b'A NEW TOOL HELPING YOU IN THE REALM OF RETAIL SEED SALES.BUILDING TOMORROWS SEED INDUSTRY TODAYHow do we build a single national seed organization? Some experts provide key insights.Marc ZienkiewiczTodd, theres been a lot of talk about Seedindustry-led and government-enabled. We Synergy these past few years. Can you give uscheck in with Agriculture and Agri-Food a quick snapshot of what is happening here? Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Its important to think of Seed Synergy as aAgency at each step to ensure they are on process rather than a thing. One of its majorthe same page. They have given us the Todd Hyra goals is a new national seed organizationthumbs-up to keep moving forward and Canadian Seed Tradethat will amalgamate five of the six cur- encourage us to continue to flesh out the Association Rep rent players in the industrythe Canadiannew organization.Seed Synergy OversightSeed Growers Association, Canadian Seed Committee Trade Association, Canadian Seed Institute,What will the budgetary requirements of this As western business managerCommercial Seed Analysts Association ofnew organization look like?for SeCan, Todd develops newCanada and Canadian Plant TechnologyWere working through that nowwhat business opportunities forAgency. The goal is a better, more efficientmembership structure might look like, SeCan members and industrysystem to serve the entire industry costs, that sort of thing. The ultimate goal partners. He is also a past- whether you are large or small, a grower,is to make sure we add value, not costs.president of the Canadian Seedprocessor, developer and ultimately our farm Trade Association. customers and end users. We need to buildHow will provincial seed growers fit into this something to position us for the future. new organization?Well be fleshing out that structure over Why are we doing this now? the next few months, but theres great sup-Theres a regulatory opportunity that allowsport for having provincial outreach within us to change how we do things. When wethe new organization. Having that two-look at the government regulatory reviewway information flow strengthens the new happening in 2020 and 2021, we want toentity. Theres strong support for maintain-ensure we have a system in place to adapting a provincial-type system to ensure to what government wants to do. In termsinvolvement by grassroots members.of what government can provide to indus-try, were not going to be provided withWill the new organization have a single, cen-any more. As we look at those resourcestral office location?and how we govern ourselves, its crucialThe goal is to have one entity. In terms of to use those resources effectively and beoffices, its too early to tell what that will proactive in filling those gaps so we can belook like. That will be sorted out within proactive and not reactive. the next year. The important thing is to build a governance structure that works. What has the governments response Staffing requirements will follow.been so far?From the beginning, we described this as 22GERMINATION.CA NOVEMBER 2019'