34 SEEDWORLD.COM/CANADA SEPTEMBER 2026 THE SEED INDUSTRY has become remark ably good at solving individual problems. When protecting the durability of midge tolerant wheat became a priority, the industry developed a stewardship agreement. As new intellectual property models emerged, the Variety Use Agreement (VUA) provided a way to support continued investment in plant breeding. Certified-only agreements, farm-saved seed royalty discussions and other compliance initiatives have followed, each created to address a specific need. Individually, these programs work. Collectively, they’ve created something few people intentionally designed: a growing collection of digital platforms that often ask retailers, seed growers and farmers to enter much of the same infor mation, just in slightly different ways. Today, a retailer may complete one process for the VUA, another for the Midge Tolerant Wheat Stewardship Agreement, and still others for additional contracts or compliance programs. Each platform has its own interface, its own login and its own workflow. None are particularly difficult on their own, but together they create an administrative burden that consumes time, increases the risk of errors and pulls attention away from customers. That growing complexity was the focus of our recent Retail Strategy webinar. Rather than discussing another stewardship program or another agree ment, the panel explored a different idea: what if the seed industry built a single, RETAIL STRATEGY THE NEXT EVOLUTION IN SEED RETAIL ISN’T ANOTHER AGREEMENT — IT’S ONE PLACE TO MANAGE THEM Canada’s seed industry has spent two decades building stewardship agreements, variety use agreements and royalty programs to support innovation. Now it’s asking a different question: what if managing them all became as seamless as using a single trusted platform? By Marc Zienkiewicz trusted transaction platform where retail ers and farmers could manage steward ship agreements, variety use agreements, royalties and future compliance pro grams in one place? An Administrative Problem Built One Solution at a Time One reason today’s administrative landscape feels fragmented is because it wasn’t designed all at once, notes SeCan’s western business manager, Todd Hyra. He points to the Midge Tolerant Wheat Stewardship Agreement, intro duced roughly 16 years ago, as one of the industry’s earliest examples. “It was paper, and so everybody thought during those days paper wasn’t so bad. Fax in your form, easy. But when you have thousands of forms being faxed in, and then you start adding in other platforms that require some administra tion, the logical step was to go to digital platforms.” Each program naturally developed software that suited its own needs. “The frustration for retailers and seed growers is real,” Hyra says. “They have to go to multiple places multiple times. They’re all similar but slightly different. Even think of password management for five, 10 or 12 different locations. It’s more awkward than it has to be, really.” That awkwardness may sound minor, but multiplied across thousands of retail ers and tens of thousands of transactions, it represents a significant investment of time. The issue isn’t that the programs themselves are flawed. It’s that they don’t talk to one another. Todd Hyra of SeCan says today’s administrative landscape feels fragmented because it wasn’t designed all at once. Terry Griffin of Kansas State University says digital transformation should never come at the expense of retailer-customer relationships.
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