CAFTA details Principles for Sustainable and Fair Trade in Agri-Food Sector

Aug 07, 2024

The Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance (CAFTA) has set out its principles for sustainable trade and what it hopes to see from international organizations in the future.

Those include global food security, trade stability, climate measures, and pest practices for countries and organizations.

Micheal Harvey, the Executive Director of CAFTA, talks about the need to get out and let others know about Canada's values.

"What we're seeing is more and more international organizations where sustainable trade is being discussed. You see it in places like the World Trade Organization, the climate change discussions called the Conference of the Parties (COP), the G20, and the G7 and we thought it was really important for Canada, for your food exporters to put together a clear set of principles on how we think Canada should be approaching these discussions."

Harvey says he's hoping the principles serve to bring together international agricultural stakeholders.

"What stands out to me is that is really important that when you discuss sustainable trade that it not become a trade barrier. What we don't want is for sustainable trade to be used as a way to keep Canadian products out of markets the way you see sometimes with other sorts of non-tariff barriers."

"We want to keep the discussion on the positive side of international trade in the Agri-food area, especially just how much international Agri-food trade contributes to sustainability, contributes to fighting climate change, contributes to food security."

These principles would be put towards future discussion with international organizations according to Harvey.

"You'll see these principles guiding our discussions with the World Trade Organization, where there's going to be more and more discussion of sustainable trade in the Agri-food area. Brazil in particular has been pushing the idea that there be a retreat of World Trade Organization members to discuss sustainable trade and agriculture. We really want our principles we want that the Canadian government will pick up on when it's representing Canada at those meetings."

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Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

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• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.