Nineteen months after having nearly $70 million unexpectedly dumped into its lap, the Western Grains Research Foundation has finally figured out what to do with it.
The financial windfall came from the two national railways, which were penalized for exceeding their rail revenue caps in 2007-08, as related to hopper car maintenance costs.
By law, any excess revenue, plus penalty, is turned over to the WGRF and deposited into its endowment fund.
Some farm and industry groups wanted the money to be reimbursed directly to producers, since it was their money in the first place.
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“At that time, there were lots of questions as to what we should do with all this money and what is the best way to start putting these dollars out there,” said Mike Espeseth, communications manager with WGRF. “This is the answer to those questions.”
The case ended up in the courts and the money – about $67 million – was put into trust until all appeals had been exhausted, which didn’t happen until late last year.
“We couldn’t go ahead with planning because we didn’t know how much we were actually going to get,” said Don Dewar, a member of the WGRF’s board of directors and chair of the endowment fund advisory committee.
Once the court cases wrapped up, the committee began consulting with scientists, farm groups and others.
Prior to the windfall, the WGRF received letters of intent from researchers with project proposals.
The new process will include a request for proposals in which the WGRF will identify specific areas of research it would like to see pursued and then issue an open call for proposals.
The WGRF is also asking for a list of research priorities. More than 40 submissions were received and whittled down to six:
• Breeding tools, including breeding processes and methodology and genomics.
• Post-harvest handling to address quality and market access.
• New crop and new uses for existing crops, such as feed, biofuel and other non-food, industrial uses.
• Pest and weather surveillance, with improved surveillance and monitoring for disease, insects and weeds.
• Fusarium head blight was identified as an issue that requires increased attention, including testing for FHB and DON.
• Agronomy, based on a whole farm approach focusing on production and profitability, fertilizer and fungicide use and seeding rates.
Proposals have been requested for the first three categories this summer. The final three categories require more preliminary investigation.
Each year, WGRF will approve funding for five-year directed research projects, each worth $500,000 annually.
By 2015, a projected $2.5 million will be spent annually on these projects. That same year, the spending on letters of intent will total $825,000. The WGRF distributes research funding in two ways.
It operates refundable checkoffs on wheat and barley delivered to the Canadian Wheat Board for plant breeding.
The endowment fund was created in 1981 to administer $9 million transferred by the federal government from the defunct Prairie Farm Assistance Act.
