The pulse funding will be spent on marketing benefits of the crop, eliminating trade barriers and transferring knowledge
Federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz kept busy making Growing Forward 2 funding announcements at CropSphere 2015.
On Jan. 13, he doled out $3.3 million to Pulse Canada and other groups for market development initiatives. The announcement included $1.3 million to develop new tools for measuring the sustainability performance of Canadian grain, oilseed and pulse crops.
Gordon Bacon, chief executive officer of Pulse Canada, said it is an example of farm groups working together toward a common goal.
“Farmers have said that they don’t want to pay multiple organizations to focus on the same issues,” he said in a news release.
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There was $870,261 for marketing the nutritional value, health benefits and sustainability of Canadian pulses, $897,311 for eliminating trade barriers and $270,000 to transfer knowledge to the food processing and ingredients sector.
“We are pleased to accelerate the commercialization of value-added research and technology in the sector and to give producers the tools they need to better respond to emerging non-tariff barriers in foreign markets,” said Ritz in a news release.
The following day, he announced $9.5 million for the canola industry to spend on market development and market access efforts over the next five years, which is slightly less than what was provided the previous five years.
The funding is being matched by the canola industry and lasts through March 2018.
Patti Miller, president of the Canola Council of Canada, said the money will help the industry achieve its goal of producing and selling 26 million tonnes of canola by 2025.
“We can move more quickly. We can do more in markets. We can dig deeper in those second wave markets. So it’s really useful,” she said in an interview at CropSphere.
Miller said canola oil accounts for only five percent of the global vegetable oil market.
“So it’s really important for us to get the message to consumers about what our health benefits are, how versatile the product is and differentiating ourselves from our competitors,” she said.
Sixty percent of the funding will be spent on market development activities, with the remainder devoted to market access initiatives such as working with the federal government to develop a position for the South Korea free trade agreement, continuing to work on access issues in China and promoting the council’s Export Ready program.
sean.pratt@producer.com
