Collaboration can drive positive change for the farming sector

Jan 09, 2024

By Angela Cammaert,
Director, Ontario Federation of Agriculture

I’ve always been a big believer in the idea that the more people work together, the more we can achieve.

As a fifth-generation farmer raised in rural Ontario, I grew up with the belief that it’s always important to give back to the community you’re involved with, whether through service clubs, volunteerism, donating your skills and abilities to worthy causes, or stepping up to participate in leadership roles.

That spirit of involvement and collaboration also drives my husband Dave and I in our farm business near the southwestern Ontario town of West Lorne, where we grow crops, raise cattle and sell beef from our farm directly to consumers.

I spent time as a municipal councillor in West Elgin before becoming involved as a director with the Elgin Federation of Agriculture, where I soon became the organization’s Vice President and Chair of Land Use planning, as well as a mentor to young female farmers.

Late last fall, I took on my newest community involvement leadership role when I was elected as a Director-at-Large for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA).

I was inspired to put my name forward for the position by the example of OFA’s recently retired president Peggy Brekveld, who so ably led the organization through the very tough pandemic years.
Stepping forward to lead is never easy, particularly often for women, but she was a strong yet compassionate advocate for agriculture and dedicated to the ideas of collaboration and of
building bridges between rural and urban communities.

I also decided to run for an OFA director position because I feel strongly about the future of agriculture. As a farmer who sells food directly to consumers, I spend a lot of time answering the public’s questions in person and online about how food is produced and where it comes from – and I’m deeply familiar with the critical roles that farming plays in so many ways right across our society.

It’s also important that agriculture’s voice is heard on major issues like land use planning and farmland preservation, for example, so we can ensure that our ability to produce food, fuel, fibre and flowers here in Ontario isn’t lost forever.

A key part of that also lies with investment in critical infrastructure for rural Ontario. This means well-maintained roads and bridges, but it’s also about access to affordable energy like natural gas as well as social infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, healthcare and community services.

Source : Ontario Federation of Agriculture

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.”