West Australian farmer John Foss, chief executive of health food innovator The Chia Co and keynote speaker at the Global Food Forum in Melbourne last month, says Australia has an opportunity to position itself as offering premium-quality and safe health foods worldwide.

“I’m very excited about the range of opportunities in the functional food space through high-value foods like chia and quinoa,” Mr Foss said.

“The edge lies in positioning ourselves as providing full connection from farmer to high-value end product and transparency of information to the consumer.”

One of the main barriers to farmers moving away from traditional crops has been a lack of capital investment — a situation that is changing, Mr Foss says.

“We’re seeing investment bankers and financiers looking to these new crops as the next thing to be a part of. This flow of capital back into agriculture is very positive.”

As a fourth-generation wheat farmer, Mr Foss had grown tired of watching his healthy grains becoming processed, sugary breakfast cereals.

With the help of a Nuffield scholarship, he travelled the world researching alternatives and stumbled on chia.

Chia is grown in small quantities in southern America and is virtually unheard of globally. The special nutritional benefits of the seed sparked Mr Foss’ interest and he began to research the possibilities for northern Australia.

“One of the main reasons the global food industry hadn’t embraced chia was because it was rain-fed, which made it highly volatile. The growing potential in the irrigated Ord Valley was much more stable,” Mr Foss says.

With his first successful crop, he established The Chia Co in 2003. The next challenge was selling it.

“It took between four to five years of solid marketing to crack into the global market,” Mr Foss says.

“Domestically, we focused on educating naturopaths and food coaches on the health benefits of chia as the richest combined source of omega 3 and protein of any plant.”

There were times when he thought it was “crazy” and the risks were too great.

A breakthrough came in 2009 when Bakers Delight launched a chia loaf, with chia sourced from Mr Foss’ growers in the Ord.

The leap of faith has paid off: The Chia Co exports chia to 36 countries and has offices in New York, London and Melbourne.

A key to growth has been the three-pronged strategy of chia sold as bagged consumer product, as ingredients to companies and more recently in their “Chia Pod”: a ready-to eat-serve of chia seeds, fruit and coconut milk, Mr Foss says.

His company sold 1 million Chia Pods in 90 days after launching in the US whole foods market.