Grain Farmers of Ontario Welcomes Vision for New Policy Framework from Ministers of Agriculture

Nov 12, 2021

Guelph, ON – Grain Farmers of Ontario, the province’s largest commodity organization, representing Ontario’s 28,000 barley, corn, oat, soybean and wheat farmers, is pleased to see the progressive and insightful shared vision of the next policy framework for the future of Canadian agriculture released by the Federal, Provincial and Territorial (FPT) Ministers of Agriculture in the “Guelph Statement.”

The statement acknowledges the continuous work done by farmers to produce food while maintaining Canada’s natural resources: “Canadian farmers have always been good stewards of the land and have a solid track record of sustainable agriculture, with sound management practices, innovation, and new technologies. Over the past two decades, farmers have doubled the value of production while stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions. In that time, the amount of agricultural emissions per dollar of GDP generated by the sector has dropped by half.”

The policy framework highlights five priority areas:

Climate change and the environment
Science, research and innovation
Market development and trade
Building sector capacity and growth
Resiliency and public trust

“The priority areas in the new policy framework shared by the FPT align with grain farming and our own priority areas at Grain Farmers of Ontario. We look forward to working with all levels of government to ensure the future of grain farming,” said Brendan Byrne, Chair, Grain Farmers of Ontario. “Grain farmers in Ontario are part of the solution when it comes to protecting the environment, with the wide number of practices they have adopted to promote good land stewardship, and their willingness to be early adopters of innovation that will help protect the land.”

“The FPT Ministers commitment to business risk management programs and acknowledgement of the diverse Canadian landscape will be vitally important to maintaining the economic and social benefits that farming brings to our province and our country,” said Crosby Devitt, CEO, Grain Farmers of Ontario.

“As these programs are evaluated, we urge our governments to ensure that they maintain the purpose of these programs, which are meant to support farmers when faced with risks outside their control. For changes that use the lens of climate change, additional programs or changes need to be resourced properly, especially as more weight is given to innovative practices that increase environmental stewardship and ask the farmers to bear the responsibility of implementation.” Devitt says.

Ontario’s grain farmers are up for the challenges of farming for a growing population, with an eye to keeping natural resources sustainable for the future and Grain Farmers of Ontario looks forward to working with governments to partner in these initiatives.

Source : GFO

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.”