Top Young Farmers honoured at Canada’s Farm Show

Jun 25, 2024

Saskatchewan’s Outstanding Young farmers were announced at Canada’s Farm Show in Regina, Sask. last week. Cyle and Erika Stewart are from the Morse, Sask. area where they raise cows and grass yearlings.

The Stewarts, along with their three daughters, are dedicated to sustainable farming and community involvement, making Pine Ranch a great example of modern farming.

Cyle went to college in Montana with a rodeo scholarship and now helps run several farming and cattle organizations. Erika studied Education at the University of Alberta and loves teaching people about beef farming. She works with various programs to improve farming practices and advocates for the beef industry.

The other nominees were Jeff and Riley Ewen, fourth generation farmers who run E3 Ag Ventures at Riverhurst, near Lake Diefenbaker.

They grow a mix of crops, such as pulses, oilseeds, and grains. Jeff, who studied Agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan, and Riley, a nurse, decided to return to the farm after they got married in 2017.

Jeff now runs a custom farming business with his brother, specializing in growing dry edible beans. They have two daughters, Harper and Ava.

The Stewart’s will represent Saskatchewan at Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmer event Nov. 27 to Dec. 1 in Lethbridge.

The Canadian Outstanding Young Farmers program celebrates achievements and inspires others in the farming community.

Eligible nominees must be farm operators between the ages of 18 and 39 who derive a minimum of two-thirds of their income from their farm operations.

Each year an individual, couple or managing partner/shareholder of a farm group is selected from each of the program’s seven Regional Recognition Events. The successful candidates go on to represent their respective region at the National Recognition Event.

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Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids