OFA marks one-year anniversary of Home Grown campaign

May 11, 2022

GUELPH, ON – Where our food comes from matters.

Especially when that food comes from Ontario farms. Our food security relies on a strong agricultural sector that can get food from the farm to your dinner plate without the hassle of international travel, trade disputes or unforeseen events like a global pandemic shutting down cross-border travel.

And that underscores one unalienable truth — you cannot farm without farmland.

“That, really, is the entire crux of our Home Grown campaign,” says Peggy Brekveld, President of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA). “Your morning toast and cereal. The cream in your coffee. The meat and veg at dinner. The apple for a mid-afternoon snack. The Ontario VQA wine, craft beer, cider or Candian-distilled spirit to relax in the evening. It all depends on Ontario farmers and our farmland.”

It was May 4, 2021, when digital ads first started appearing under the Home Grown banner — a campaign that was a response by the OFA to an increasing use by the province of an obscure land-use planning tool that was taking agricultural lands out of production for urban development.

Home Grown evolved from that initial advocacy into a broader awareness campaign to highlight the importance of preserving farmland to support the production of local foods, fibres, fuels and flowers. With 2016 Census of Agriculture data indicating the province is losing an average of 175 acres of productive farmland each day, it is a vitally important issue. (And it should be noted, data from the 2021 Census of Agriculture is expected to be released later this month, and all expectations are that 175 acres per day number will grow.)

To date, Home Grown has generated more than 31,500 signatures of support at homegrown.ofa.on.ca, and more than 1.5 million people have engaged with a Home Grown digital ad an average of five times each.

The OFA has also put together a short YouTube video to mark the occasion.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been an alarming expansion of low-density housing, warehouses, factories and other non-agricultural land uses on land that was previously in agricultural production,” says Brekveld. “This is added pressure Ontario farmers simply don’t need. The need for urban growth to keep up with a growing population is understood, but it has to be approached in a smart, measured and sustainable way. Ontario can’t afford to prioritize haphazard urban development over prime food-producing farmland.”

Together, our unified voice can make change happen and save Ontario’s food and farms from disappearing forever.

Source : OFA

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.”