Balancing our energy and food security needs

Sep 03, 2024

By Drew Spoelstra, President, Ontario Federation of Agriculture

The demand for energy is growing in Ontario, as is the need for reliable supply and infrastructure that will provide sustainable, affordable options and accommodate growth across all sectors of the economy, including the agri-food sector.

Ontario’s agriculture and agri-food sector is not only a cornerstone of our province’s economy, but also a critical part of our identity and our future. We produce more than 200 different farm and food products that sustain our communities, fuel our rural economies, and provide jobs for 11 per cent of Ontario’s work force.

With an annual contribution of over $50 billion to Ontario’s economy, the agri-food sector is undeniably one of the most significant drivers of economic prosperity in our province, which is a key reason the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) has long been advocating for affordable and reliable energy options. This is particularly true for rural Ontario, which is where so much of our food, fuel, fibre and flower production takes place.

That’s why, as a farmer and president of the OFA, I was pleased be part of an event this past week where the provincial government announced a new energy procurement framework for Ontario. It will take a mix of all types of energy generation infrastructure to meet the growing demand for reliable, affordable and sustainable power, and this plan focuses on a diverse supply mix that includes nuclear, hydroelectric, renewables, natural gas and biomass.

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Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids