A news alert came across the teletype machine this morning and I was excited as my staff here in the Winnipeg Western Producer bureau decoded it for me.
But when I read the decoded news release, I realized that this was about something that wouldn’t put money in producers’ pockets this year, next year or maybe even in a decade for some of it. This was news about something that will have a market impact way out in the future.
And that’s what’s wonderful about it. Because this type of incremental, dogged, determined research is what gives prairie farmers the long term edge they need to compete with growers in other parts of the world that have lower production costs. The news release was the annual announcement of the specific projects that the research funding consortium of the Canadian malting barley industry, an organization known as the Brewing and Malting Barley Research Institute, has approved.
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None of this research sounds very sexy, and none sounds like it’ll lead to higher price sales or more sales made in the next year. Here’s what the approved projects are:
* Saturation of Barley Chromosones with Transposons to Target Malting Quality Traits
* Characterization and Quantification of Arabinoxylans in Canadian Malting Barley
* Improvement of Malting Barley Quality Characteristics Through Production of More Homogeneous Seed That Results in Better Endosperm Modification
* Characterizing Barley Lines With Increased A-Type Starch Granules
The lack of a quick return on this sort of stuff is why consortia like the BMBRI are best at doing it, because many funding hands make lighter work in the lab, and why Canada and prairie farmers get an advantage from this. We, as a Canadian people, tend to be dull, diligent, dutiful. Those are good traits to have when it comes to funding research, because lots of other people aren’t as patient or cooperative with long term or incremental projects that don’t have a quick payback. And there are lots of places in the world that are so disorganized, or dysfunctionally organized – like the Former Soviet Union – that their malting barley industries are less likely to bother to undertake such long-term work.
I thought of that as my staff ran around the radio room deciphering messages about the agricultural markets from around the world and wondered whether I was in the same situation vis a vis my counterparts in the FSU. Here I am, using the latest in Telex technology and able to send messages around downtown Winnipeg with our ultra-modern pneumatic tube network
and what are Bloborussian ag journalists forcing their staff to use as they try to keep up on the markets?
No, as much as it’s costly, time-consuming and sometimes unsuccessful, research is a key advantage our ag industry has. Our dogged, determined, incremental and diligent commitment on ongoing research is a trait that we Canucks have by the bushel, and while most of the advancements we gain from this work will never show up in a markets story, this quiet work in the buildings around Portage and Main and in the nation’s laboratories will help us all survive into the future. Microscopic improvements in malting barley quality may never have the raw sexy appeal of new-fangled gadgets like the Telex and pneumatic tube machines in my office, but they earn farmers the markets of the future.
