SeedChange is hosting a local seed demonstration site in Abbotsford this summer

May 27, 2022

Rising food prices has been a consistent problem throughout the pandemic, coming to a head with the conflict in Ukraine. But prices are rising for the wrong reasons, according to David Catzel, program manager for the Bauta Family Initiative on Canadian Seed Security at nonprofit organization SeedChange, because farmers are not benefiting from it.

“As somebody who farmed previously, I’m not opposed to food prices going up if it means farmers are making a better living,” he says. “But that’s not what’s happening right now—they’re making minimum wage so I think the price is going up for the wrong reason, for reasons we actually do have control over."

Localizing our food system can alleviate supply chain issues and keep prices lower. Ottawa-based SeedChange (formerly USC Canada) is an advocate for sustainable agriculture and has been supporting farmers and communities around the world since 1945. With $750,000 from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada,

it’s launching a dozen local seed demonstration sites this summer, one being at the FarmFolk CityFolk farm in Abbotsford, showcasing local farmer-bred seed varieties.

The demo site in Abbotsford opens with a public tour and event on June 24. It will see similar events throughout the summer, featuring seed experiments and ongoing breeding projects to educate people. Throughout the year, the nonprofit’s partners in academic institutions like UBC, University of Fraser Valley and Kwantlen Polytechnic Institute helps it run “variety trials,” which includes planting varieties of a crop (like rutabaga). The demo in Abbotsford will replicate some of those trials based on surveys with farmers across the country to display what people need to learn about. These educational demos happen a few times a year, but there’s always activity on the Abbotsford farm, which hosts field days, grows seeds and does trials and experimentation all year long.

SeedChange is also working with some 200 Canadian farmers on other projects to boost local seed production, support organic agriculture, save seeds at risk of extinction and breed new varieties better suited for the local soil and climate.

For example, the Bauta program ran a variety trial with 100 domestic farmers over the last six years where it facilitated the breeding of a popular carrot that farmers flagged as being at risk. Because it’s a hybrid seed produced by one company in France, a lot of local farmers growing it were insecure about it disappearing.

The hybrid variety couldn’t be reproduced and grown here, so the Bauta program helped breed the carrot, which farmers saved seeds from. The result was similar to the variety they worried would disappear, and now the program is ready to test this variety that the farmers helped select.

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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.”