18 GERMINATION.CA JANUARY 2018 THE KEY TO A successful 21st century Canadian seed industry is a modern- ized seed system that effectively attracts investment, fosters innovation, and delivers new and tailored seed traits to customers efficiently. That’s according to the new green paper issued by the Seed Synergy Collaboration Project Team, which is made up of the executive directors of our industry six associations and is working to develop a next-genera- tion seed system for the country via the Seed Synergy project. First announced in 2016 and reported on extensively in Germination over the past number of months, the Seed Synergy project is being undertaken by all six associations that make up the seed industry — Canadian Seed Institute, CropLife Canada, Canadian Seed Growers’ Association, Canadian Seed Trade Association, Commercial Seed Analysts Association of Canada, and the Canadian Plant Technology Agency. The Seed Synergy project kicked into full gear after a series of annual meetings in 2017, at which the boards of all six associations gathered to discuss the project and how to move forward. Seed Synergy “represents an opportunity for us to rethink the seed system, and how we organize ourselves. The potential for partnership is great, as there are many areas where the various Synergy organiza- tions might assist one another. The primary risk in this area is not acting: without action, we might not adapt to changing circumstances and find ourselves trying to update the seed system too far down the road.” That quote comes from the 2015/16 annual report of the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association. The Seed Synergy project will culminate in a series of recommendations that will be provided to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) for the spring of 2018, a tentative date set by the CFIA in March of last year when it announced that it’s opening up Canada’s Seeds Regulations for review in order to “reduce overlap and redundancy, increase responsiveness to industry changes, address gaps, weaknesses and inconsistencies, and provide clarity and flexibility to affected regulated parties for seeds imported, conditioned, stored, tested, labeled, exported and sold in Canada.” The green paper represents the current state of Seed Synergy thinking as of Fall 2017 (as stated in the paper itself), and will provide a reference point for engagement activities over the coming months. Engagement activities will help the Seed Synergy project team to refine and finalize its policy proposals for the Canadian seed system, and the resulting white paper may be quite different from this document, the team notes. We’ll cover the highlights of the green paper in this print edition of Germination, and in March we will discuss with industry stakeholders what the implications are for the project and the industry in general. SHOULDTHESEEDSECTOR STARTFROMSCRATCH? To read the full green paper, visit the brand new Seed Synergy website at seedsynergy. net We break down the first major document released by the Seed Synergy Collaboration Project working team, which proposes to rebuild Canada’s seed sector from the ground up. Marc Zienkiewicz FIRST LOOK: SEED SYNERGY GREEN PAPER