Federal agricultural research is changing.
The most obvious evidence is the news that several older facilities will close, but the restructuring goes deeper.
It is not clear where the changes will take federal farm research, but some farmers and agricultural organizations worry the result will be reduced activity, less crop and practical farm agronomy research and more areas left to privately funded research.
Concerns flared late last year when word leaked of presentations to Agriculture Canada research staff about major restructuring.
The talk was about ending some crop variety development, livestock production and agronomy research in favour of basic “building block” research and value-added bio-product development.
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It appears the discussion was geared to test the waters, said Steve Morgan Jones, director general of sustainable production systems for Agriculture Canada.
“We have heard from a wide variety of industry members that we need to carefully consider the approach to research, and we are,” he said.
Agriculture Canada officials say that some of the descriptions and approaches outlined to staff may have been an oversimplification of the facts as they appear four months later.
Still, farm organizations are wary.
The National Farmers Union fears that the national seed sector review, combined with federal and provincial research cuts, will mean farmers will have to fund research by paying more for new seed types and other agricultural advances developed by private companies.
“We are moving the cost of research from all Canadians onto agriculture,” said NFU president Stewart Wells.
“We all know that grain companies, input companies and foreign markets won’t pay more for our production, so it puts new costs squarely on the shoulders of already overly cost-burdened farmers,” he said.
While Morgan Jones dismissed concerns about wholesale restructuring of federal agriculture research, he said several factors make change unavoidable.
First, the department’s research service must live within the budget provided. Funding has levelled off at $275 million to $325 million a year.
Morgan Jones said operating within that budget has been a challenge and he expects more adjustments will be needed unless new money is found for research in the future.
“Research costs more all the time: new tools; recruiting staff; replacing equipment. Then there is inflation. Even if it only runs at two percent (per year) over five years, we are down 10 percent just trying to do what we were doing,” he said.
“We have commitments from the government for the funding levels we have now. … We’re making changes to make the most of that money.”
There are other problems, too.
Research scientists are getting older. Fifty-five percent will be eligible to retire in the next decade. Research buildings are also getting old: six facilities are deemed to be in poor condition by Agriculture Canada.
The research service must also keep up with a farm community that is changing and struggling with commodity prices that are often inadequate to provide sustainable net farm income.
“This type of change causes uncertainty. We’re hoping it might also bring some stability,” Morgan Jones said.
Another push for change comes from agribusiness and universities that want more partnerships with federal scientists.
The relationship between public and private company research in agriculture generates some of the most passionate opinions among farmers and observers.
Private company research in Canadian agriculture has jumped in the last 10 years as Ottawa increased its funding to joint research and the legal environment changed, giving companies more control over products they develop, such as seed varieties.
George Brinkman, a senior agricultural economist who is newly retired from teaching at the University of Guelph in Ontario, has analyzed domestic research for decades.
“As we move away from public research to private, we transfer more of that benefit from the public, and the farmer, to the private sector,” he said.
“No one can blame the private sector for this. It’s their job to produce profits over the relatively short term or perish. But agriculture isn’t just here for the short term and makes up an important part of our society …. It’s a choice that governments are making.”
Keith Degenhardt, chair of the Western Grains Research Foundation, said public research is important because the need for profit reduces private companies’ interest in some agricultural research areas.
“Agribusiness corporations are not going to be attracted to most cereals,” he said.
“There isn’t enough margin in them to charge much in the way of fees or attach (technology use agreements) to them.”
Don Dewar, former president of Manitoba’s Keystone Agricultural Producers and new WGRF board member, said the fusarium disease problem defines the need for public breeding.
“This is a big deal to Canadian producers, a big deal to our foreign market share and a very small deal to the largest players in the seed industry and private breeders.”
Wells said pesticide producers would rather develop products to treat a problem such as fusarium than overcome it.
“They have a vested interest in selling products. Farmers have vested interests that need to be protected through research in the public interest.”
Many Canadians wonder what value they get from paying their taxes. They might be surprised to learn that tax revenue invested in agricultural research pays itself back many times.
Brinkman’s analysis caused him to conclude that publicly funded agricultural research has delivered one of the highest returns on investment that governments can achieve.
The benefit-to-cost ratio has topped 20:1 in Canada, with the lion’s share of those benefits going straight to farmers, according to Brinkman’s research.
For example, analysis of wheat research, mostly federally funded, between 1962 and 1991 found a return of up to 33 to one on investment. Farmers got almost all of the benefit.
Federal beef cattle production research between 1968 and 1984 produced a 48:1 benefit-to-cost ratio. About 90 percent of the benefit was captured by producers.
“With the high level of return to public agricultural research and the high share of benefits going to producers, continuation of research funding is likely to generate far more income over time than would the same level of funding delivered through transfer payments,” Brinkman concludes in a paper called Strategic Policy Issues for Agricultural Research in Canada.
There is a practical example of how the differing effects of public and private research affected farmers’ crop choices last year when a late spring delayed seeding.
For years, Agriculture Canada has limited its involvement in Brassica napus canola to germplasm enhancement, leaving variety breeding to private companies.
This has met with success, Morgan Jones said.
“In providing traits for disease resistance and quality through enhancing germplasm and then handing it off to the private sector for further development, it has worked very well industry wide.”
Degenhardt said while napus, or Argentine, canola is an example of success, it also created problems.
He said Brassica napus is easier and less costly to breed, allowing quick advances. This concentrated breeding on napus while the faster maturing Brassica rapa, or Polish, canola was all but ignored.
A small rapa breeding program remains at Agriculture Canada in Saskatoon. Research there is producing high-yield, shorter-season canola lines and yellow seeded mustards with canola traits that have high yield and oil concentrations combined with meal qualities better than soybean.
That holds promise, but existing rapa varieties compare poorly to napus varieties with higher yield potential.
“Last year was the kind of year when producers knew they were already too late in seeding Argentine canola, but you risk it when you’re desperate for revenue,” Degenhardt said.
Farmers risked planting longer-maturing Argentine varieties and paid the price when frost hit in mid-August.
“Polish canolas (or mustards) would have saved a lot of farmers last year. But they wouldn’t have made any difference to chemical companies,” he said. “Public breeding can be about making choices available for farmers.”
The biggest change to federal agricultural research in recent history was delivered in the deficit-fighting 1995 budget that also ended the Crow Benefit.
That year, the research budget was cut by nearly $75 million. In following years it was cut more and bottomed out at $215 million in 1997. Funding then recovered and in 2000 was about $325 million, close to where it is today.
Ralph Goodale, who was federal agriculture minister in 1995, said at the time the cuts would be more than compensated though a new program, the Matching Investment Initiatives, or MII. It matches about $32 million annually with other funding sources by as much as a one-to-one ratio.
The provinces did not fill in the research gap left by Ottawa. Also facing budget pressures, the provinces since 1995 on average reduced agriculture research staffs by 43 percent while also cutting applied agrology staff. Since 1995, public sector research has fallen by 37.5 percent.
Brinkman and his colleagues found that public research fell by 82.4 percent in human-related agricultural research, including health and economics. Horticulture research dropped 45.5 percent, field crops 38.5 percent and animal agriculture 20.9 percent, while aquaculture increased 3.6 percent.
“On that basis the MII didn’t live up to its (1995) billing as being able to replace cuts to research,” Brinkman said.
Degenhardt said the Western Grains Research Foundation has worked extensively with the MII.
“The MII hasn’t done what they claimed it would, but it has allowed the feds to keep doing research. Just not all of it is in the public interest.
“In many ways, we have seen great success in cereals since the start of the program 10 years ago, but we would have expected that success if the federal government had been funding it all themselves.”
Some observers say the initiative did help lead to agricultural advances that helped producers increase production, but that production failed to generate increased net farm incomes.
Dewar said private research might produce more bushels, but the real benefits go to companies that develop the new crop varieties and sell more chemicals and fertilizer.
Gerhard Rakow, a senior plant breeder with Agriculture Canada in Saskatoon, said a lack of money over the past 10 years has often tied the hands of talented researchers.
He said in some cases it has left the research division without the staff and infrastructure needed to do traditional agricultural research and made it difficult for many researchers to meet commitments made with MII partners.
He said he looks forward to stability from the current changes, but laments the past decade’s experience.
According to reports filed by Agriculture Canada with the Treasury Board, agricultural research spending for 2005-06 is projected at $330 million, dropping to $274 million in each of the following two years.
The department is closing outdated facilities and shifting the work to other federal facilities or universities.
Indeed, Morgan Jones expects an increase in collaboration particularly between federal and university researchers.
“We recognize that the benefits have to be allocated in the interests of all Canadians. We’ve had the chance to look at the effect of the MII. That said, I think we’ll see a lot of new research partnerships with the universities.”
MII funding models will continue.
Morgan Jones points to the new Western Grain Research Foundation five-year, renewable wheat breeding program contract as an example of the government’s commitment to plant breeding. The contract provides for the continued development of wheat varieties through to release.
“Shifting resources into germplasm enhancement was something that was suggested for wheat and barley … but it has not been adopted and it’s not something we’re going to do now,” he said.
