OFA says farmers appreciate risk management program funding Increase

Jan 28, 2025
By Andrew Joseph
Assistant Editor, North American Content, Farms.com

In Guelph, Ontario, OFA President Drew Spoelstra (third from left) stands with members of the provincial government and others at the announcement on January 28, 2025, concerning risk management funding expansion for farmers.

Ontario farmers are expressing their support for the January 28, 2025, announcement that the provincial government is expanding risk management funding for farmers.

Over the next three years, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness is phasing in a $100 million increase to the Risk Management Program (RMP) for beef, pork, sheep, veal, and grain farmers and the Self-Directed Risk Management Program (SDRM) for fruit and vegetable growers.

RMP and SDRM help provide financial protection for farmers against unprecedented challenges beyond their control, including inflation, supply chain disruptions, market downturns, and climate risks.

“This additional investment by the government comes at a critical time for Ontario farmers as we are making key decisions for the coming growing season,” stated Drew Spoelstra, President of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA). “This increased funding will provide Ontario farmers with confidence to continue making critical investments in our farm businesses and Ontario’s agri-food sector in such uncertain times.”

Increased funding for risk management has long been a key advocacy priority for the OFA, and it was one of the organization’s top three budget asks of the provincial government for 2025. This ask also supported efforts by the Ontario Agriculture Sustainability Coalition, which has long been urging the province to enhance its investment in RMP and SDRM.

Ontario’s agri-food sector is a key part of the provincial economy, contributing more than $50 billion in annual economic activity, $26.2 billion in agri-food exports, and employing 11 percent of Ontario’s workforce by supporting more than 870,000 jobs.

“We appreciate the government’s recognition of the importance of our sector to the provincial economy, and we thank Ontario’s Minister of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness, Rob Flack, for his leadership in strengthening this critical risk management tool for our sector,” added Spoelstra.

The OFA represents 38,000 farm families across the province and serves as the leading advocate and strongest voice of Ontario’s farmers. As a dynamic farmer-led organization, the OFA represents and champions the interests of Ontario farmers through advocacy and government relations, research and farm policy recommendations, media and public relations, community representation, and more.

Information on the OFA can be found at www.ofa.on.ca.

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.”