Funding supports 26 projects in the fish and seafood processing sector

Jul 22, 2021

FREDERICTON GNB – The provincial and federal governments are investing a total of $4.2 million to help improve productivity and sustainability in New Brunswick’s lobster, snow crab and smoked herring processing sectors.

Through the Atlantic Fisheries Fund, 26 projects that focus on innovative technologies will help local processors be more efficient and adapt to meet national and international market requirements.

“The fish and seafood industry continues to be an important economic driver for our province,” said Agriculture, Aquaculture and Fisheries Minister Margaret Johnson. “We are committed to supporting innovation and infrastructure that will position New Brunswick’s processing industry as a global leader in increasingly competitive markets.”

Edmond Gagnon, a family-owned seafood processing plant in Grand Barachois, has received $2 million to support the acquisition and installation of state-of-the-art seafood processing equipment for a new processing facility. The equipment will enable greater automation, product traceability, increased productivity and market diversification by meeting the British Retail Consortium certification requirements.

Twenty other processors also share more than $2.2 million for 25 projects to acquire and install specialized equipment.

Ten of these projects are related to the lobster and snow crab processing sectors. New Brunswick accounts for more than 50 per cent of world production of frozen processed lobster, and approximately 25 per cent of Canadian production of snow crab.

In addition, 15 smoked herring processors are receiving funding for new equipment. The smokehouse sector is an important component of the seafood processing industry in New Brunswick, with 95 per cent of the world’s hard-cured smoke herring produced in the province.

“Canada’s fisheries are a vital part of our national blue economy, and the backbone of so many coastal communities,” said federal Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard Minister Bernadette Jordan. “Through the Atlantic Fisheries Fund, we’re ensuring that the hardworking people of this sector have the technology and equipment they need to continue to harvest and process our world-class seafood and earn the maximum value for that product.”

Automation in the seafood processing sector is instrumental in maintaining a globally competitive industry through improved efficiency and productivity. The industry faces challenges in hiring workers, and automation with modern equipment allows for improved working conditions and leads to improved employee recruitment and retention.

The Atlantic Fisheries Fund aims to help Canada’s seafood sector transition to meet growing market demands for products that are high quality, value-added and sustainably sourced.

Source : Government of New Brunswick

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.”