Editorial: Greater collaboration is necessary

As a new year begins, it’s a time to reflect on what happened the previous year, and set goals for the coming year.

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For some, that means setting personal goals like losing weight, eating healthier, exercising more, spending more time with family, or planning some travel, for example.

For farmers and those working in the agriculture sector, it’s a time to review things like business plans and financials, assess what went right during the growing season, and what can be done to improve things for the coming year.

For me and for my role as editor, I try to reflect on the big picture ideas and themes that I have noticed, and what they could mean for the agriculture sector moving forward.

In 2023, sustainability was the dominant theme for nearly every conference, meeting and think-tank white paper released. This wasn’t a surprise and the focus on sustainability isn’t going away any time soon, and I’m sure it will still be a dominant force in the sector this year as well.

But a new buzzword started to catch my attention in the latter half of 2023: collaboration.

More specifically, the need for greater collaboration within the agriculture sector.

Defined as a process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal, the word collaboration certainly isn’t a new term in the farming world.

Families have collaboratively worked together on farms for centuries and employed labour to help them be productive. Numerous farm and agriculture organizations, as well as rural community groups, churches and neighbours have also come together for decades, even centuries, to ensure crops are harvested and livestock tended.

The type of collaboration I heard a lot about last year is the need for more stakeholders to be involved in directing the future of agriculture research, funding, and policy planning.

And these stakeholders are not just the usual suspects, but should include entities and individuals that have normally remained outside of the agricultural realm.

The reason for this is that Canada is not keeping up with innovation in the sector, and policy development is not keeping up with what farmers need, and consumers and importers want.

I’ll use an event I attended last fall called the Toronto Global Forum. It was a three-day event to discuss what countries need to do in order to adapt and encourage innovation and resilience in the current economic climate.

It featured an impressive line-up of global experts and attendees from many different sectors. Even more impressive was that two afternoon sessions were devoted to discussing agriculture, and Canadian companies (and a farmer) were panelists.

It’s important for me to note that the theme of the agriculture sessions focused on sustainability, but instead of concentrating solely on soil and climate as I expected, the focus was on innovation.

Panelist Dave Smardon, chief executive officer of Bioenterprise Canada, told attendees that “we’re not going to recognize agriculture in 20 years.” What he meant by that is that farming will be high-tech (even more than it is already) and methods will change to meet sustainability and productivity goals.

He noted that farmers and food processors have been stuck within a high volume, low margin game, due in part to the fact Canada is a net ag exporter, but also because Canada is “abysmal” at bringing innovations to market. Although Canada has “immense” potential to grow the agriculture sector and be a world leader, he said the country’s lack of support for research funding and focus on innovation is stagnating the sector.

Panelist Alison Sunstrum, a venture capitalist and chief executive officer of CNSRV-X, made the point that Canada can start adapting innovations right now using currently available bioengineering tools such as gene editing. “It’s faster than evolution,” she said, when explaining that we have the technology to produce crops and animals that meet sustainability goals and maintain productivity.

She’s absolutely right, but as several researchers told Farmtario contributor Matt McIntosh on gene editing, bioengineering presents numerous regulatory challenges which further decreases the chance of public funding dollars, at least for the near future.

Innovations also need to make sense on the farm. As panelist Peggy Brekveld, former president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture said farmers know they have a role to play in a sustainable future for agriculture, and they’re in the game – but new innovations have to make sense.

But that doesn’t mean the sector shouldn’t keep driving innovation forward. Those preaching for more “collaboration” are often not from the agriculture sector, but energy, venture capital, and economic development, just to name a few.

Perhaps collaborating with some new faces can make Canada the agriculture powerhouse it can be.