Governments Investing in Agricultural Leadership Development

May 25, 2023

PUSLINCH – The governments of Canada and Ontario are investing more than $2.3 million over three years through the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP) to support 4-H Ontario programming. This funding will allow 4-H Ontario to continue to engage youth interested in a career in the agriculture and agri-food industries.

“Young Ontario farmers greatly benefit from the leadership and training activities that the 4-H offers thanks to funding under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership. Young people are the future of the sector and this investment will give them the possibility to play an active role in agriculture,” said Rechie Valdez, Member of Parliament for Mississauga—Streetsville and Member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, on behalf of the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food.

4-H Ontario provides youth across the province with opportunities to participate in local and provincial initiatives that contribute to their growth and professional development, as well as teach transferrable leadership skills. This funding will continue the delivery of 4-H programming, create further learning opportunities for youth and seek to expand the program’s engagement with Indigenous and marginalized communities.

“4-H Ontario is a valuable youth development, community-based program focusing on leadership and life skills that young people will benefit from their entire careers,” said Lisa Thompson, Ontario Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs. “This investment will ensure 4-H Ontario can continue building future community and business owners, foster greater appreciation and pride of our rural communities and agriculture and food sectors, while creating a learning environment outside of the classroom where 4-H members can learn by doing.”

Under the funding agreement, investments will be made in a variety of 4-H programming areas. These will include:

Support for local initiatives to increase awareness of careers in agriculture;
Provincial youth leadership development efforts;
Engaging diverse communities including underrepresented and Indigenous youth about 4-H Ontario programs;
Improving the capacity to train and onboard volunteer workers for the organization;
And developing and distributing curriculum resources.

This initiative continues a long-running tradition of government support for the organization. Approximately 6,000 currently enrolled youth will benefit from the funding.

Sustainable CAP is a five-year (2023-2028), $3.5-billion investment by federal‐provincial and territorial governments to strengthen competitiveness, innovation, and resiliency of the agriculture, agri‐food and agri‐based products sector. This includes $1 billion in federal programs and activities and a $2.5 billion commitment that is cost-shared 60 per cent federally and 40 per cent provincially/territorially for programs designed and delivered by the provinces and territories.

Source : News Ontario

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.”