For decades, milkweed was treated as a weed: toxic to livestock, invasive in fallow fields, it was pulled and sprayed. Yet at the turn of the 2010s, a handful of Quebecers bet that it could become an industry. What followed was a genuine roller coaster: outsized promises, a brutal collapse, and a struggle that continues today. And this saga is inseparable from that of the monarch butterfly.
The beginnings: from a hemp field to an industry
It all starts with an astonishing fibre. When the milkweed pod opens in the fall, it releases a light, white floss, long known as American silk. Each filament is a tiny hollow tube coated in wax: weight for weight, the air it traps makes it an insulation that rivals down, while being naturally water-repellent, hypoallergenic and even a good acoustic insulator. As early as the late 1980s, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada had shown that its yield per hectare could match that of cotton.
The modern adventure, though, began almost by chance. In Sainte-Thècle, in the Mauricie region, farmer Daniel Allard of Ferme Algo was growing hemp when he crossed paths with textile specialists fascinated by milkweed. One of them, engineer François Simard of the company Encore3, passed on what he knew. The plant's floss had been known for a long time, but almost everything about growing it as a field crop remained to be invented. In the spring of 2012, the small Québec group flew to Illinois to meet Dr. Winthrop Phippen, a leading authority on milkweed as a crop, then launched a first trial with the support of Québec's agriculture ministry (MAPAQ): 115,000 seedlings started in greenhouses, transplanted onto half a hectare, and immediately visited by monarch caterpillars. The plants held up. Proof of concept.
2013-2014: an industry takes shape
A new industry was born. Daniel Allard founded the Coopérative Monark to support growers (seed, harvesting equipment, fibre processing) and offer them purchase contracts of 10 hectares each. The ambition was clear: reach 1,000 hectares under cultivation to guarantee a steady supply, a collective project valued at $1.1 million. By the fall of 2013, the first seven growers had signed on; in 2014, about 300 hectares were in the ground, in Mauricie, the Bas-Saint-Laurent, the Eastern Townships and the Outaouais. In parallel, Encore3 developed its own machines to extract the fibre from the pods.
The targeted markets were many: spinning, coat insulation, oil absorbents, insulation panels, hypoallergenic bedding. Protec-Style won a contract with Parks Canada for emergency spill kits distributed in 54 national parks, then a contract with the Canadian Coast Guard for milkweed-insulated liners, vests, gloves and mittens, two promising milestones that would nonetheless be lost later on.
The crux of the matter: harvesting milkweed
Behind the enthusiasm lay a stubborn problem: harvesting milkweed by machine. No existing equipment could do it, and the window is tiny, barely two weeks between the moment the pods ripen and the moment they release their seeds to the wind. These damp, fragile pods then have to be dried quickly, and the very delicate fibre breaks, producing a lot of dust. Designing a suitable harvester quickly became the industry's central challenge. Two ambitious machine projects took it on, and both failed; in the opinion of several people we spoke with, these setbacks were mainly due to poorly managed development projects entrusted to underqualified people.
For lack of anything better, milkweed was long harvested by hand. Two approaches eventually emerged, and they need to be told apart. The first, semi-mechanized, relies on a simple comb mounted on a tractor, which already makes it possible to harvest some 2,000 kg per day. The second, far more advanced, is a dedicated harvester developed by an independent grower, at least five times more productive. This missing piece, reliable mechanized harvesting, has been cited again and again as the reason the industry failed to get off the ground. We detail this technical saga in our article on harvesting milkweed.
Milkweed fibre, too warm for Everest
Even before it reached store shelves, American silk was about to face a spectacular test. In 2016, Québec mountaineer Jean-François Tardif set off for Everest dressed in milkweed-insulated prototypes: a light anorak, a one-piece suit and a blanket, cut from an orange fibre that deliberately recalled the monarch's wings. For health reasons, he would not reach the summit. But at high altitude, his verdict was unequivocal: he found his clothing warm enough, even too warm for the Himalayas, in temperatures ranging from -22 to +25 degrees in the sun. Weight for weight, the fibre rivalled down, while being water-repellent and less bulky. The roadside weed had just proven, on the roof of the world, that it could keep a person warm in the most extreme conditions.
2016: the coat that changed everything
In October 2016, the manufacturer Quartz Co. launched, with Altitude Sports, a first winter coat insulated with milkweed, in a limited edition, at around $800. The image was striking: the roadside weed, the one that grows in sidewalk cracks, sewn into a high-end parka worn in the city. It was a kind of consecration. But it was also, though no one saw it yet, the seed of a misunderstanding. At that price and in such small quantities, selling at best a few hundred units, a coat like this could never generate the volume the crop desperately needed to become profitable. Other products, launched later, would contain only a tiny share of milkweed, offering almost no support to growers. Little by little, a false idea took hold: milkweed was a luxury product.
2017-2018: the collapse
Then everything fell apart. In October 2017, Protec-Style and its subsidiaries Les Industries Encore3 and Fibre Monark declared bankruptcy, with liabilities of more than $1.4 million. Encore3 alone had reserved nearly 90% of the harvest under way; the growers, who had invested nearly $2 million to prepare their land, were left without a buyer. Quartz Co., cut off from its supply, produced its coats for only two seasons and ended the line in 2018. Discouraged, many growers gave up the crop in turn.
How did it come to this? The causes pile up. The first, as we have seen, was the lack of reliable mechanized harvesting, which deprived processors of sufficient volume and consistent quality. The second was an ambition too broad, too fast: Protec-Style was trying to break through on several fronts at once, from oil absorbents to membranes and insulation, which one of its own people would later sum up as "a mistake to want to move too fast in every area". On top of that came debts that grew too heavy, particularly around the harvester project, until they drained the company's supply and its finances.
A loss for Québec and for the monarch
It is worth measuring what was at stake. This was not just a company going bankrupt: it was an emerging economic flagship, a source of jobs, know-how and pride, that was weakened and remains precarious today. Québec had an industry that was nearly unique in the world, and it very nearly let it slip away.
For the monarch, the setback is crueller still. Its caterpillar eats only one plant: milkweed. And its population in Mexico, in free fall since the 1990s, had started climbing again around 2013-2014, at the very moment the crop was getting started in Québec and Vermont.
Correlation is not causation, and we say so plainly. But a University of Guelph study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology points precisely to the loss of breeding habitat, in other words the decline of milkweed (about 21% between 1995 and 2013), as the driver of the monarch's decline. The industry had, almost without meaning to, grown vast fields of milkweed, each one a refuge for the butterfly. When those fields were cleared for other crops, a large share of that habitat, on the order of 80%, vanished along with the industry. The economic bet and the fate of the monarch were, and remain, inextricably linked. To understand this link in depth, read our page on the monarch butterfly.
Our place in this story
It is precisely this urgency that drives us forward. Where the industry stumbled, for lack of markets and because of a fragmentation in which everyone worked in isolation on their own link of the chain, we chose to act, and to act fast.
When we started out in 2020, we made a bet that went against the grain: instead of a luxury coat, start small, with mittens. A lean, self-reliant launch, designed to break into the market quickly and prove milkweed's potential to as many people as possible. Since then, we have embraced a deliberately aggressive, and risky, approach: invest, dare, and broaden the range, from mittens all the way to milkweed-insulated soft coolers, where others pulled back. And it is paying off. What sets us apart cannot be outsourced: a real, slightly obsessive love for the plant; multidisciplinary know-how that takes us through every step of its chain; and the will to maximize the share of milkweed in our products rather than dilute it, because that is what gives growers breathing room.
Everything we do flows from one conviction: what will save milkweed and its cultivation is volume. A plant this abundant should not end up as an overpriced product; it must be democratized, even if that means making the compromises that make it possible, because an accessible product sold in large numbers supports infinitely more fields than an exceptional object sold in a few hundred units. That is why we turn the old model upside down: not an $800 parka, but a coat under $300, designed around a simple, novel idea: removable milkweed insulation. Pads you insert in winter and take out in the warm season, which make the coat useful year-round, more durable, and finally commercially viable, where previous projects had bogged down.
By turning milkweed floss into useful, desirable products, we give people an economic reason to plant those fields again, and therefore to recreate monarch habitat. The product is the means; the mission is the end. Our ambition is anything but modest: to make milkweed a true world-class flagship rooted in Québec, and a concrete engine for saving the monarch. And if you want to do something with your own hands, it also starts in your backyard, with a few milkweed seeds.
A much older story than you'd think
This restart in the 2010s is only the latest chapter in a very long story. Back in the 18th century, milkweed was already called "American silk," and it is said that Louis XV wore garments trimmed with its fibre, before its use fell away after the Conquest. And during the Second World War, when the supply of kapok was cut off, schoolchildren harvested milkweed pods to fill soldiers' life vests. These chapters are now part of the same series, ready to read today.
From weed to the hope of a threatened species, milkweed has never stopped making itself useful. It is a story that deserves to be continued.
