St. Isidore, Ontario – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada - The crop sector is a key contributor to Canada's economy, representing $25 billion in farm gate receipts, $21 billion in exports and supporting thousands of jobs across the country while expanding markets for the sector's safe, high-quality products.
Francis Drouin, Member of parliament (MP) for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell was at the Chicken Little Farm in St. Isidore where he reaffirmed the Government of Canada's support for the sector through an investment in the soybean research cluster. Lawrence MacAulay, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, previously announced this investment on January 15, 2019 at the annual CropSphere event in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
MP Drouin highlighted the Government of Canada's investment of up to $5.4 million to the Canadian Field Crop Research Alliance under the Canadian Agricultural Partnership's AgriScience Program (Clusters). This research investment, which includes an additional $3 million from industry, will help soybean crops become more resilient and productive, increase the geographic range for growing crops and benefit the environment.
MP Drouin also announced an additional investment of $4.1 million over five years to the Canadian Field Crop Research Alliance (CFCRA), funded under the AgriScience Program (Projects). This additional funding supports two national projects, one on oat and one on corn.
The oat project will develop new oat varieties, enhance breeding efforts and recommend new agronomic practices to help improve productivity, stability of yields, consistency, and quality.
The corn project will develop germplasm that is more disease resistant and adaptable to cooler growing regions. The project will also focus on new nitrogen strategies that will help enhance productivity and environmental performance for farmers across the country.
Source : Government of Canada