Date posted: March 15, 2006

Fuelling innovation

How can Canada build a research strategy to remain competitive in agriculture? A panel discussion of leading crop industry players tackled the big issues.

Ski-touring buses, picturesque mountain scenery and alpine wildlife are not normally associated with crop production in Western Canada. But that was the case in 2006 as the PRRCG held its meeting in Banff, Alta.

The setting proved prophetic, as key crop development players took a lofty view of the big issues facing crop research and development in Western Canada, as part of a keynote panel discussion on "Fuelling Innovation - How to Build a Canadian Agricultural Research Strategy to Remain Competitive in a Global Environment."

Participants in the seven-member panel included:

• Dr. Keith Degenhardt, producer and Chair of Western Grains Research Foundation (WGRF)
• Gordon Cresswell, Tisdale, Sask., producer and director of Saskatchewan Flax Development Commission (SFDC)
• Don Macyk, producer and Chair of the Alberta Producer Marketing Council (APMC)
• Kelvin Rothenber, producer and a member of Manitoba Pulse Growers Association (MPGA)
• Dr. Brian Rossnagel, plant breeder University of Saskatchewan (U of S)
• Dorothy Murrell, Chair of the Canadian Seed Trade Association (CSTA)
• Garth Hodges, Global Canola Manager with Bayer CropScience

The panel was moderated by Bill Greuel, of Saskatchewan Agriculture, Food and Rural Revitalization.

Below is a small collection of highlights from the discussion, which centred around four key topic areas.

Research priorities

Cresswell (SFDC): Some of the priorities we set out tend to become crisis management priorities. We need to move beyond that. On the flax side, we are trying to accomplish that, while at the same time striving to move away from some of the traditional things and more into the functional food side and health side.

Murrell (CSTA): The private sector does goes through a continual analysis of research priority setting. We can be quite reactive in the short term. For example, in Fusarium in canola, it took one to two years, and now virtually all of the germplasm that's being released is resistant or carries some resistance. We can also be proactive in thinking of the long-term. Again as an example in canola, our genetic modifications to provide herbicide tolerance and to enhance the oil quality have been very visionary on the part of the private sector players. And of course high-yielding hybrids - we believe these do actually provide value to producers.

What the private sector can do to be involved in broader priority setting? We believe perhaps we can be very focused on our work and may need to be more proactive and communicative with the larger industry and the value chain. Particularly with our primary customers, the farmers.

Degenhardt (WGRF): Western Grains Research Foundation is a funding organization and 90 percent of our money is spent strictly on funding research.

We're not interested in short-term funding. We're interested in long-term funding, because that's what research requires and that's what producers are interested in - the long-term. We discuss long-term needs and issues all the time as part of our planning process, and we do that with our research partners. We try to think of where we're going to be in five years and 10 years, both with our budgets and in terms of the research targets we're aiming for.

It's interesting that during some of the hardest times over the last five years we've seen check-offs increase and producers involvement with the check-offs increase, not decrease. Producers have stepped up to the plate, because they know they need research.

Funding

Hodges (Bayer CropScience): Our real challenge in the future is going to be some of our competitors, in Eastern Europe and further east into China. When we're thinking of research, we're thinking where do we start today that's going to get us where we want to be in 10 to 15 years time. So we need to visualize what we think the world will look like then, and not try to see it through the eyes of what the commodity price is like today.

There shouldn't be an internal competition for funding, private sector vs. the public sector. Rather, the focus should be on how can we together go out and try to meet some of these larger challenges out there, when we have larger governments and larger private and public sectors funding research than we have in Canada. There's not enough funding [in Canada], so I think foreign investment is also something we should encourage.

Degenhardt (WGRF): The question has been asked, should a portion of income support payments also be directed into administered research funds? Short, sweet - no. Would you take money from patient care in order to find a cure for the disease?

If we are looking at going forward with the new APF and looking at new ways to improve support research and innovation, we need new dollars. And that needs to be impressed upon both provincial and federal governments.

Rothenber (MPGA): We need to establish a vision on where research needs to go, come up with a plan and see how it can be implemented. We feel that the federal government needs to take the lead role as far as bringing all the levels together, but it needs to be a joint effort to organize this and to run it.

Rossnagel, (U of S). I had the opportunity to spend a fair bit of time in Australia right from the beginning of the Grains Research and Development Corporation program. The huge difference there is somehow, someone convinced producers in Australia that this was an investment.

Here in Canada, we really need to get people to understand that this is not a tax, this is an investment. By the same token, at a political level, we can't be looking on agriculture as a basketcase - an area we have to cough up money when there's a problem as opposed to an area where we can invest money so it becomes as self-sustaining as possible.

Murrell (CSTA): It's really quite clear in the broad picture that Canada does have to move forward in allocating resources to ag research. The statistics indicate that we are at the low end of the total investments in R&D, and yet agriculture provides 8 percent of our gross domestic product - there is an imbalance and we need to address it. Both public and private sector need to play a role here.

Ownership and benefits

Degenhardt (WGRF): As an organization, we've invested over $40 million over 10 years, and the way we view it is, if you're funding a part of it, you should own a part of it. As part of our agreements with research institutions, a portion of royalties from the varieties we've helped support come back to WGRF.

Macyk (APMC): Ownership is a complicated area, but clearly we need to start talking about it. We need to grow support for research and development based on benefits and a high rate of return. And the fact is, if you don't own the technology, you're not going to benefit.

Cresswell (SFDC): At the end of the day, the whole value chain reaps benefits off of research. From a farmers perspective, I'd like to see other private industry be a contributer along the way in some of the same ways that we are as producers.

Rossnagel (U of S): There are a plethora of ownership issues that invade universities, and every institution has different responses. As universities, we are supposed to be independent and support the public good, and I hope we can maintain that. But I think we stepped off a precipice when we started collecting royalties - now royalties have become something we depend on. The public system needs support to be able to do innovative research, and not just try to solve problems.

Strategies for innovation

Macyk (APMC): Priorities change. They change every year. We need a strategic management process that allows those priorities to change and be driven by the people who both pay for it and benefit from it.

In Alberta, we're going through a transformation, and part of that transformation is that research and development has become a much more inclusive process in the full continuum of the value chain. Some of the things we already see coming out of that are that there will be a process which incorporates farmers and industry and even those in the marketplace in directing and investing in research and development.

Hodges (Bayer CropScience): I believe we're having to compete with the investment moving east, in central and eastern Europe, Russia - these are the countries that are going to compete directly with Canadian agriculture. I think the question is, can we move Canadian agriculture to a higher value, more specialized area?

There are certain elements here where one needs to understand what the motivation is of the different parties - what the different parties can actually contribute.

In terms of roles, there's an incredible amount of credibility in the public sector. When anyone thinks of health benefits, funding that research in a credible organization, and then allowing the private sector to make investments in actually developing some of those products. If one looks at the pharmaceuticals world, this is what's happening.

Murrell (CSTA): Research and development is too important for us to lose ground, especially in genetics. Let's multiply the investment by 10. We need a commitment to attract future scientists, and a strategic management process in the area of renewal. Whatever the pillars are of a new Canadian agricultural research strategy, they need to foster greater R&D investment.

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