The Harvest Zone

Jul 01, 2022

By Kim Baldwin

Every year around this time, the world around me has the potential to quickly turn into a continuous swirl that would be perfect for a TV series.

In cinematic effect, I imagine my story would begin with a black and white tight shot of my eyes opening wide from slumber and darting back and forth in a semi-confused state.

The background music at the start of my episode would consist of an odd pattern of guitar plinks and orchestral bursts, and over this hair-raising musical selection would include a Rod Serling-like narration:

“You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance. Of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into … the ‘Harvest Zone.’”

Harvest crews are making their way through wheat fields in my part of the world right now. As a farming family, this begins the busy season of not only harvesting wheat from the fields while racing the summer storms, but also finishing up the planting of our fall crops, and beginning the long, hot summer days of irrigation. Sprinkle in a variety of summer activities for our kids like Vacation Bible School, baseball games and swim lessons, and you have a swirling vortex of days that leave people like me asking at times, “What day is it?”

It’s during this time of the year I have to intentionally look at my calendar every morning to identify which kid has a baseball game that evening, if I have a scheduled Zoom call at some point during the day, or if my newspaper column is due. In reality, I also have to look at my calendar to know what the actual day is.

It’s during this part of the year where I intentionally set two alerts on all of my calendar entries. One alert is set for “1 day before” and the second for “1 hour before” to help remind me of daily events.

And it’s during this part of the year while conducting my daily morning calendar review, I will also routinely set alarms on my phone to go off approximately 30-minutes prior to any calendar entries that demand me to be at a certain place at a certain time.

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Video: Why Invest in Canada’s Seed Future? | On The Brink: Episode 3

Darcy Unger just invested millions to build a brand-new seed plant on his farm in Stonewall, Manitoba so when it’s time for his sons to take over, they have the tools they need to succeed.

Right now, 95% of the genetics they’ll be growing come from Canadian plant breeders.

That number matters.

When fusarium hit Western Canada in the late 90s, it was Canadian breeders who responded, because they understood Canadian conditions. That ability to react quickly to what’s happening on Canadian farms is exactly what’s at risk when breeding programs lose funding.

For farmers like Darcy, who have made generational investments based on the assumption that better genetics will keep coming, the stakes are direct and personal.

We’re on the brink of decisions that will shape our agricultural future for not only our generation, but also the ones to come.

What direction will we choose?

On The Brink is a year-long video series traveling across Canada to meet the researchers, breeders, farmers, seed companies, and policymakers shaping the future of Canadian plant breeding. Each week, a new story. Each story, a piece of the bigger picture.

Episode 3 is above. Follow Seed World Canada to catch every episode, and tell us: Do you think the next generation will have the tools they need to success when they takeover? How is the future going to look?