a chance to shine through for specialty growers as demand may pick up.

There may be a market for organic Catalina, but again the only reason I bring it up is is we are just starting to dabble in it and we're testing the waters. We're looking to see if there is an opportunity there if it's something that we can offer in addition to the organic flax that we do today. As the more trade shows we go to we just seem to be getting more and more inquiries on this stuff."