Famed Waterloo-area agri-retailer and Hall of Fame inductee passes away

May 06, 2022

After a long life and distinguished career serving the ag retail sector and community, Warren Vincent passes away at the age of 98.

By Andrew Joseph, Farms.com; Image via www.legacy.com

Within the Ayr, Waterloo, Ontario and Canadian agri-retail sector, the name Warren Lesley Vincent stood out for nearly a century.

Vincent passed away peacefully on May 1, 2022, at the age of 98, in Ayr where he lived his life.

Born on September 25, 1923, his obituary stated that Vincent was an Ontario Agriculture Hall of Fame inductee—he was not. He was, however, a member of the Waterloo Region Hall of Fame.

Raised on a farm south of Ayr, Vincent got his start in the agri-retail sector as a teenager riding his bicycle along the concession roads selling grain lifters and electric fences.

In 1943, he joined International Harvester, a farm equipment dealer in Ayr where his father also worked.

Joined by his brother Marlen, in 1955 the Vincent boys started Vincent Farm Equipment Ltd., and quickly helped modernizing the Ontario dairy industry after taking on a line of bulk milk coolers and supplying them to customers.

Along the years, Vincent Farm Equipment expanded, with a new facility in Ayr, and branches established Cambridge, Seaforth, and Woodstock, Ontario. Lawn and garden and recreational equipment were also added to its product lineup.

Vincent served as President of the Canadian Implement Dealer Association, President of the Ontario Implement Dealer Association, and director of Eastern Canada for the North American Equipment Dealers Association.

He volunteered his time with numerous community groups, and supported many local organizations. He served as a village councillor, participated on local sports and church committees, co-chaired the Ayr Sesquicentennial Committee in 1974 with his wife Laura, and over the years often acted as master of ceremonies at various public events.

In 1974, he was one of 100 recipients awarded the Centennial medal by the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph for service to Agriculture. In 1978 he was also selected as the Ayr Citizen of the Year.

Funeral services were held on May 6, 2022, at Knox United Church, in Ayr.

NOTE: Special thanks to the Ontario Agriculture Hall of Fame for their help with this article.

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.”