More than timber being harvested in Sask. forests

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When most people think of saleable products coming out of forests, they usually think of timber. Gerry Ivanochko isn't one of those people.

Ivanochko is a provincial specialist in northern agriculture with Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food's La Ronge Sustainable Production office. He's been working with non-timber forest products (NTFP) for 15 years, and in that time has seen much growth in the sector.

The main focus of NTFP harvests in Saskatchewan's forests is on wild mushrooms. In each of the last two years, wild mushroom harvesters in the province have earned a total of $1 million for their efforts, Ivanochko said.

Three different types of wild mushrooms are harvested in Saskatchewan - morels, chanterelles, and pine mushrooms. Morels are harvested in May and June, while the other two types are harvested in July and August.

While chanterelles and pine mushroom crops remain relatively steady year after year, morels grow best the first year after a forest fire, if conditions are suitable, Ivanochko said. So the low number of forest fires last year means this year's morel crop isn't likely to be a good one.

Harvesting of wild mushrooms in Saskatchewan is done by individuals rather than companies, Ivanochko said. The harvesters are mainly northerners, spread out all across northern Saskatchewan, although most of the morel harvesting takes place on the west side of the province, north of Meadow Lake, up to La Loche.

Although Ivanochko said it would be difficult to put a specific figure on the number of people employed in the non-timber forest product industry in Saskatchewan he said the majority of them are Aboriginal.

"It's local people who do the harvesting. There are sometimes local buyers, but they're buying on behalf of a larger buyer. The buyer is usually from the west coast - B.C. usually," he said.

"The mushrooms are marketed mainly to Europe, but the pine mushrooms are sold to Japan. And the morels, it's a dried product, so they dry them on location. The others, its a fresh market, so they're air freighted to Europe or Japan."

Although mushrooms are the biggest part of the NTFP sector in Saskatchewan, other products are also gaining ground.

"The herbal industry, there's always new herbs that people are looking for. So we're seeing more local companies becoming established. Like, there's a company called Fytokem in Saskatoon, they produce plant extracts, and one of the products that they're producing is from fireweed. So as more and more companies like that become established, looking for natural products, there are a lot of those products in the forest.

"There's always new things coming on stream, so I think the industry will continue to grow, and with the increased demand for natural products, I think that the future's looking quite good for non-timber forest products," Ivanochko said.

"There's also different herbs, things like that, but it's still pretty small. There are other edible crops like fiddle heads. The ostrich fern, in the spring, when it comes up and the leaf is still curled, you call that the fiddle head. That's a fresh market fresh green. A lot of potential for that, especially in the Cumberland House area. Other food products, birch syrup, and then there are the wild berries, mainly blueberries and low bush cranberries, that are also known as lingonberries. And then there are a lot of floral and craft items - birch bark, twigs, branches, things like that - that are used in the floral industry.

"The nice thing about non-timber forest products is that there are a lot of value-added opportunities. And so this industry can generate a lot of employment for people. Making twig wreaths or Christmas wreaths, or baskets, or all kinds of things like that," he said.

Although the amount of money a person can make by harvesting non-timber forest products varies, Ivanochko said very few can generate their total income from the harvests.

"It's mainly just a supplemental form of income. The do this. They may do something else - trapping, or wild rice growing, or whatever - and it all helps for them to make a living. But there are quite a few people that make a substantial amount of their income from harvesting these products."

For more information about the non-timber forest products sector in Saskatchewan, call Gerry Ivanochko toll free at 1-800-665-4400.