U of A student reflects on Youth Ag Summit experience

Feb 23, 2022

Amanda Hardman was one of two Canadians to attend

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

A sustainable agriculture student at the University of Alberta recently represented Canada at a youth event in November.

Amanda Hardman from Stony Plain, Alta. was one of two Canadians to participate in Bayer’s 2021 Youth Ag Summit (YAS).

Emily Robb, a University of Manitoba student, was the other.

The biennial event brings together a total of 100 delegates between the ages of 18 and 25. The attendees represent nearly 50 countries.

“It was one of the best online conferences I’d ever attended,” Hardman told Farms.com. “The material was great. There were so many international speakers, and it was great to hear about situations going on around the globe.”

Those stories affected Hardman, she said.

Living in Alberta, Hardman has access to everything she needs.

But others around the world don’t have that luxury, she said.

“These stories were super inspiring but very humbling,” she said. “I obviously have a very Canadian and Alberta-centric on agriculture, so to hear stories about water quality and food security, things that I don’t have to worry about because of where I live, those stories will stay with me.”

As part of the application process, interested youth had to present project ideas and examples of advocacy work on the event’s overall theme “Feeding a Hungry Planet.”

Hardman’s project focuses on biodegradable food packaging to replace plastic clamshell packaging.

Hardman’s experience at the YAS didn’t focus so much on bringing her project to market, but rather renewed her confidence in the work she’s doing on the packaging.

“It’s hard when you’re young and you don’t have any money to help bring your ideas to fruition,” she said. “But the leadership speakers there helped remind me and the others that you always have a seat at the table and there’s always someone you can ask for help.”

Attendees of the summit also received access to free education material.

The delegates received 10 free weeks of mentorship and coaching through YAS University.

Hardman hasn’t had much time to look at that material as it’s exam season after all.

“School has blindsided me this semester,” she said. “I’ve been trying to play catch up on those units and I’ll hopefully get to them soon.”

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.”