What is the future of agriculture in Canada?
This is a question I spend a lot of time thinking about. As a farmer, the future success of my family’s business depends on this, in a truly significant way. Investment truly matters. Also, as someone involved in the agriculture industry as a chair of a crop commission, this is a critical discussion we are constantly having around our board table. It’s a big question – and an increasingly important one. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be one that’s being answered by our government.
Farmers drive agriculture, one decision at a time
Let’s start with a note of clarity: farmers drive the success of the agriculture industry. There are over 153 million acres of farmland in this country. Everything you can imagine is grown on these acres, from the vast fields of wheat, canola, lentils, and so many other crops across the West, to the grasslands being grazed, or to vegetable and fruit production, or intensive livestock operations – you name it, Canada grows it.
The decisions each individual farmer makes across Canada, and indeed across the world, are truly what drives the production of each acre. Most farmers want to harvest every unit of production they can get off every single acre with the minimum amount of inputs. That, simply put, is how we make money. That is how we put food on our tables. We are incentivized to maximize that difference between inputs and outputs.
Of course, the money we sink into each acre depends largely on what Mother Nature gives us. For those of us in broad-scale crop production, the accuracy of our decisions and actions doesn’t always guarantee success. A perfect crop of canola, meticulously maintained from seeding to harvest to maximize every bushel, can be destroyed in minutes by a hailstorm. A flawless field of wheat can be ruined by too much rain in September. Mother Nature holds the hammer – and it’s a big one.
Even if we are able to harvest that perfect field, we don’t get to negotiate a price for it. No one cares whose canola it is when it gets dumped at the elevator. There is a price available to sell canola today at every grain buyer in Western Canada. It is up to each one of us farmers to decide whether to take that price today, or wait for tomorrow, hoping for better.
These two elements, yield and price, are, in a meaningful way, outside of our control. We can influence yield, we can set up potential, and we can decide when to sell, but we cannot determine either of these numbers.
Despite these two massive determinants of our farm’s success, what happens before we purchase that seed to plant in the ground, and what happens after we deliver grain to the elevator, do have an enormous impact on our livelihoods.
Plant breeding is a fantastic investment
The genetics we plant truly set the limits of our production potential. Better genetics can better handle stress of all types. But not every crop is the same: for canola, we buy seed from multi-national companies, use it once, then buy again next year (hybrid seed loses its vigour after generation one). This system drives large investments in research, but the costs are high for us to buy the seed, and recent yield advancements have been lagging.
For our other crops, like wheat, lentils, peas, flax, and many others, these varieties are bred using a mix of public, taxpayer-funded dollars and farmer investment. The investment Agriculture Canada (which means you, if you’re a Canadian taxpayer) puts into breeding is tremendous – hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested into infrastructure, land, staff, laboratories, and equipment to produce newer, better varieties. Farmers invest huge amounts, too, through the check-off dollars going into the crop commissions across Canada.
Morden, Manitoba research station
These investments are not without merit. The return on investment in wheat breeding, for example, is 33 to 1 – meaning, every dollar invested returns 33 back to the farmer. For the taxpayer, it’s actually even stronger than that.
So, why are we spending less and less?
Public investment in agricultural research and development in Canada has fallen to half of what it was 40 years ago, just 0.35% of GDP (source – Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute). We are being seriously outpaced in this by many of our competitors. Federal spending at Agriculture Canada has been slowly sliding, when adjusted for inflation, and threats of further cuts are on the horizon.
After the budget cuts of 2012, we lost many key staff members (including breeders), we lost the Cereal Research Center in Winnipeg, key testing sites like Glenlea, Portage la Prairie, and Regina. We lost 60,000 plots for trialing varieties. These gaps still exist, despite substantial increases in producer funding to make up for a reduction in government funding.
My question is, why? Why would you not invest in initiatives that clearly, strongly show excellent return on investment? If I could put money into a stock that generated a 33:1 return, I would put every dollar I had into it.
As always, it’s a complex problem. Governments are often looking for opportunities to manage deficits, and there are a lot more votes for other social programs than there are for agriculture. We just don’t have the votes. With a massive deficit of over $1.2 trillion on the books, future governments clearly have no choice but to save dollars where they can. We are in a truly unfortunate economic position and all will bear the consequences. It didn’t have to be this way, either.
Deficits aside, agriculture is not a place to cut investment. Maybe the problem is simply a lack of awareness of its importance, and its success. If so, it’s time to turn the tide on that. It’s time to recognize agriculture as a true economic powerhouse in Canada, something that generates one in nine jobs, and provides 7% of Canada’s GDP. If we care about raising the standard of living for each and every Canadian, agriculture should be one of the key focuses of our governments – and our public.
Infrastructure matters
It isn’t just plant breeding. After I deliver my grain to the elevator, that company loads it on a train to begin the long journey to port. The trains unload into cargo vessels or container to be shipped across the world. These railways wind their way through the Rocky Mountains or the Canadian Shield, for thousands of kilometers. It’s remarkable that this system works at all. But it could work better.
In 2023, the Port of Vancouver was rated second last in the world for vessel wait times for containers. That is number 347 out of 348. That is a terrible statistic for one of the most export-dependent countries in the world. And it doesn’t have to be that way.
One of the biggest problems is we just don’t seem to prioritize agriculture as a society. The Port of Vancouver may be our single most important piece of infrastructure in the country, but it seems to take a back seat to the city itself. For example, trains must pass beneath the Second Narrows lift bridge, which provides rail access to the export terminals on Vancouver’s north shore. Astonishingly, marine traffic has the right of way under this bridge, causing trains to regularly wait for even small recreational vessels, like sailboats. This is just one example of many of prioritizing city inhabitants over the port.
Where is the vision?
I’ve only highlighted a couple of major issues, but there are many more. Biofuels are such an important piece that just don’t seem to be a priority. Livestock continue to disappear in this country due to poor risk management options. And there are more.
All of these issues highlight one thing: Canada does not have a coherent vision for agriculture. Complaints are regularly leveled against the many farm groups across the country for providing mixed messaging to the government, but that is an unavoidable outcome of a country as large as Canada, with such a diverse landscape of farmers. It is the government’s role to collate what they hear and develop a positive vision for agriculture, not to pick and choose which message they like best.
Canada can and should be, at the very least, a top five agri-food exporter worldwide. The fact that the Netherlands, a tiny country of 17 million people in Europe that, by all expectations, should really be mostly underwater, is the #3 agri-food exporter in the world, should give us pause here in Canada – especially since we aren’t even in the top five at all. The United States, Brazil, China, and Germany, along with the aforementioned Netherlands, are. This should change.
We have the land, we have the people, and we have the climate. All we need to do is build a vision for agriculture in this country – one that recognises the enormous return on investment that plant breeding, research, and infrastructure provides, and release farmers from excessive taxation and regulation that keeps creeping its way into our farms.
We can’t take agriculture for granted. If you’re a farmer, consider the value of your investments in plant breeding through your check-offs — it’s money well spent. If you’re a Canadian, let your MP know just how important agriculture is, and that it is the wrong target for cuts.
We can do this, Canada.
Like this:Like Loading…
Related
