28 GERMINATION.CA MARCH 2018 SUPPORTED BY: ENDORSED BY: DOWNLOADTHEWHOLE CONVERSATION! View our latest Retail Roundtable webinar on this very topic at germination.ca/technological- disruption/. outlet or a seed grower. Under this new virtual seed company model, the grower could contact this entity and be matched up with a seed provider. It’s based on electronic exchanges and a different way of sourcing seed than what has traditionally been seen. Lorne Hadley: Under the UPOV 91 convention, our industry has extended the opportunity for plant breeders to collect royalties owed to them. What’s disruptive about this is that in the past, innovators (plant breeders) had to get their return from the sale of seed. Now, we can create new models of royalty collection that can be used at various parts. You can create a model that allows you to collect a payment on the use of farm saved seed; a model that allows you to do an acreage payment; a model that collects on production. What can add to the disruption is that with any of these flexible options of legitimate production, you can use verification systems including imaging and drone technology to provide efficient meth- ods of verification and confirmation of what is owed to the breeder. Doug Miller: It’s important to note that not all innovations have to be disruptive to impact your business. Some examples are robotic process automation (using computer bots to do routine tasks, which we rely on a lot at CSGA); private blockchains (data management systems that offer huge opportunity for traceability and transparency in the supply chain); and chatbots (which are used a lot to handle routine business customer support transactions). Germination: Blockchain is being talked about a lot more in the seed sector. What potential does it have for us? Doug Miller: We could use it to trace assets throughout the value chain. There’s high potential for value creation mechanisms to be embed- ded with smart contracts. Privacy is top-of-mind for everyone. You’re creating a business ecosystem where players are invited into the block- chain; it’s encrypted and not all data is shared with all participants in the blockchain. As other industries look at blockchains, there are going to be opportunities to link up seed block- chains with others to facilitate infor- mation sharing, with the purpose of traceability and transparency. Germination: What mechanisms are in place to protect seed from major disruption? Erin Armstrong: I’ve been involved for the past two years with what we call value creation, looking at developing a model for comprehen- sive royalty collection for cereals to ensure increased investment in the development of value-added cereal varieties for Canada. As innova- tive products are produced, not all innovations will make it to market. If value is not perceived for a par- ticular innovation, it simply won’t be adopted. There needs to be an effec- tive mechanism for that innovative product to reach market and to be adopted. Someone told me, “I don’t want to be able to produce more wheat; I want to produce a higher value wheat.” How do we ensure the investment continues so we can con- tinue to develop new varieties for the benefit of producers and customers of the products produced? Lorne Hadley: UPOV 91 gives us a new suite of tools, and it’s a matter of helping everyone understand their responsibilities. Under UPOV 91, the things that are done by farmers and processors in preparing the physical seed/grain — the hardware — are now controlled by the owner of the variety, who is essentially like a software engineer. We have a provi- sion under UPOV 91 that allows us to go after illegitimate use of harvested material, for example. If someone acquires seed illegally and it ends up in the grain market, we can actu- ally act in the value chain against everyone involved — be they a seed buyer, conditioners, grain processors and so on. Doug Miller: It’s important to note that when it comes to disruption, the opportunity it offers outweighs the concerns that inevitably arise. Disruption is a good thing — we just have to be ready for it. Erin Armstrong: Yes. Rather than looking at disruption as something to worry about and protect ourselves from, we need to look at it as some- thing to expect, embrace and contrib- ute to.