Presentation at the BC Dairy Seminar in Salmon Arm in March 2014

1. Moving Forward in
Agriculture
Past achievements, current capacities and future
possibilities
Cami Ryan, B.Comm., Ph.D.
College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan
North Okanagan Dairy Seminar and Trade Show
March 7, 2014
Salmon Arm, BC

2. Agriculture
in the PAST
Agriculture
TODAY
PAST
Achievements
CURRENT
capacities
Agriculture
MOVING
FORWARD
Rural / urban
divide
Misinformation
Misperceptions
of expertise
Ag’s growing
image
problem?
Growing
world
population
Diseases,
pests, H2O
shortages
“…he who does not know the past
can never understand the present,
and he certainly can do nothing for
the future.“
- J.G. Diefenbaker -

3. Ag in the past…
Photo courtesy: Gail Bruckner
Govt of Canada archives

4. 1800 to 1960…
Rasmussen 1962

5. Circa 1908-1915…
Rasmussen 1962
Circa 1908-1915 http://postalpicture.blogspot.ca/2010/06/harvesting.html

6. Data source: M. Bellis 2013
The evolution of food production

7. Urbanization in Canada
1851 to 2001
Reimer in Hiller’s (ed) Urban Canada: sociological perspectives 2005

8. Agriculture: Then and now
Old Rural Economy New Rural Economy
Homogenous culture Diverse culture
Simple & repetitive Complex
Resource commodities Services & amenities
Low mobility High mobility
Local relations matter External relations
important
Low knowledge demands High knowledge
demands
Reimer in Hiller (ed) Urban Canada: sociological perspectives 2005

9. Agriculture in Canada Today
 Important to our economy
 $70 Billion in economic activity in 2008; jobs & GDP
 Grain farming & beef operations
 ‘backbone’ of Canada’s ag economy
 CROPS: 54.6% of total farmland
 BEEF: 31.2% of total farmland
 ORGANICS: # operations  2006 to 2011
 Ontario and Quebec greatest gains
 Ag’s changing structure:
 Fewer farms, bigger farms
 More renting, less owning
StatsCan 2013

10. Past achievements
and current capacities…
Slide courtesy: Dr. Steven Savage “Applied Mythology”

11. Current capacities
 Moisture control of grain
 In-field control of storage pests
 Controlled atmosphere
transport/storage
 Post-harvest treatments
(fungicides, sprout inhibitors,
ethylene management, waxes…)
 Active packaging
Slide courtesy: Dr. Steven Savage “Applied Mythology”

12. New technologies
 Precision farming (seeding,
irrigation, fertilizer, crop
protection)
 Sensor technology (water,
nitrogen)
 Remote sensors (drones)
 Robotics in dairy farming
 Wireless data transmission
 3D printing
 DATA!

13. Traditional Breeding
Unguided Selection
Rootstocks for
perennials
Cloning Perennials
Ancient
Methods
Hybrid Crops
Mutagenesis Breeding
Wide Crosses
Doubled Haploids
Early to
mid-20th
Century
Epigenetics,
Transient Expression
Transgenics
Marker Assisted
Selection
Enhanced Ploidy
Micro-biome
Selection
Gene Editing
RNAi
Apomixis
Modern
Methods
Slide courtesy: Dr. Steven Savage “Applied Mythology”

14. Sustainability
 AAFC: “meeting the needs of
today without compromising the
needs of future generations…
improving the standard of living
by protecting human health,
conserving the environment,
using resources efficiently and
advancing long-term economic
competitiveness.”

15. Issued by Direction
of Hon. W.J. Roche
Minister of the Interior
Ottawa, Canada, 1914

16. No till: a Western Canada story
 Reduces…
 Number of passes
 moisture loss
 Soil erosion
 Costs: fuel, labour
 55%-72% of Canada’s total seeded
land is cultivated using no-
till/conservation till practices
(StatsCan 2011; CropLife Canada)
Lafond and Clayton, 2010; Bodnar, 2013; Derpsch and Moriya, 1998
Photo courtesy: M. Wipf, AB
Photo courtesy: G. Stamp, AB

17. Pesticides and use
Pesticides
with
increasing
safety and
efficient
delivery
Slide courtesy: Dr. Steven Savage “Applied Mythology”

18. Yearning for the past?
Photo courtesy: Gail Bruckner

19. Social Media -> ‘just in time’ users
 72% use mobile technology (Pew Institute 2013)
 Social networks
 Social media
 Rise of the ‘citizen journalist’ (Gant 2007)
 Blogs / online diarizing
 Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc
 megaphone for misinformation!
19

20. Words and images… misleading

21. Does Agriculture suffer from an
image problem?

22. Dog noses or space aliens?
HUMAN COGNITIVE HABITS
22

23. Misplaced
perceptions of
who the
EXPERTS really
are…
an
Agri-Intellectual

24. Celebrity influence & mass media
24

25. Canola 96%
Soybean 91%
Corn 77%
Sugarbeet 91%
GE crops: Canada and the world
Map Source: International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) 2014

26. Independent organizations that attest
to safety of GMOs
American Association for the Advancement
of Science
American Medical Association
World Health Organization
National Academy of Science
Royal Society of Medicine
European Commission
American Council of Science and Health
American Dietetics Association
American Society for Cell Biology
American Society of Microbiology
American Society of Plant Sciences
International Seed Foundation
Source for Food, Agriculture and Environmental
Issues
Crop Science Society of America
Federation of Animal Science Societies
Society for Invitro Biology
Society of Toxicology
French Academy of Science
Royal Society of London
Royal Society of Canada
Seven of the World’s Society of Academies
Food Standards Australia New Zealand
The Union of German Academics and Societies
….MORE!

27. 27Photo: J. Kamiya-Rose
Lots of ‘good news’ stories
out there…

28. How about them apples?
 (almost?) Canadian success story in
the making
 Under CDN & US regulatory review
 Okanagan Specialty Fruit, B.C.
 Non-browning
Arctic Apple™

29. Photo credit: Andy Kristian Agaba / © Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Challenges
29

30. No silver bullets!
“…no single agricultural technology or
farming practice will provide sufficient
food for 2050…
instead we must advocate for and
utilize a
range of these technologies
in order to maximize yields.”
Mark Rosegrant, Director, International Food Policy Research Institute

31. Moving forward in agriculture
(S. Savage (2014))…
 Address barriers to the use of “state-of-
the-art” farming methods
 Address the key limitations to the
productivity of farmers in the developing world
 Use the complete “tool box” to enable
farmers to be as efficient as possible in their use of
key resources
Stop demonizing agriculture and imposing
limits upon it which are purely about marketing
and/or ideology

32. 32
Address the ‘gaps’ – talk
about agriculture!
10,000,000
calories,
two ‘hollow legs’
&
lots
of
‘chat’
‘Hayden’ Phenotype
‘Hayden’ Genotype

33. Farmers are innovative and
resilient folks…
Photo courtesy: Bill Price

34. Bright
future!
Foxglovefarm.com
CCAGR.com

35. Photocredit:DebraMurphy
BLOG: doccamiryan.wordpress.com
@DocCamiRyan
Cami Ryan on science, tech & ag
35
MOVING FORWARD IN
AGRICULTURE
Cami Ryan, B.Comm., Ph.D.
College of Agriculture and Bioresources
University of Saskatchewan