Alberta Grains elects inaugural board of directors and delegates

Feb 01, 2024

Following Alberta Grains’ Annual General Meeting held today in Calgary, Alberta, during the CrossRoads Crop Conference, the commission is pleased to announce its inaugural board of directors including Tara Sawyer as chair, Scott Jespersen as first vice-chair, and Devin Hartzler as second vice-chair.

Sawyer, who farms near Acme, has previously served as chair for Alberta Barley and Alberta Grains’ interim board of directors since the formal amalgamation of Alberta Barley and the Alberta Wheat Commission (AWC) in August 2023. Jespersen, who farms near Spruce Grove, takes over the first vice-chair role after previously serving as a director for Alberta Barley since 2021, and most recently as second vice-chair on the interim board for Alberta Grains. Hartzler, who farms near Carstairs, also held a position on the Alberta Grains interim board of directors and has previously served with AWC as a director since 2020.

“I am honoured by the board’s vote of confidence in my ability to serve Alberta’s wheat and barley farmers as chair,” said Sawyer. “There is so much opportunity in the industry as a whole and as a board, we’re leveraging that to ensure wheat and barley remain a top choice for farmers and end-users alike. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to serve as the first chair for Alberta Grains.”

After a series of regional meetings held throughout November 2023 to conduct elections, Alberta Grains enthusiastically introduces the newly elected directors:

• Region 1: Dean Hubbard, David Bishop.

• Region 2: Devin Hartzler, Tara Sawyer.

• Region 3: Stewart Oke, Dick Wymenga.

• Region 4: Shawn Jacula , Brent Christensen

• Region 5: Scott Jespersen, Marvin Neumann.

• Region 6: Greg Sears, Tasha Alexander.

“I see tremendous opportunity to help tell the story of Alberta’s 18,000 wheat and barley farmers and can’t wait to get started with our newly elected board of directors,” stated Alberta Grains executive director, Michael Flynn. “Their passion and dedication to enhancing the agriculture sector at not only the provincial level, but nationally and internationally is unmatched.”

Alberta Grains thanks all outgoing directors, delegates and regional representatives for their longstanding commitment to furthering the interests of Alberta barley and wheat producers.

Entering 2024, Research is Alberta Grain’s largest investment for a reason. We are focused on supporting research projects that aim to improve crop management, reduce input costs and environmental impact, and increase yield and grain quality.

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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.”