Agriculture This Week: Finding acres for niche crops not easy

Jan 13, 2023

The cropping landscape of the Canadian Prairies is an interesting one in the sense two crop whales – canola and wheat – dominate acres in a huge way, and all the other crops and farmland uses acting like a school of small fish going after whatever acres they can muscle away from the big two.

It's not easy grabbing acres from canola, which while having high input costs, and greater risk as a result should a crop disaster strike, it is still the option with the big gross return potential too, and that always looks good on a ledger plan.

Wheat by contrast doesn’t offer the big dollars per bushel, but the agronomics of producing a good crop are well-understood, and it makes a good rotation companion for canola so it gets acres.

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Video: Democratizing Gene Editing - Pairwise’s Vision for the Future of Agriculture

Pairwise has built its business around an idea that runs counter to how many companies approach innovation: make transformative technology easier to access.

In this Seed World interview, CEO Tom Adams discusses why broader access to gene editing could speed crop improvement, expand innovation opportunities and help agriculture address emerging challenges. He explains why Pairwise believes no single company can solve all of agriculture's problems alone—and why making advanced breeding technologies available to more organizations could accelerate progress across the industry.

The conversation explores how consumer trust influences technology adoption, why innovations like pitless cherries and seedless blackberries matter beyond convenience, and how future crop improvements could help address labor shortages, automation, harvest efficiency and other production challenges. Adams also shares his perspective on what the industry may be underestimating about the next wave of gene editing innovation.

Watch the full interview to hear why Pairwise believes agriculture is approaching an important inflection point for gene editing, and why the pace of innovation over the next decade could surprise the industry.

Topics Covered:

o Democratizing agricultural innovation

o Consumer trust and technology adoption

o The business case for sharing innovation

o Expanding innovation beyond major crops

o Next-generation breeding technologies