Provincial government funding is waning for Saskatchewan’s agriculture biotechnology sector.
Four years ago the province contributed $5.4 million to Saskatchewan’s top four biotechnology firms. Last year it spent a little over half that amount.
It’s uncertain what this year’s total will be, but it is unlikely that it will rise from the $2.9 million doled out in 2002-03. The province slashed its overall agriculture research and technology spending by $2 million in the new budget announced March 28.
That means Ag-West Biotech Inc., the National Research Council’s Plant Biotechnology Institute, Agriculture Canada’s Saskatoon Research Centre and the University of Saskatchewan will have to look elsewhere for biotechnology research funds.
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Saskatchewan Agriculture’s director of research said the decline in support is due to the “winding down” of the Agri-Food Innovation Fund, a federal-Saskatchewan fund that expired March 31, 2003.
“There’s no AFIF2,” said Abdul Jalil.
Wilf Keller, research director at the Plant Biotechnology Institute, said AFIF was a good source of funding. But over the last four years the province’s contribution to the institute through that program and the Agriculture Development Fund has dropped to $300,000 from $1.5 million.
That will have a direct impact on the types of activities undertaken at the institute.
“There would be some priority areas that we have on the go, such as pulses, that we could have beefed up a bit more with more provincial input,” said Keller.
He understands the National Research Council is a federal government agency and shouldn’t expect to be a major recipient of provincial funding, but thinks there needs to be a higher level of commitment.
The province tends to spend its money on short-term applied research projects like disease management rather than the long-term work that goes on at the institute.
“We can help the producer 10 years down the road by having bigger lentil seeds or a higher proportion of good quality protein in them,” said Keller.
He also thinks there is an understandable tendency to back away from research involving genetically modified organisms, which could be influencing the province’s investment decisions.
“Products produced through biotech may not get into the global market as quickly as we thought they would 15 years ago,” said Keller.
Ag-West Biotech president Peter McCann hasn’t noticed a decline in provincial commitment. That’s because Ag-West has a separate, long-standing funding agreement with the province for a perennial grant of $1.1 million that hasn’t been affected by the disappearance of AFIF.
“We’ve been able to manage,” said McCann.
He also points out that what other biotech institutions have lost in provincial government funding has been made up through other sources.
“There has been a very large amount of additional research money flowing into the ag biotech community,” said McCann.
Over $120 million has been invested in Saskatchewan agricultural genomics in the past few years through organizations like Genome Canada Inc.
Keller said that money is targeted toward the broad long-term study of genes and their function, which is important work.
But there is also a need to fund projects that fit somewhere in the spectrum between short-term applied research and long-term knowledge gathering. That’s where the province should step in, said Keller.
