Canadian Roundtable For Sustainable Beef Provides Update On Operations

Oct 06, 2021

The Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (CRSB) held its second virtual Annual General Meeting last week.

Key highlights of this past year included completing a full suite of 2030 Canadian Beef Industry Goals, together with the six other national organizations that form the Canadian Beef Advisors. This also complements work done on a global scale through the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, of which CRSB is a member.

The CRSB is working with its stakeholders to review the Certified Sustainable Beef Framework, develop an impact monitoring and evaluation system, and to update its Business Strategy.

Sustainability Benchmarking and Strategy

The National Beef Sustainability Assessment (NBSA) and Strategy provides a comprehensive farm-to-fork measurement of Canadian beef industry performance from environmental, social and economic perspectives, and identifies areas for improvement. The first assessment and strategy, released in 2016, is being updated, with the full results planned for 2023. The data collection phase of the next assessment was launched today, with primary data from Canada’s beef producers being critical to its success. The CRSB is encouraging beef producers, packers, restaurants, retailers and others across the beef supply chain to participate in the update to ensure a robust data set that accurately reflects the sustainability performance of Canadian beef. This update to the NBSA will complement the suite of 2030 Canadian beef goals launched earlier this year.

Certified Sustainable Beef Framework

The Certified Sustainable Beef Framework continues to see significant growth, more than doubling the numbers of companies now sourcing beef from CRSB Certified Sustainable farms and ranches across Canada. Over 5.6 million lbs. of beef sourced from certified sustainable farms and ranches was sold this year, bringing the total since the program began in 2018 to over 14 million lbs. A new Certification Body was added - Ontario Corn Fed Beef Quality Assurance Program for Ontario feedlots, and there are now five processing facilities certified to the Sustainable Beef Processing Standard. Over 17% of the Canadian cattle herd is now raised on Certified Sustainable farms and ranches.

“The CRSB’s AGM is an opportunity to share updates on all the important work being done to advance beef sustainability in Canada. I am so proud of the leadership the CRSB demonstrates in bringing together people who work together in true collaboration. It is exciting to see our supply chain partners embracing our certification program, and their desire to show Canadians the dedication of our farmers and ranchers to sustainable practices,” said Chair Anne Wasko. “But we are also reminded as we plan and strategize for the future, that our work is never done – continuous improvement as they say!”

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”