Minister Bibeau announces over $2.5 million to help improve food security in Montreal

Jul 13, 2021

Montreal, Quebec – The Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, and the Member of Parliament for Hochelaga, Soraya Martinez Ferrada, announced over $2.5 million for 30 projects with local not-for-profit organizations in the Montreal area. These investments, through the Local Food Infrastructure Fund, will support projects that facilitate access to safe and nutritious food for at-risk populations and strengthen the local food system.

The announcement was made during a visit to La Cuisine Collective Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, which is receiving nearly $235,000 to establish an urban farm, including installation of two greenhouses and the purchase of horticultural equipment. The products grown at the farm will be integrated into food baskets distributed to families in need and also used in local solidarity markets, collective kitchens and low-rent housing units. A full list of projects can be found in the backgrounder.

On July 9, 2021, Minister Bibeau announced a top-up of $10 million for the Local Food Infrastructure Fund, which re-opens for applications today. The additional top-up of $10 million is part of the Government of Canada’s commitment to provide continued support to emergency hunger relief organizations, who have faced significant challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as higher demands and fewer resources. With this additional funding to address pandemic-related food security pressures, the Fund is supporting $23 million in projects in 2021-22.

The new call for proposals will support infrastructure projects such as a walk-in refrigerator for a food bank, or installing a greenhouse in a remote community. Applications for grants valued between $15,000 and $100,000 are being accepted.

Since it was first launched in August 2019, the Fund has already committed $27 million to support over 625 vital food security projects across Canada, such as: community gardens and kitchens; refrigerated trucks and storage units for donated food; greenhouses in remote and northern communities; and more.

An increasing number of Canadians have faced challenges in putting food on their tables due to COVID-19. Even before the pandemic, too many Canadians were struggling to access safe and healthy food. The Government of Canada is committed to helping communities invest in infrastructure that will improve their food security and increase access to healthy, nutritious and local foods for families in need.

Source : Government of Canada

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.”