26 SEEDWORLD.COM/CANADA SEPTEMBER 2026 THERE’S A STRANGE thing about innova tion in plant breeding: by the time you realize you’ve stopped doing enough of it, you may already be too late. A new cereal variety can take seven to 12 years and millions of dollars to develop. That means the genetics going into Canadian soil today are, in a very real sense, the product of decisions some body made a decade ago. And that makes the future of plant breeding a different kind of innovation problem. Cut investment today and fields don’t suddenly go empty tomorrow. Farmers keep planting. Crops keep growing. Grocery stores stay stocked. The consequences arrive later. “We would expect to see lower productivity coming as a result, maybe in five, maybe in 10 years,” says Stuart Smyth, agricultural economist at the University of Saskatchewan. That time lag is at the heart of Season 2 of On the Brink, the cross-country video series about the future of breeding. Canada’s Farming Advantage Came From Somewhere Canada remains a global leader in agricultural productivity. Stuart Smyth, agricultural economist at the University of Saskatchewan, studies total factor productivity — a measure of how much output agriculture produces relative to the inputs going into it. Canada contin ues to perform well internationally. The problem is what happens when you look underneath that number. Today’s performance, Smyth argues, reflects research investments made years ago. Between 1980 and 2010, Canadian agricultural productivity climbed. Between 2010 and 2020, it declined. And when Smyth looks at Canadian agricultural R&D investment relative to major competitors, Canada slips down the rankings. His prescription isn't complicated. “If Canada wants to stay at the top of the total factor productivity, we need to increase our public sector investments, and we really need to figure out how to get more private sector investment,” he says. The important word may be “stay”. Canada isn't trying to invent an agri cultural advantage from scratch. It already has one. The question is whether the country is willing to keep paying for it. On the Farm, the Stakes Look Different Mark Keating of Keating Seed in Manitoba is heading into his 35th crop. When he started farming, his biggest constraint was labour. Today, it’s capital. “The financial risk right now is enor mous, and the reward possibility doesn’t match the risk in most cases,” Keating says. Input costs, equipment, land and the amount of money required to put a crop in the ground have all climbed. The margin for error has narrowed with them. That changes the value of genetics. And Canadian farmers don’t compete only with the farm down the road. “We’re exporters of what we pro WHO WILL BREED THE CROPS CANADA NEEDS NEXT? Markets, governments, farmers and universities have all helped build Canada’s crop genetics. Now the economics of that model are changing, and the future of plant breeding may depend on finding a new way forward. It’s what we explore in Season 2 of On the Brink. By Christian Leader, Seed World Contributor duce,” Keating says. That means Canadian farms are com peting with producers around the world, and those producers aren’t standing still. Plant breeding becomes part of the infra structure required to stay in that race. There’s a 34-to-1 Opportunity Hiding in a Bag of Seed For Manitoba seed grower Jake Ayre, the case becomes very tangible. Ayre farms near Minto, Man., and sees new genetics from two perspectives: as a farmer decid ing what to plant and as a seed grower deciding which varieties are worth multiplying. “Canadian bred varieties give me the confidence to try something new,” he says. “It has the winter hardiness. It’s been bred for these conditions. I can try and test and put it to work.” Then there’s the number Ayre keeps coming back to: 34 to 1. That’s the return he cites for public investment in plant breeding — $34 in benefits for every dollar invested. “There’s nowhere else in any sector, not just agriculture, where you can see that sort of return on investment,” he says.
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