Why this election matters for farmers and rural communities

Apr 02, 2025

By Drew Spoelstra, President, Director, Ontario Federation of Agriculture

We’re in the midst of our second election campaign of 2025 and like all elections, it’s a perfect opportunity to shine a spotlight on the importance of agriculture to our communities, our economy and our country.

In Ontario alone, the agri-food sector contributes over $50 billion to the economy every year – to put that into every day terms, that’s enough to buy 10 billion cups of Tim Hortons coffee, or 250 double-doubles for every Canadian!

The sector also employs 11 per cent of Ontario’s workforce by supporting 871,000 jobs and generates $26.2 billion in exports every year.

That’s why food and farming matter – and why, as farmers, we work hard to get that message across to politicians of all parties, both federally and provincially.

I farm with my family near Binbrook in the City of Hamilton growing crops, raising horses and producing high quality milk and beef, and I’m also the president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA).

It’s already been a busy year with the ongoing turmoil of tariffs and cross-border issues with the United States, but that’s exactly why it’s important to be engaged in this campaign.

This is a pivotal time for Canada and for agriculture, and that’s why the OFA is urging federal election candidates to take clear and decisive stances on critical issues affecting farm businesses, economic competitiveness and food security.

Here are the OFA’s priorities for the April 28 federal election:

Addressing trade issues: Tariffs and other trade barriers threaten Canada’s food system. The agriculture sector needs immediate support to weather this uncertainty, as well as long-term investments that will ensure we can continue to produce food, fuel, fibre and flowers right here at home.

Support for farm business competitiveness: Programs that help farmers manage business risks beyond their control, like tariffs, trade, inflation or weather, are critical. Farmers are asking for a permanent increase to the interest-free portion of the Advanced Payments Program to $350,000 per year and improvements to the AgriStability program that will make it easier for farmers to access support.

Permanently scrapping the carbon tax: There are currently no practical, cost-effective alternatives to the fuels used in agricultural production for essential activities like grain drying and barn heating. Although Canada’s carbon tax rate has been set to zero, farmers are asking the carbon tax to be permanently removed from fuels used in agricultural production.

Preventing railways from downloading costs onto farmers and landowners: Federally regulated rail companies are downloading infrastructure maintenance and safety upgrade costs that have always been their responsibility onto farmers and landowners in two major areas: drainage and private rail crossings. The federal government must prevent railways from downloading these cost-prohibitive expenses onto farmers and landowners.

Ensuring consistent access to labour: Lack of labour across the entire agriculture and food supply chain — including planting, production, quality control, processing, distribution and research — is a critical issue. Farmers need access to reliable, well-functioning labour programs that provide benefit to both employers and workers, and a long-term strategy is needed to address workforce shortages.

To help engage candidates locally and regionally on agricultural issues, we encourage our members to host an online call or forum, invite them on farm tours or organize all-candidate meetings focused specifically on farming and food-related topics.

For reach beyond rural areas, it’s important to demonstrate agriculture’s relevance to urban issues. Many of those 871,000 jobs our sector supports are actually in urban areas far from our farms, for example. Topics like food security, economic resilience, affordability and climate change matter to Ontarians regardless of where they live.

As the leading advocate and strongest voice for Ontario’s farmers, we’re proud of our sector and the work that farmers do producing food, fuel, fibre and flowers all across Ontario – and we will continue to work with all levels of government to help ensure Farms and Food Forever.

Source : OFA

Video: Can Gene Editing Give Seeds a Stronger Start?

Reagan Reed has a way of describing his research that might make a plant breeder pause.

“I’m the sort of person who likes to break things to understand them,” he says.

What he breaks are genes involved in seed germination. Reed, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, is investigating whether changing those genes can help seeds establish healthy plants under a wider range of conditions.

Reed recently attended the National Association for Plant Breeding meeting in College Station, Texas, as an NAPB Borlaug Scholar. His work speaks to a question that matters well beyond a research lab: what does it take for a seed to get a crop off to a strong start?

A seed that germinates quickly, alongside the others planted with it, spends less time vulnerable to stresses before seedlings become established.

“If you’re able to bridge that gap between germination to stand establishment, then that’s going to give you the highest probability of having a solid yield that year,” Reed says. “There’s a bunch that can go wrong after that, but it maximises your yield from the start, at least.”

Reed works in Dr. Imtiyaz Khanday’s lab at UC Davis, where his research focuses on seed quality in tomatoes and potatoes. He brings an unusual academic background to the work: at Skidmore College, he studied both biology and Latin.

Reed believes that combination prepared him for research. Translating an ancient text means studying each word, weighing its possible meanings and using context to reach the best interpretation. There is rarely a way to know with complete certainty what an author intended. Science, he says, requires a similar willingness to work through uncertainty.

“Attention to detail and comfortability working with uncertainty,” is how he sums up what Latin taught him.

In the lab, uncertainty can produce a surprise. Reed describes changing one gene and seeing little effect. Changing a second gene also appears to do little. Put both changes in the same genetic background, though, and the result can be substantial.

“I break this gene, nothing really happens. I break this other gene, nothing really happens. I combine them into the same genetic background, and now there’s a massive effect,” he says.

Those interactions matter as researchers gain the ability to edit multiple genes at once. They also complicate any simple account of how a trait works: improving a seed may depend on understanding what several genes do together.

For Reed, the question is whether that knowledge could help seeds germinate reliably when conditions are difficult. Some of the genes he studies prevent germination under certain conditions. That response may serve a plant well in one setting while limiting its usefulness in agriculture. He wants to learn what happens when those genes are changed, and whether the result improves establishment.

Yet a discovery that works in a lab still has a long way to travel before it reaches a field. Reed argues that agricultural biotechnology faces an economic challenge as well as a scientific one. New tools can create value for farmers, he says, but developing them requires a way to support the work in an industry where margins can be thin.

His fellowship with Flagship Pioneering gave him a view across AI, agriculture-related work and human health research. It also reinforced the importance of bringing people with different expertise into the same conversation—a benefit of gatherings such as the NAPB meeting.

“You need to have a team of people with different backgrounds who are willing to work together and approach the same problem in different perspectives and different ways,” he says.

That thinking connects the different parts of Reed’s path. Latin taught him to examine details without expecting a perfect answer. Gene editing lets him test what individual genes do—and what happens when their effects combine. Working with people beyond his own field helps him ask what those findings could become.

He came to agriculture because of its reach: the possibility that work by a small group of researchers could eventually make a difference on a much larger scale. His immediate focus is smaller and more precise. He wants to understand what helps a seed get through its first days and become a healthy plant.