This series highights 6 agricultural crops found in SK. These Legacy Caches are placed for SCAR 2018. To keep your smiley from being harvested, please do not find or log before 5:30 Friday May 25th
Pulse Crops: These are recent crops to Saskatchewan agriculture. This includes lentils, peas, chickpeas, beans, soybeans and faba beans. Pulses are the dried edible seeds of certain plants in the legume family. The four main types of pulses grown in Canada are dry peas, lentils, beans and chickpeas.Pulses are very high in protein and fibre, and are low in fat. Pulses are also nitrogen-fixing crops that improve the environmental sustainability of annual cropping systems. Pulses come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours and can be consumed in many forms including whole or split, ground in to flours or separated into fractions such as protein, fibre and starch.
By the 1970's, crop rotation was wheat ,sumer fallow, wheat, summer fallow etc. The bins and elevators were filled with wheat that nobody was buying. The Crop Development Centre at the U of S was founded and brought in Alfred Slinkard, a pulse researcher from Idaho to change and hopefully diversify the crops grown in SK.
His success was fairly immediate. A farmer near Drinkwater planted 2 full fields of lentils and had a large production. That same year, the lentil producing areas in WA were hit with drought and they didn't have enough product to fill their committments. When it was known there was lentils in SK, there was a rush to buy it up. Since then, there have been a number of varieties of pulse tested and now in production. SK is now a major producer of the global lentil inventory.
Locally, you will find this cache between two pulse processors. The one further west is the most recent facility in the area.