Agriculture bracing for ‘seismic shift’ in wheat breeding

Feb 18, 2025

The future of wheat breeding in Canada is on uncertain ground.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) may be moving away from field-ready wheat development and towards upstream research, attendees heard during Edmonton’s Crossroads Crop Conference Jan. 29.

The event featured a round table of four prominent wheat breeding figures, with an eye to what the future would look like if their field isn’t getting the federal support industry is used to.

WHY IT MATTERS: Climate-heavy federal research funding has come under fire in the agriculture sector, which points to other crop development priorities farmers say also need support.

The discussion included Todd Hyra, western business manager for SeCan; Stuart Smyth, an agricultural economist at the University of Saskatchewan; Robert Graf, science advisor with SeedNet and retired AAFC wheat breeder; and Dean Hubbard, Alberta farmer and chair of the Canadian Wheat Research Coalition (CWRC).

Graf, a veteran breeder who developed or helped develop many of Western Canada’s varieties, said AAFC needs to be straightforward with its intentions. All he’s heard to date is the possibility of a three-year phase-out of AAFC’s wheat breeding activity.

“What we really need to get is some straight answers from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada on what exactly is the plan right now. It’s quite vague,” he said.

“It’s very difficult to come up with a good plan if we don’t know what we’re moving towards, and so I think there needs to be some real, honest discussion amongst the entire industry on ‘what is the plan?’”

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators