It is upsetting because it impacts affected staff and their families, our local community, Prairie agriculture as a whole and the broad Canadian public who rely on a productive, sustainable and prosperous agriculture.

Agriculture Canada’s Seed Increase Unit (SIU) located on the farm is the largest single source of breeder seed for the Canadian pedigreed seed system.

Its national mandate is to produce and distribute breeder seed of varieties developed by Agriculture Canada scientists.

Currently the SIU produces and distributes more than 300 varieties of more than 30 cereal, oilseed, pulse, forage and special crops. These varieties represent a significant portion of crop production in Canada, a multibillion-dollar industry.

The specialized land, staff, equipment and facilities on the Indian Head Research Farm are ideal for this operation and would be difficult to replace or relocate.

The rich Class 1 soil at Indian Head provides an excellent site for testing new crop varieties.

Variety testing and plant breeding activities are a significant activity on the research farm, with technical staff of the Arid Prairie Wheat Breeding Program managing tens of thousands of small plots of spring wheat and other cereals each year.

The spring wheat varieties developed by this program are planted on more than half of all spring wheat acres in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. How’s that for success?

Crop management and agronomy have been studied at Indian Head since the farm’s inception in 1887.

The success of these efforts is evidenced by the productivity of diverse crops grown in this region using practices developed and perfected here.

The agronomists are highly sought after at workshops and field days. The themes of their research reflect issues of current and anticipated concern.

The Long-Term Rotation study managed by the agronomy program has run for nearly 70 years. It is a one-of-a-kind benchmark study detailing the impacts of crop rotations and fertilizer use. Its termination would be a loss to science.

The role of trees in the settlement of the Prairies was shown as early as 1890. As a result, the Tree Farm (Shelterbelt Centre) was opened on a nearby site.

Although tree propagation and distribution were stopped with the closure of the Shelterbelt Centre, agro-environmental research continued with the transfer of staff to the research farm.

This research studies the importance of perennial species in creating environmental benefits and economic returns on marginal land.

It has proven the benefit of maintaining naturalized “pollinator strips” around farmland to support insect populations. This improves pollination and increases crop yield.

The Indian Head Agricultural Research Foundation (IHARF) is an invaluable partner for the farm.

What began as management of non-plot fields grew to include diverse partnerships, field days attracting hundreds and the hiring of additional staff.

IHARF is a model of successful co-operative applied research. Its impacts are certainly of significant economic benefit.

Aside from their meaningful work at the Indian Head Research Farm, most staff and their families contribute to the community’s vibrancy in so many ways. Their departure would create a void in public life.

A line from a song says that “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

The Indian Head Research Farm is still here. It is an invaluable asset to our community, our province and our country. It deserves your support. Please add your voice to those resisting the closure.

David Gehl is a retired officer-in-charge and head of the seed Increase unit at the Agriculture Canada Indian Head Research Farm.

These publications have a long history of providing objective, science-based information.

The seed guides also present information regarding the varieties’ intellectual property status. While often overlooked when choosing a new variety, this information should be considered — especially now that some varieties are being sold with a Variety Use Agreement.

The VUA is a pilot project of Seeds Canada in which some companies make specific new varieties available only under a contract requiring the farmer to pay the company a fee every time they use the variety for farm-saved seed.

Since the government amended Canada’s Plant Breeders Rights (PBR) Act on Feb. 27, 2015, new varieties have been released under the UPOV 91 PBR framework.

UPOV 91 gives plant breeders sweeping rights over seed, but includes the farmers’ privilege entitling farmers to reproduce, condition, and store varieties for use as seed on their own farms without further royalty payment.

Under UPOV 91, royalties to the PBR holder can be collected only once per sale.

During 2019 consultations, farmers rejected the idea of eliminating farmers’ privilege and paying end-point royalties on their crops or to have trailing contracts that would require them to pay a royalty on their farm-saved seed.

Despite this rejection, Seeds Canada is now test driving a voluntary trailing contract system with its VUA project.

Farmers who participate sign a contract in which they agree to pay the company whenever they use farm-saved seed of the variety. The VUA allows the seed company to collect revenue from these farmers every year after their initial purchase of the variety.

When Parliament was debating the UPOV 91 PBR Act amendments, farmers fought hard to protect the ability to freely use farm-saved seed.

Yet when comparing the intellectual property status of cereal listings in the current seed guide with previous years, it shows a trend toward more royalty-generating varieties.

In 2015, the Saskatchewan Seed Guide listed 193 cereal crop varieties: 21 percent (41) with no PBR and 79 percent (152) with UPOV 78. None had restrictions on producers’ ability to save and plant the seed on their farms.

In the 2022 guide, 15.2 percent (30 varieties) have no PBR, 20.8 percent (41) have UPOV 78, and 61.4 percent (121) have UPOV 91— and five (2.5 percent) are listed as having a Variety Use Agreement, which can only be accessed by farmers who sign a contract agreeing to pay the company an annual fee to use their farm-saved seed to sow future crops.

This restriction on the use of farm-saved seed appears to be an attempt to use commercial contracts to supersede the farmers’ privilege provisions under UPOV 91.

This VUA pilot project may also be intended to normalize the concept of paying companies for farm-saved seed to make it easier for Seeds Canada to convince the federal government to introduce regulatory changes that would make royalty payments on farm-saved seed mandatory on all UPOV 91 varieties.

Even without regulatory change, if VUAs are applied when new varieties are released, there will be a massive transfer of wealth from farmers to seed companies.

Farmers have a choice. It’s time for Canadian farmers to reject the VUA varieties.

David Gehl represents the National Farmers Union on the CFIA’s Variety Registration Task Team.

Cathy Holtslander is NFU’s director of research and policy.

However, the introduction of this new class may actually undermine CWRS wheat by facilitating the introduction of higher yielding, lower protein American hard red spring varieties.

Prairie wheat producers and others in the Canadian grain industry should give this development careful consideration. Will western grain farmers actually benefit from introducing a new class of lower quality milling wheat?

CWRS wheat has long enjoyed a well-earned reputation in the world marketplace as a premium quality milling wheat. It is in steady demand, almost always at a premium price, because of its versatility and ability to improve end-use quality in blends with lower quality wheat.

The integrity of Canadian wheat classes is protected by a grading system administered by the grain commission and a variety registration system which has, until recently, restricted commercial production of milling wheat varieties with lower quality outside the parameters of prescribed market classes.

The dissolution of the Canadian Wheat Board single desk, an oversupply from the bumper crop of 2013 and several years of adverse growing conditions that resulted in quality challenges have resulted in lower prices paid to prairie wheat producers.

In turn, end-use buyers have complained of erratic quality and in some cases have turned to alternative suppliers.

The introduction of a new class of milling wheat has the potential to further disrupt the Canadian wheat production and marketing system, which has well served the interests of producers and end users for decades.

Recent privatization of the grain commission’s system of grading export shipments and a lack of reserve capacity in the Canadian grain handling and transportation system have added to the problems.

Farmers are experiencing the freedom to market their CWRS wheat for lower returns than under the CWB single desk. Their resultant anger has been deliberately misdirected at the railways, a traditional scapegoat. Meanwhile, grain company profits are at record levels.

No one can blame prairie producers for their anger. They are producing a premium product and often earning a discounted price. Under these conditions, the opportunity to produce higher yielding American HRS varieties will be attractive to many in the short term.

Some of the outcomes are predictable:

• The area planted to American HRS varieties on the Canadian Prairies will grow dramatically as long as higher quality CWRS varieties do not earn offsetting price premiums for growers.
• Increased volumes of lower quality spring wheat because of wide-scale production of American HRS varieties will add to reserve capacity problems in the Canadian grain handling and transportation system.
• Canadian seed companies with distribution rights for American HRS varieties will enjoy high sales and profits for several years.
• A profusion of new spring wheat varieties will place pressure on the Canadian variety registration and provincial variety testing systems.
• Canadian public sector wheat breeding programs will be at a significant disadvantage to American public sector and transnational private sector breeding programs, which currently focus on developing higher yielding American HRS wheat.

The introduction of a new marketing class of spring wheat is the next logical step if the ultimate objective is to dismantle the Canadian wheat system and replace it with a North American system dominated by transnational grain and crop life companies.

By doing so, Western Canada will sacrifice its international market niche supplying the highest quality milling wheat. In return, it will compete with American and other wheat growing regions that are much closer to port, have lower land and labour costs and better climates and whose ports are thousands of kilometres closer to end-use customers.

David Gehl is a former head of Agriculture Canada’s Seed Increase Unit.