Government of Canada invests in organic industry

Mar 02, 2022

Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Marie-Claude Bibeau has announced funding of up to $770,000 for the Canada Organic Trade Association (COTA) to support market development for organic products.

“Canada’s organic industry is one of our fastest growing sectors. These producers provide healthy and nutritious food to consumers across the country and, increasingly, around the world. Supporting the market development for organic products will further contribute to the growth of a more competitive and sustainable Canadian agricultural sector,” said Bibeau.

The funding will help create domestic and international export opportunities and promote the "Canada Organic" brand.

The project includes the development of market activities at major food shows in Germany and the United States with additional activities related to market accessibility and technical assessments. The investment, made under the Canadian Agricultural Partnership's AgriMarketing Program, will support the association in welcoming incoming missions, offering retailer training, creating market reports and developing a directory of organic producers and exporters.

“COTA and our members are very grateful for the continued support from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada as organic agriculture and trade assist the Federal government to meet their goals on climate change. Canada’s organic landscape continues to shine on the world stage and grow at a pace that highlights the increased demand for climate-friendly products by consumers worldwide,” said Tia Loftsgard Executive Director, Canada Organic Trade Association.

With this investment, COTA has developed a 4-module retailer training program as well as a webinar training series on how to become ‘Export Ready’. It continues to expand the training program in order to deliver sessions virtually as well as in-person to a wide stakeholder audience. In the first two years of the program COTA has trained over 600 participants from 300 companies with estimated related sales close to $1.7 million.

There were more than 7,500 organic operations in Canada in 2019, accounting for roughly 2% of total agricultural land.

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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.”