An Amended Bill C-234 Adds Costs and Delays for Farmers

Nov 02, 2023

Canadian Canola Growers Association (CCGA) is calling on all Senators to defeat the Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry's amendment that would remove heating and cooling of barns and greenhouses from Bill C-234.

“This amendment dramatically changes the scope and intent of the bill and will cost farmers thousands of dollars, which could instead be used to invest in the sustainability of their operations," says Dave Carey, CCGA's Vice-President, Government & Industry Relations. “Farmers are on the front line of food production, and they currently do not have any viable alternatives for natural gas and propane used in drying grain or heating and cooling barns."

CCGA is extremely concerned that the proposed amendment will severely delay the bill's passage, while unfairly hurting major segments of Canada's farming sector.

“We ask all Senators to vote against the proposed amendment and avoid having the bill sent back to the House of Commons for further review," says Carey.

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.