Predicting the future of agriculture in Canada.
Public trust is at stake if we let this happen
‘If only your grandpa could see this.” Things change. The future is uncertain and unexpected.
We grow the proteins that energize this world. We grow the food you eat. And the food you eat keeps a lot of people busy. It’s paying a lot of salaries. It’s consuming a lot of minds.
I was asked, recently, to comment on what the agriculture sector in Manitoba would, could, should look like 20 years from now. I did, albeit from a local perspective. But it’s a valuable exercise to do this for Canada, too.
When people such as David Yee, vice- president of the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute, present on what’s coming down the pipe for technology in agriculture, it’s tantamount to being transported from a world for which humanity lowered its expectations to a world of pure discovery and endless possibility and infectious optimism. At least, this is how it feels.
Australian company WEED it has a sprayer that claims to reduce herbicide usage up to 90 per cent. “It’s all about sensors,” said Yee, speaking to a room full of Manitoba farmers about ag tech. The WEEDit sprayer uses its plethora of sensors to differentiate weeds from crops and soil, activating the nozzles only when needed.
In these examples, what’s happening in agriculture seems larger than the issues, say, surrounding Trump’s gross underestimation of the stakeholder titans he awoke when he decided to take on NAFTA.
Historically, the juggernauts of agriculture have conducted business quietly. They’ve amassed immeasurable wealth behind the scenes, intentionally staying away from the scrutiny of Yonge Street or Bay Street. Except that’s not always possible.
Ag as an industry has enough money socked away that it can cash flow a seemingly endless amount of projects outside the scrutiny of the self- proclaimed intelligentsia keeping coffee shops the world over in business.
When Monsanto created Round-Up, it plunked itself in the centre of a public throng that had never seen its likes — a throng that had not been with them throughout the process. Knee-jerk responses are rarely measured, and in this case they were highly destructive.
Holding power to account is always a good thing, but you’re not holding power to account when you’re yelling in a different language or when the things you’re opposing are driven underground.
Twenty years from now, agriculture will look differently than it does today. The GMO debate will have ended, but it will continue in spirit under a different name. Biotechnology is not slowing down. It’s a busy arena, and a needed one.
If the gap between the public and the farmer continues to widen and the public’s trust in what we do continues to erode, a likely (or a possible one, anyway) future involves ag tech continuing to advance rapidly, but doing so in secret. Those are not healthy conditions for any industry.
If the people, organizations and/or governments at the forefront of the GMO debate — at the forefront of the anti Big Ag movement, at the forefront of reforms that debilitate the very people growing their food — want to drive positive change and write themselves into agricultural history, they need to meet me on my farm.
I want agriculture to continue along the trajectory that is delivering precision technologies to farms across Canada and putting computers in our tractors.
I agree with my dad. My grandpa would have been impressed with how things in ag had advanced. It would have been rewarding to have been able to show him how the farm my grandma and him kept running had changed since they took it over.
I hope, someday, the next generation on this farm impresses me, too.