Minister MacAulay announces over $2M in support for Canadian organic industry

Jun 28, 2024

Ottawa, Ontario – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

The organic industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in Canada. Organic farming techniques can help improve soil health, promote biodiversity, and boost farm resilience in the face of climate change.

Today, to mark the 15th anniversary of the Canada Organic Regime, the Honourable Lawrence MacAulay, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, announced an investment of more than $2 million to 2 organizations through the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership.

The Canada Organic Trade Association is receiving up to $1,175,841 over 3 years, under the AgriMarketing Program, to facilitate the growth of an innovative and profitable organic sector by resolving market access issues, ensuring Canadian organic products are competitive, building export capacity, and developing domestic opportunities. Activities include incoming and outgoing trade missions, international trade shows, technical training, and marketing campaigns.

The Prairie Organic Development Fund is receiving up to $985,985 over 3 years, under the AgriCompetitiveness Program, to advance the organic sector in Canada by building evidence for organics through data aggregation and benchmarking, growing organic supply and leadership through education, tools, and skill-building, and strengthening public trust in Canadian organics.

Source : Canada.ca

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.