When I embarked on a six-month trip to visit farms around the world to research my forthcoming book, Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life, the innovative farmers I met showed me that regenerative farming practices can restore the world’s agricultural soils. In both the developed and developing worlds, these farmers rapidly rebuilt the fertility of their degraded soil, which then allowed them to maintain high yields using far less fertilizer and fewer pesticides.

Their experiences, and the results that I saw on their farms in North and South Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Ghana and Costa Rica, offer compelling evidence that the key to sustaining highly productive agriculture lies in rebuilding healthy, fertile soil. This journey also led me to question three pillars of conventional wisdom about today’s industrialized agrochemical agriculture: that it feeds the world, is a more efficient way to produce food and will be necessary to feed the future.

Myth 1: Large-scale agriculture feeds the world today

According to a recent UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, family farms produce over three-quarters of the world’s food. The FAO also estimates that almost three-quarters of all farms worldwide are smaller than one hectare – about 2.5 acres, or the size of a typical city block.

Only about one per cent of Americans are farmers today. Yet most of the world’s farmers work the land to feed themselves and their families. So while conventional industrialized agriculture feeds the developed world, most of the world’s farmers work small family farms. A 2016 Environmental Working Group report found that almost 90 per cent of U.S. agricultural exports went to developed countries with few hungry people.

Of course the world needs commercial agriculture, unless we all want to live on and work our own farms. But are large industrial farms really the best, let alone the only, way forward? This question leads us to a second myth.

Myth 2: Large farms are more efficient

Many high-volume industrial processes exhibit efficiencies at large scale that decrease inputs per unit of production. The more widgets you make, the more efficiently you can make each one. But agriculture is different. A 1989 National Research Council study concluded that “well-managed alternative farming systems nearly always use less synthetic chemical pesticides, fertilizers, and antibiotics per unit of production than conventional farms.”

And while mechanization can provide cost and labour efficiencies on large farms, bigger farms do not necessarily produce more food. According to a 1992 agricultural census report, small, diversified farms produce more than twice as much food per acre than large farms do.

Even the World Bank endorses small farms as the way to increase agricultural output in developing nations where food security remains a pressing issue. While large farms excel at producing a lot of a particular crop – like corn or wheat – small diversified farms produce more food and more kinds of food per hectare overall.

Myth 3: Conventional farming is necessary to feed the world

We’ve all heard proponents of conventional agriculture claim that organic farming is a recipe for global starvation because it produces lower yields. The most extensive yield comparison to date, a 2015 meta-analysis of 115 studies, found that organic production averaged almost 20 per cent less than conventionally grown crops, a finding similar to those of prior studies.

But the study went a step further, comparing crop yields on conventional farms to those on organic farms where cover crops were planted and crops were rotated to build soil health. These techniques shrank the yield gap to below 10 per cent.

The authors concluded that the actual gap may be much smaller, as they found “evidence of bias in the meta-dataset toward studies reporting higher conventional yields.” In other words, the basis for claims that organic agriculture can’t feed the world depends as much on specific farming methods as on the type of farm.

Consider too that about a quarter of all food produced worldwide is never eaten. Each year the United States alone throws out 133 billion pounds of food, more than enough to feed the nearly 50 million Americans who regularly face hunger. So even taken at face value, the oft-cited yield gap between conventional and organic farming is smaller than the amount of food we routinely throw away.

Building healthy soil

Conventional farming practices that degrade soil health undermine humanity’s ability to continue feeding everyone over the long run. Regenerative practices like those used on the farms and ranches I visited show that we can readily improve soil fertility on both large farms in the U.S. and on small subsistence farms in the tropics.

I no longer see debates about the future of agriculture as simply conventional versus organic. In my view, we’ve oversimplified the complexity of the land and underutilized the ingenuity of farmers. I now see adopting farming practices that build soil health as the key to a stable and resilient agriculture. And the farmers I visited had cracked this code, adapting no-till methods, cover cropping and complex rotations to their particular soil, environmental and socio-economic conditions.

Whether they were organic or still used some fertilizers and pesticides, the farms I visited that adopted this transformational suite of practices all reported harvests that consistently matched or exceeded those from neighbouring conventional farms after a short transition period. Another message was as simple as it was clear: Farmers who restored their soil used fewer inputs to produce higher yields, which translated into higher profits.

No matter how one looks at it, we can be certain that agriculture will soon face another revolution. For agriculture today runs on abundant, cheap oil for fuel and to make fertilizer – and our supply of cheap oil will not last forever. There are already enough people on the planet that we have less than a year’s supply of food for the global population on hand at any one time. This simple fact has critical implications for society.

So how do we speed the adoption of a more resilient agriculture? Creating demonstration farms would help, as would carrying out system-scale research to evaluate what works best to adapt specific practices to general principles in different settings.

We also need to reframe our agricultural policies and subsidies. It makes no sense to continue incentivizing conventional practices that degrade soil fertility. We must begin supporting and rewarding farmers who adopt regenerative practices.

Once we see through myths of modern agriculture, practices that build soil health become the lens through which to assess strategies for feeding us all over the long haul. Why am I so confident that regenerative farming practices can prove both productive and economical? The farmers I met showed me they already are.

David R. Montgomery is a professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is author of the award-winning non-fiction book, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, and his latest book, Growing A Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life, will be released in May.

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The budget did allocate $80 million over five years to replace the Centre for Plant Health in Sidney, B.C. with a new research facility to support agri-food safety. It will assist trade and national economic growth and Buy said the move is good news for agri-food.

At the same time, questions remain about the long-term future of other research facilities that were underfunded by the previous government, he said.

“Overall, the budget contains some very good news,” he said. While it will take time for the decisions on many announcements to be reached, “things are shaping up well.”

While a lot of funds were announced in the budget, there will still have to be plenty of discussion and consultation before the money is spent, Buy said.

“Choices will have to be made before we see who gets what,” Buy said.

The AIC will be ready to pitch its ideas once the budget bill is passed. Among the decisions is an independent review, announced last year, on funding for fundamental science and research. It will report sometime this year. Then the government will decide which of its proposals it will implement.

Then there’s the appointment of a Chief Science Officer announced in 2016 and still to be filled. The CSO will have a secretariat and a $2-million-a-year operating budget.

The government has decided the CSO will advise the prime minister and minister of science instead of reporting directly to Parliament as originally proposed. That means the CSO won’t have the independence of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

Also in the works for this year is a new federal science infrastructure strategy for the government. It will review existing federal labs and related facilities and recommend what’s needed for the future. No timeline for that report was set. Also in line for a review is the National Research Council’s funding and its innovation support activities.

The science innovation strategy will examine the existing federal science infrastructure, “including federal laboratories and testing facilities, and provide a road map for future investments. The strategy will offer a more integrated and effective approach to federal laboratories, information technology and human resources in the federal science community, and will seek to ensure that federal scientists have access to the world-class infrastructure, innovative equipment and computer networks they need to produce the best results for Canadians.”

The National Research Council will have its funding set at $59.6 million for the current fiscal year to support its business innovation initiatives.

“As part of the review, the government will also examine what future role the NRC could play in supporting innovation, creating more opportunities for women researchers and innovators, and supporting mission-driven, breakthrough research in collaboration with the new Impact Canada Fund,” the science strategy reads.

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Julie Gelfand’s office has audited federal programs between 2010 and 2015 and concluded that despite being the best positioned to lead with information and tools to mitigate the impact of floods, drought and other disasters, the federal government “has not put in place funding provisions to significantly improve the resilience of Canada’s infrastructure. Overall, we concluded that the federal government has not made it a priority to help decision makers mitigate the anticipated impacts of severe weather.”

She noted scientists are predicting that extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, and forest fires, will become more frequent and intense, putting aging and weakened infrastructure to an ever more difficult test.

“Studies show that dollars spent on mitigation efforts save money over time,” Gelfand said. “But to mitigate the effects of severe weather and ultimately save lives and money, decision makers need timely information and tools to inform their actions.”

It’s crucial to plan infrastructure for 2050 and beyond, she said.

“Canada must build resilient buildings, roads, bridges, water and sewage facilities, and transportation networks so that we can move around, work, keep the economy going, and live in vibrant and healthy communities,” Gelfand said.

“When resiliency is built into infrastructure, it is also built into communities, as they are then better equipped to recover more quickly when disasters strike.”

A number of federal departments could better contribute to preparedness, but Public Safety and Environment Canada haven’t provided provincial and municipal officials with the information and tools needed to address long-term severe weather effects. The National Research Council hasn’t incorporated climate change trends into National Building Code updates, which could impact buildings and structures for decades to come.

Flood plain maps and tools are required to measure the intensity, duration, and frequency of severe weather, she said.

“The federal government is uniquely positioned to support Canada-wide mitigation activities, helping avoid needless overlaps and gaps, and using government resources more efficiently,” Gelfand said.

The federal departments and agencies said in response to her criticisms they would step up their efforts to co-ordinate federal actions and programs with the needs of provinces and municipalities.

Gelfand said although the federal government has provided infrastructure funding for a decade, it has spent little on protecting them from severe weather events.

“We also found that the design of the mitigation programs did not encourage investments in infrastructure projects” to protect Canadians’ safety and security,” she said.

“The federal government’s contributions are too often piecemeal, too focused on the short term, and driven by what the government wants to put out instead of what end-users need.”

Governments across the country lack the information they need to guide the creation of resilient infrastructure for the future, Gelfand said.

“They need to know the current state of the infrastructure, which requires co-ordination among governments,” Gelfand said. “As things stand, the picture is incomplete.”

When environmental risks are not considered, projects may not be designed to minimize environmental effects or withstand the impacts of future weather events, she added. This means that municipalities could be left facing significant unexpected costs down the road.

The Building Canada Fund, the lead federal infrastructure program, has only five per cent of its approved projects that are related to disaster mitigation even though that is one of its priority areas.

“The fund is not designed to encourage provinces and territories to make disaster mitigation a priority,” Gelfand said.

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“Funding remains a challenge for us,” Robert Gordon, dean of the Ontario Agriculture College (OAC), told the delegates to the AIC conference, which was crafting a research policy for the 21st century.

Despite agri-food’s status as one of the leading manufacturing sectors, employing one in eight Canadians, “research funding available to us is lower than for other sectors,” he said.

“Universities face a changing landscape trying to ensure we have the capacity to conduct research,” he noted. “A single institution can’t do it all and we have to partner with other institutions.”

Wilf Keller, president and CEO of Ag-West Bio Inc., said Canada has become very weak in basic research. “There is not enough funding to support a university faculty. We’re seeing a terrible waste of young brain power.”

Global research projects have become increasingly important, but Canadians cannot receive funding to participate in them, he said.

While many farm groups have research checkoffs, no way exists to integrate the funds into common projects, he added. For example the partnership of Canterra, Agriculture Canada and the Alberta Wheat Commission leaves out the enhanced research impact of including wheat farmers in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario in the project, he noted. “We could do a lot of basic research to make sure our wheat industry will be competitive 30 years from now.”

Universities have taken on a greater role as the federal government has closed labs and cut or not replaced scientists who did much of the fundamental research, Keller said.

More balance

Clarke Topp, a soil physicist, said that unless basic and commercialization research is balanced, “we will have a disaster.” The current drought on the Prairies would be as bad as the dust bowl of the 1930s if researchers hadn’t determined no-till farming preserved the soil.

Canada needs to put more effort into understanding how climate change will impact the agri-food sector, he said. “We don’t have a lot of time to waste. We need to be better equipped with the disaster coming down the road.”

While the country needs more basic research to deal with climate change and other environmental problems, it also “needs to break down the barriers between applied and basic research,” he added. “The two groups need to work together to stimulate ideas.”

Although universities are involved in policy development and basic research, there is less support for professors to hire technical support.

Dependent

That makes them increasingly dependent on graduate or post-doctoral students who aren’t able to provide the required long-term research support because of their own academic priorities, he noted. Also the profs are supervising five graduate students when in the past they would have had two or three.

“It’s hard for them to work on a project with a long-term framework,” he said.

The OAC currently conducts about $58 million worth of research annually, about half of all the research at the University of Guelph, Gordon said. About 30 per cent of the funding comes from the federal government and 20 per cent from farmers and the food industry. There is a growing emphasis on intellectual property in research and the OAC produces about 92 per cent of the patents earned by the University of Guelph.

Keller noted that in 2007, the government created the Science and Technology Innovation Council as an advisory board for government research funding. It identified four key areas, which didn’t include agri-food. A year later the sector moved to the No. 1 rank among manufacturers and was lumped under the natural resources.

“Agriculture Canada should have a much stronger mandate for basic research,” he said. Its research staff has dwindled from 1,000 in the 1970s to less than 400 today. Many of them are close to retirement and there is no plan to replace them.

“There has also been a serious depredation of research capacity at the National Research Council,” he added. “Where are the long-term ideas going to come from? We need a national system that rejuvenates the federal labs. We cannot depend on the universities to conduct all the research.”

He also urged farm organizations to create a forum in which farmers, the food industry and scientists can discuss research priorities.

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The keynote speaker wasn’t a weed scientist. He is a sociologist. But as I listened, it became clear this speaker, and the ones who followed, were discussing the problem of herbicide-resistant weeds, and with urgency.

So who organized this event — the anti-pesticide lobby, perhaps?

Nope. It was sponsored by the Weed Science Society of America and hosted by the National Research Council. And the speakers lined up by the summit’s organizers made a compelling case that something has to change — and fast — about how weeds are managed in modern farming systems.

“Do you know what the definition of insanity is?” asked David Shaw, PhD, a past president of WSSA and chair of the WSSA Herbicide Resistance Education Committee. “It’s continuing to do what we have been doing expecting different results.”

It pretty much sums up where the industry is at with the lengthening list of herbicide-resistant weeds. As the speakers at this event pointed out, the discussion over herbicide-resistance management needs to move beyond raising awareness and telling farmers what to do about it.

Farmers are aware. The management tools and options are well documented. The lastest BASF poll of Canadian farmers says 94 per cent of Manitoba farmers are worried about it, nearly 60 per cent think they already have resistance on their farms, and their hunch is supported by the data.

But when it comes to controlling weeds, they, like farmers across North America, continue to rely almost solely on chemical weed control.

Some characterize this as a biological problem. Farmers’ dependence on chemistry creates selection pressure that causes weeds to evolve resistance.

Others will say it is a technological problem, focusing on the need for different combinations and new active ingredients to preserve or replace wonder herbicides such as glyphosate.

But Shaw said it goes much deeper than that. “Fundamentally, at its core, it is a problem of human behaviour — it’s the choices you and I have been making,” he said.

• From Country Guide: Farmers need solutions in the face of bigger, tougher problems

Hence the enlistment of sociologists to help explore and explain why farmers, with full support of the pest-control industry, continue to make decisions today that threaten their future ability to farm.

An overexaggeration, you say? Stephen Powles, an Australian weed scientist considered one of the world’s leading experts in herbicide resistance, even calls it a threat to global food security because it predominantly affects the world’s top grain exporters.

These production powerhouses are characterized by big farms, a high reliance on herbicides, low biodiversity and a farming culture fixated on the next technological solution. He compares farmers’ chemical addiction to an illness — HOS (herbicide-only syndrome.)

In other words, that’s the problem. The herbicide-resistant weeds are only a symptom.

Powles said the surge in multiple-resistant weeds, some of which are resistant to chemistry that isn’t even in use yet, is a strong indicator that herbicides alone are not sustainable.

In sociological terms, HOS is considered a “wicked problem,” meaning it involves “multiple, complex and uncertain causes and effects over time in the way humans and nature interact,” said Raymond Jussaume, head of sociology at Michigan State University.

Farmers’ management decisions are driven by multiple factors, including financial, but also time management, the surge in rented land, and farming culture. As such, Jussaume said it defies simple technological fixes such as stacked traits, and requires adaption to a more holistic approach to weed management by the whole community.

One potentially powerful motivator for change is the looming reality that farmers may have to return to tillage, a prospect many find abhorrent. Another, is the possibility that governments will look to regulation if the farm community doesn’t come up with a plan on its own.

Last week a British weed specialist brought a chilling message to farmer meetings in Manitoba and Saskatchewan about the difficulty and cost of controlling herbicide-resistant black-grass in Europe. In the U.S., some farms are now being lost because of the difficulty of controlling glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth.

Herbicide manufacturers and distributors are already well aware of the threat, which ultimately means no market for their product. The message to rotate herbicides to prevent resistance is well taken, but to keep them in the tool box, it may also mean using them less often.

Don’t take my word for it. On the next rainy day, tune in for yourself by visiting the Weed Science Society of America website.

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“The primary output will be new varieties, however, there will be other projects that look at breeding tools to support varieties,” said Garth Patterson, executive director of the farmer-funded Western Grains Research Foundation (WGRF). “This is all non-GMO-type research.”

The federal government is contributing $12.5 million, or about half the funding, in the new wheat science cluster through the federal-provincial Growing Forward 2 agreement.

The WGRF, Alberta Wheat Commission and Canadian Field Crop Research Alliance, representing wheat growers in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, are investing $9.6 million, $1.3 million and $1.7 million, respectively. Most of the money will be collected from farmers through checkoffs.

“The take-home message is this is truly a national cluster,” Patterson said. “It goes from Atlantic Canada right through to the B.C. Peace area. It’s bigger than the last cluster under Growing Forward 1.”

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz announced the program Nov. 7 in Red Deer during Agri-Trade 2013’s first annual All Crops Breakfast and Market Outlook.

The new program will fund 50 research projects at six different public institutions — Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), the universities of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Guelph (Ridgetown campus) and CEROM in Quebec, Patterson said.

Wheat researchers are excited, partly because the new program provides stability, he said.

“We all know variety development is a continuum,” Patterson said.

“That’s really important. It’s not stop and start. There has been continuous work over the decades and this helps it continue and provides stability.

He said the cluster approach fosters more co-ordination between researchers instead of individual silos. “That’s one of the requirements of the program — that we work together.”

Goals include developing new wheats resistant to insects such as the wheat midge and diseases such as fusarium head blight.

“We’re seeing increasing interest in the mid-quality wheats but there’s still lots of activity in the high-quality wheats,” Patterson said.

This latest funding is in addition to the $97 million Canadian Wheat Alliance research program announced in May. The federal government is contributing $85 million to that initiative through the National Research Council and AAFC in co-operation with the Saskatchewan government and University of Saskatchewan. The goal is boosting wheat yields.

In addition, the WGRF still has core wheat-breeding agreements with AAFC and the University of Saskatchewan.

“And in addition to this commitment through 2014 we’re going to be looking through new commitments to the western universities and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada,” Patterson said. “So this isn’t the end of our investment either.”

Meanwhile, several private seed companies have said they are investing more into wheat research.

Canada doesn’t invest as much in wheat research as the United States or Australia. But there appears to be a recognition that Canada must invest more, Patterson said.

Outsiders say Canada has done well with the limited research resources it has, said Don Dewar, a Dauphin farmer and interim chair of the proposed new Manitoba Wheat and Barley Association.

“Australia is spending more than double what we are (on wheat research),” said Dewar, who also represents the Keystone Agricultural Producers on the WGRF board. “To get there the farmers will have to spend more, and I think in part, that’s what the (wheat) commissions intend to do.”

Once Manitoba’s new wheat association is established and has a checkoff it will be invited to contribute to the new wheat research cluster, Patterson said. Saskatchewan’s new wheat commission will also be invited to contribute, he said.

In the meantime, Manitoba and Saskatchewan farmers are contributing to wheat research through a temporary checkoff set up by the federal government after ending the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly. That checkoff ends in 2017, but it’s expected that by then provincial wheat associations will collect checkoffs to fund research.

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The Canadian Wheat Alliance wants to boost wheat yields by developing new varieties with increased tolerance to drought, heat, cold and diseases such as fusarium head blight and rust.

“By working in an integrated fashion and bringing in additional collaborators and contributors, the alliance is striving to ensure the global competitiveness of Canadian wheat farmers and increase the value at the Canadian farm gate by a cumulative total of $4.5 billion by 2031,” the alliance said in a news release last month.

Another goal is to speed up the development of new wheats.

Stephen Morgan Jones, director general of AAFC’s Prairie/Boreal Plain Ecozone, is especially interested in making wheat more efficient in its use of sunlight and nitrogen.

“Wheat is not particularly efficient at capturing sunlight so there will be a fairly large project developed within the consortium to see if we can increase the efficiency of… the photosynthetic process,” Morgan Jones said in an interview.

Photosynthesis in corn is about twice as efficient, which helps to explain corn’s remarkable rise in yield potential and growing popularity among farmers, he said.

By exploring microbial activity in the root zone, Morgan Jones hopes scientists can discover why some wheat yields more than others even though it’s the same variety, in the same soil, with the same amount of nutrients.

“It’s another area of work that could be very fruitful… in terms of potentially finding microbial communities at the root level and trying to encourage them to give us a lot more use of plant nutrients,” he said.

The coalition will receive $97 million to invest into wheat research over five years, but the coalition is based on an 11-year agreement, Morgan Jones said.

The funding breaks down the following way:

The National Research Council will contribute up to $13 million a year. This is new money for wheat research.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada will contribute up to $4 million a year.

“It’s from our existing work in wheat,” Morgan Jones said. “We have taken… approximately a quarter of the work we do that is specifically related to the priority areas for the alliance and we said ‘that’s our contribution.’ It isn’t new money but it is ongoing money that has been approved for wheat improvement, which aligns with the priorities of the alliance.”

The University of Saskatchewan will contribute an estimated $1.4 million in in-kind funding.

The Saskatchewan government will contribute $5 million during the first five years. In addition it announced another $5 million for wheat research not directly connected to the alliance.

Seven of AAFC’s research centres will be involved, including Swift Current, Ottawa and Charlottetown.

“The hard red spring class is one class that will get specific attention through the alliance,” Morgan Jones said. But I should emphasize there is quite a large component in winter wheat as well. That’s being driven to some extent by the University of Saskatchewan and NRC.”

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A year ago, Ottawa announced it will close AAFC’s venerable Cereal Research Centre on the University of Manitoba’s Winnipeg campus because it would cost too much to upgrade it to modern standards. Many researchers formerly housed there are being transferred to Brandon or Morden.

More AAFC budget and staff cuts were included in this year’s federal budget including the closing of AAFC’s Regina research farm and dozens of technicians in all areas.

Others have quit because they don’t want to move. Some researchers, including current and past AAFC employees, say splitting up staff will make them less efficient, while synergies are lost by moving from the University of Manitoba campus.

Then last month Ottawa announced it will contribute $85 million of the $97 million allocated over five years to the new Canadian Wheat Alliance (CWA) created with the Saskatchewan government and the University of Saskatchewan to boost wheat yields. The National Research Council (NRC) and AAFC represent Ottawa in the alliance.

Industry observers are careful to say the new research alliance may provide some positive spinoffs, but they question at what cost.

“I see positives from the Canadian Wheat Alliance,” said one researcher, who asked not to be named. “But Ag Canada has less resources needed to do its job.”

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said in an email that the department still has what it needs to fulfil its commitment to the CWA.

Stephen Morgan Jones, director general of AAFC’s Prairie/Boreal Plain Ecozone, says the alliance creates more research capacity with additional resources. The alliance is based on an 11-year agreement, he said.

“So it’s saying to me that our department regards this area as a key and important area for Canadian farmers and we are going to be in it for the long term rather than the short term,” Morgan Jones said in an interview.

The Crop Development Centre, like AAFC, has long worked on wheat.

The NRC, which has a new mandate to focus more on applied research, has the equipment and expertise in plant cell biology, high-speed genotyping and bioinformatics allowing it to glean important information from large data sets, he said.

Some, including the National Farmers Union (NFU), fear the federal government’s actions signal its desire to get out of crop breeding, handing it over to private companies.

“Now, the CWA is being set up to occupy our space and override the farmer’s interests,” NFU president Terry Boehm said in a news release.

Public researchers, including those with AAFC, have released at least 158 new wheat and barley varieties over the past 20 years thanks to farmers’ money distributed through the Western Grains Research Foundation (WGRF), he said.

Seventy-five per cent of the wheat grown on the Prairies is from publicly owned varieties. In the future, however, AAFC wants to pass on its new wheats to the private sector, which could include farm groups such as the WGRF, earlier in the process. The money AAFC saves will be invested in more breeding, Morgan Jones said.

But over the next five years it’s business as usual, with AAFC continuing to register new wheat varieties.

“We are not going to exit and leave the producers high and dry in any way, shape or form,” Morgan Jones said.

Ideally, AAFC and the private sector will both do wheat breeding, he added.

“The public sector can take on some of the longer-term challenges and the private sector can focus on the short-term, commercial opportunities,” Morgan Jones said. “That usually gives the best result.”

But Martin Entz, professor of cropping systems and agronomy at the University of Manitoba, is concerned.

“Agriculture Canada definitely looks like it’s threatened and it really disturbs me,” Entz said in an interview. “I’m sensing that we’re actually ready to throw the whole thing away.”

Entz said one area in which AAFC has made significant cuts is in agronomic research.

“Because we have not rejuvenated that field-based science at Agriculture Canada I think it’s fair to say that we have fallen behind,” he said.

Farmers are facing tougher pests, including herbicide resistant weeds, and AAFC needs to step up, Entz said.

It should be working on “ecological intensification,” making farming more energy efficient and fighting pests through crop rotations, beneficial insects and integrating livestock.

Private companies won’t do that kind of research because there is no way for them to recoup their costs, much less make a profit, even though farmers and society gain.

“We have to keep a publicly funded group of scientists who are directly engaged in the research and development and the design of new cropping systems and new animal management systems for national security because agriculture is fundamental to our civilization,” Entz said.

“iPads and other gadgets are important, but you can’t eat them and you can’t drink them.”

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The council’s tested 100 per cent biofuel in jets and found it to be “cleaner than and as efficient as conventional aviation fuel.”

The tests were conducted last fall in a Falcon 20 jet flying at 30,000 feet, similar to regular commercial aircraft altitude.

“These tests also show a comparable engine performance, but an improvement of 1.5 per cent in fuel consumption during steady operations,” the council said. “The jet’s engines required no modification as the biofuel tested in flight meets the specifications of petroleum-based fuels.”

There were also major environmental gains — both aerosol and black carbon emissions fell by half, and particulate matter was reduced by one-quarter.

Air Canada and Porter Airlines have also successfully tested biofuels in their aircraft.

But before biofuel takes to the skies on a regular basis, it will need international certification and aircraft makers will have to approve its use in their engines, said Les Alders, vice-president of the Air Transport Association of Canada.

“The NRC has shown it can be done,” he said. “Now it’s up to the manufacturers of aircraft engines and the suppliers of fuel to make it happen.”

Biofuel for jets would open up a major new market for Canadian grain farmers, but there are hurdles there, too, he said.

A major challenge would be ramping up a sufficient supply of the fuel and making it available across the country, he noted. As well, none of the current biofuel plants in Canada are currently producing aviation-grade fuels, said Alders, adding a 50-50 blend of biofuel and regular aviation fuel would likely be the first step.

The fuel used in the NRC tests came from oilseeds grown on the Prairies.

“This year, more than 40 commercial growers in Western Canada have been contracted to grow over 6,000 acres of the oilseed crop that will be used to create 100 per cent bio jet fuel,” the agency stated.

Porter tested a 50-50 blend of fuel on a flight between Toronto and Ottawa last fall, while Air Canada used it on a flight between Toronto and Mexico City last summer.

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“This historic flight symbolizes a significant step not only for the aerospace industry, but also towards advancing sustainable sources of renewable energy,” the NRC said in a release.

“Today, I flew the world’s first 100 per cent biofuel flight,” said Tim Leslie, one of NRC’s pilots. “We have been working hard with our partners for many months, and it is most rewarding to see it all come together. It is truly inspiring to take this step towards an eco-friendly future!”

“I congratulate the aerospace team at the National Research Council of Canada for achieving today’s milestone in aviation history,” said the Honourable Gary Goodyear, minister of state (science and technology). “This is a perfect example of how government and industry work together to bridge the gap between Canadian innovation and commercialization.”

The biofuel flowed into the engine of the Falcon 20 — one of NRC’s specifically equipped and best-suited jet for this challenge — as it flew over the sky of Canada’s capital. A second aircraft, the T-33, tailed the Falcon in flight and collected valuable information on the emissions generated by the biofuel. Research experts at the National Research Council will analyze the data to better understand the environmental impact of biofuel. Preliminary results are expected to be released in the following weeks.

The biofuel used for this flight was transformed by Applied Research Associates and Chevron Lummus Global using oilseed crops commercialized by Agrisoma Bioscience Inc. The oilseed is Brassica carinata, a new oilseed in the mustard family grown under a closed-loop contract in Saskatchewan last summer.

This aviation initiative is funded by the Government of Canada’s Clean Transportation Initiatives and the Green Aviation Research and Development Network.

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