NOVEMBER 2026 SEEDWORLD.COM/CANADA 17 tives met elected officials and attended Question Period on Parliament Hill, giving participants a closer look at how agricultural issues move — or fail to move — through government. Nadalin was OSGA vice-president at the time. “That was kind of our first foray into having members of Parliament involved, trying to have that gala and starting to build relationships,” he says. Roots in Canada’s Original Seed Movement According to OSGA’s 2026 annual meet ing report, Ontario had 647 pedigreed seed growers in 2025 producing 157,390 acres of seed crops. OSGA’s SeedOntario guide, produced in partnership with Seed World Group, connects that work directly with com mercial farmers. The guide combines variety performance information with a directory of seed growers, helping farm ers connect test results with a local source of certified seed. The immediate issue consuming much of the association’s attention, how ever, is public research. Ontario growers may appear geographically removed from the announced closure of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research farms at Indian Head and Scott, Sask. Acres cau tions against viewing those facilities as strictly western Canadian assets. Indian Head performs functions that support the national variety-development system, including work involving breeder seed. A grower multiplying a new variety in Ontario may not realize that the earli est seed generations passed through a facility thousands of kilometres away. Rather than waiting for another clo sure announcement, OSGA is beginning conversations with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness, Grain Farmers of Ontario and members of the province’s plant breeding com munity. Ontario has considerable plant breeding capacity to protect. University of Guelph programs have delivered important soybean, dry bean and wheat varieties to farmers. Public-private collaboration has been central to that success. University breeders work with provincial research infrastructure, com modity organizations, seed companies and seed growers to test, multiply and commercialize new material. The university’s soybean breeding program, for example, has produced dozens of varieties adapted to Ontario and other Canadian growing regions. Its dry bean program has developed varieties combining yield, quality and disease resistance. The Ontario Crops Research Centre network supplies field environments where experimental material can be evaluated across the province’s varied soils and climates. AAFC’s Harrow Research and Development Centre has also contributed to dry bean breeding and disease resist ance, work that remains important to a crop that gives Ontario farmers another rotation and marketing option. AAFC Ottawa has also been a huge help in developing corn inbred lines and successful oat, barley, wheat and soybean varieties. The goal is not to preserve every program exactly as it exists today. It is to identify the functions Ontario agriculture cannot afford to lose and ensure government understands the time required to rebuild them once people, plots or germplasm collections disappear. One Table, Different Perspectives Nadalin’s presidency brings the pub licprivate relationship inside the associa tion itself. OSGA’s current bylaws provide for six grower directors and three industry directors. That composition distinguishes it from many other provincial seed grower boards, where leadership is drawn almost entirely from pedigreed seed producers. The model gives Ontario growers direct contact with people working in seed development, regulation and com mercialization. For Nadalin, weakening public research would not create an auto matic opportunity for private companies to take its place. The two sectors often perform different but complementary jobs. Public programs may work on crops, traits or agronomic questions for which a private return is uncertain or many years away. Private companies bring invest ment, technology, market knowledge and commercialization capacity. Seed growers connect both sides to the farm. That is why OSGA’s advocacy is not built around choosing public research over private investment, or vice versa. It is about maintaining a system in which each can contribute. “Everybody, from the board to industry, is watching this very closely,” Nadalin says. OSGA President Phil Nadalin with his family at CSGA’s meeting in Victoria, B.C. in 2025. OSGA Executive Director Colleen Acres.
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