Why a Prairie Grain Farmer Became a Champion for Seed Processing

Mar 25, 2025

Todd McCann didn’t set out to be a voice in the seed world. In fact, he’s not even a seed grower.

But what started as a simple act of curiosity has led to over two decades of involvement in seed processing and policy. And while his path wasn’t linear, it’s one that shows how curiosity, community, and a willingness to show up can shape an entire industry.

McCann lives near Coaldale and operates an irrigated farm. He is a member of the County of Lethbridge Seed Cleaning Co-op. Now president of the Alberta Seed Processors, he comes from a seed family. His grandfather was once part of the local seed board. But as a young farmer, McCann didn’t see the point of all those meetings.

“For years, I didn’t have time, or didn’t think all this stuff was important,” he recalls. “As you get a little older, you realize, I gotta find the best variety for my farm. Well, how do you find the variety? You start asking questions. You start talking to seed growers.”

That shift in mindset opened the door. He began attending meetings at the local seed plant. One thing led to another, and he eventually served on that local board for 21 years.

“I thought, there are some folks that do it longer, and I give them full accolades. If you can give it your attention and do the job for more than 21 years, good for you. I just thought I was running out of new ideas for our local board.”

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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