Agriculture stakeholders continue to plead for more publicly funded long term research, as the House agriculture committee wraps up its study on innovation and competitiveness in Canadian agriculture.
The latest entreaty came Monday, in testimony from the Canadian Forage and Grasslands Association, who told MPs the decline in research dollars is hurting their industry.
“Dramatic” drops in research funding for forage means its associated research can’t keep up with popular annual crops like canola, corn and soybeans, “putting the livestock sector at risk,” said the group’s chairman, Doug Wary.
Forages are perennial plants (like pastures, baled hay and alfalfa pellets) consumed by livestock. They are the largest cultivated crop in Canada, at 13 million hectares or 39 per cent of cultivated land.
Another 15 million hectares of native or natural pasture land in Canada is dedicated forage.
The forage industry, valued at $5.1 billion, is essential to the Canadian livestock industry. Eighty per cent of Canada’s beef production and 60 per cent of a dairy cow’s diet depend on forages.
The plants also help with soil conservation. Farmers often include them in their crop rotations to improve soil structure, control erosion, and add nitrogen — crucial to plant growth.
“The reality is Canada has experienced a substantial decline in investment and expertise in forage research,” Wary said via teleconference from Calgary.
The biggest drop, he told the committee, came between 1985 and 1998, when funding and scientific capacity slumped by 55 per cent.
That slump continues today, he added. Research capacity is shrinking, “funding has been inadequate and sporadic in nature and goals have been short term.”
“There has been no long-term commitment to building or maintaining existing infrastructure,” Wary, who ranches in Southern Alberta, explained.
Global demand for forage continues to spike, he told the committee, thanks to drought, population issues, and protein and fiber shortages internationally.
Canada already exports forage, to the tune of $288 million, to countries like Japan, the United States and China. Now, Ron Pidskalny, the associations executive director said from Edmonton, there’s growing interest from the Middle East.
Canadian forage acreages, though, are dropping and seeds are in short supply.
“Producers are losing the financial incentive to grow forages and forage seed on productive land as part of a perennial cropping system,” Wary told the committee.
Unlike with annual crops (like canola, corn, wheat, and soybeans) farmers aren’t planting or buying forage seed every year. Instead, ranchers want varieties that last upwards of 15 years, without a farmer needing to re-seed.
The result, Wary said, is a “catch-22″ where plant breeders often struggle to be commercially viable because farmers aren’t buying seed every year.
“I can see that being a challenge,” Conservative MP and Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture Pierre Lemieux acknowledged.
“The business case would be weaker, I would imagine for trade development, given the costs, the process and the resources that are required,” he mused.
The government, Lemieux added, would be open to sector-proposed solutions where industry would work together to “enhance” technology in the forage sector.
“I think you’ve identified something that is very important,” NDP MP Randall Garrison said. “Sometimes the market fails for various reasons, and I think you’re in one of those areas where it’s going to fail to produce the research.”
Forage acreages, though, aren’t the only resource in short supply, Pidskalny replied.
“At the moment, we have maybe one or two researchers in those institutions,” Pidskalny said. “We don’t really see one or two researchers as constituting a core.”
“We really need five or six researchers working together within that core – in conjunction with the private sector – working towards strategic goals that benefit the industry,” he said.