Therefore, anyone who claims to understand the “Asian consumer” and what the typical Asian likes to eat probably doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

“There is no such thing as an Asian consumer,” said Andrew Powell, chief executive officer of Asia BioBusiness, a life science company in Singapore that specializes in agriculture and food.

“There are consumers who live in Asia.”

WHY IT MATTERS: Asian markets account for some major export destinations for local agriculture, such as Manitoba pork headed to Japan.

Powell travelled to Manitoba in late September to participate in a panel discussion on the global marketplace for proteins at the Protein Industries Canada annual meeting in Winnipeg.

Understanding the preferences of consumers in Taiwan and how they differ from Indonesia or Malaysia isn’t easy for a small company in Saskatchewan that wants to export a faba bean protein or a roasted lentil snack food across the Pacific.

To help bridge that knowledge gap, Protein Industries Canada has partnered with Nurasa, a firm in Singapore that specializes in food product development and commercialization.

Together, the two have created the Asia-Pacific Market Entry program.

”(It) will fast track opportunities for Canadian plant-based ingredient and food companies to bring their products directly to this important market,” federal agriculture minister Heath MacDonald said in August.

Canadian firms that participate in the program will get help from Nurasa to navigate local regulations and test market their products for consumers in Asia.

Xiuling Guo, Nurasa’s chief executive officer who attended the Protein Industries Canada meeting in Winnipeg, told a story about what she ate at a Winnipeg hotel to illustrate an opportunity for Canadian exporters.

“This morning I had a breakfast with the most delicious granola,” she said, adding the oats in the granola had higher level of protein than she’s accustomed to.

“For me, this is an upgrade…. And the granola tastes really good.”

The granola may be high quality, but Nurasa could help a Canadian food company tweak the recipe or change the marketing so it appeals to consumers in Singapore, Vietnam or Indonesia.

The Asia-Pacific Market Entry program is open until Oct. 15. More information is available online.

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“The danger here might be that the sector might not live up to its potential,” said Nicholas Renzetti, research associate with Smart Property Institute, the group that wrote the report in partnership with the Future Skills Centre.

And that potential is enormous. Protein Industries Canada believes the plant-based protein sector could be contributing $25 billion annually to Canada’s gross domestic product by 2035.

“Manitoba alone wants to grow its protein sector by attracting $1.5 billion in investment and creating 1,550 jobs by 2025,” stated the report.

Major investments have already been made in the two prairie provinces.

Roquette opened the world’s largest pea processing plant in Portage la Prairie, Man., in 2021.

Cargill and Viterra have announced plans to build canola crushing facilities in Regina that will be operational by 2024.

Federated Co-operatives Ltd. and AGT Food and Ingredients are building a $2 billion canola crushing and biodiesel plant in the same city that will be completed by 2027.

Burcon NutraScience Corporation’s pilot protein ingredient plant in Winnipeg received funding in 2023.

But a survey of companies working in that space revealed that there are some significant hurdles to overcome for those plants to be successful.

“People are concerned that the persistent labour challenges might lead to a situation where the sector continues along but doesn’t expand to its full potential,” said Renzetti.

The case of Merit Functional Foods offers a cautionary tale along those lines, according to the report.

There were “sky-high expectations” when the company opened its 94,000 sq. foot processing plant in Winnipeg in 2021.

Two years later the firm declared bankruptcy despite receiving $116.5 million in federal and provincial funding.

“The company’s lack of success was attributed to factors ranging from the high costs of inputs to labour shortages to delays in new product development,” stated the report.

A survey by the Canadian Federation for Independent Businesses found that 63 percent of agri-food companies could not hire all the staff they needed.

“There is a lack of visibility and perceived attractiveness for food and beverage manufacturing careers,” stated the report.

Renzetti said that is odd given that it is the largest manufacturing sector in the country measured by employment and the second largest measured by sales.

It doesn’t help that wages paid in the food manufacturing sector are typically much lower than in competing sectors such as potash mining and oil and gas extraction.

Average pay in the food manufacturing sector was $21.20 per hour in 2020 compared to an average manufacturing wage of $30.36 per hour.

Another hurdle is that many food production facilities are in rural areas, which means there is a smaller talent pool to draw on and it is harder to convince newcomers to Canada to settle in those areas.

“We do think these are solvable challenges,” said Renzetti.

The first step is to create increased awareness of food manufacturing jobs starting at the educational institutes.

People training in information technology, engineering and data analysis might not be aware of these jobs.

One idea is to work with institutes to create job internships or to get them teaching specific technical skills unique to food manufacturing jobs.

Food manufacturers need to make better use of existing immigration programs, such as the Provincial Nominee Program, which he called a “standout” program.

The industry should also lobby hard to get plant-based protein manufacturing on the list of eligible industries for the federal Agri-Food Pilot program.

There needs to be better co-ordination and sharing of labour market data between provinces and with the federal government.

And there should be a wholistic approach to job creation that places an emphasis on quality-of-life aspects, such as providing adequate transportation, housing and child-care facilities to accompany the new job.

—Sean Pratt writes for the Western Producer from Saskatchewan.

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“Lupin is an exciting new crop for Canada that will bring new value to Canada’s plant-based food and ingredient ecosystem, benefiting the entire value chain, from farmers to end consumers,” PIC CEO Bill Greuel said in a Dec. 16 news release.

In a $7.3-million project, Lupin Platform Inc., Hensall Co-op, Lumi Foods and PURIS plan to develop lupin varieties suited to Canadian conditions, to improve seed-cleaning and -processing technology, to determine the value of its co-products, and to create new food products.

PIC said lupin is acknowledged as a pulse with the highest seed protein content and also has a unique starch and oil composition.

Lupin Platform Inc., a new company, will oversee the development of the ecosystem and contribute inputs and expertise to agronomic research, commercial-scale lupin production, protein extraction and functional characterization, and ingredient and value-added product development such as lupin beverages and a baking mix.

Hensall Co-op, one of Canada’s largest farmer co-operatives, will take on agronomic research and testing for the novel crop and will use in-house equipment to develop cleaning, dehulling and milling technology.

Hensall hopes to develop data related to the feed value of lupin in monogastric and ruminant nutrition, PIC said.

The novel lupin ingredients will then be used by Lumi Foods, a high-end plant-based cheese and products manufacturer, and PURIS, a pulse ingredient manufacturer, to develop new plant-based products for consumers across North America.

“Lupin has a unique composition that makes it an exciting source for plant-based protein ingredients,” said Lupin Platform Inc. CEO Tristan Choi. “It also fixes nitrogen to the soil and is naturally disease resistant.”

Depending on the species, lupin seeds contain 30 to 40 per cent protein and between two and six per cent starch, wrote Mark Olson in a 2020 blog post for the Alberta Pulse Growers.

“This high level of protein with very little starch makes the crop appealing for protein fractioners struggling to find a market for the large quantities of byproduct starch,” Olson wrote.

By comparison, field pea seeds contain 18 to 26 per cent protein and 35 to 40 per cent starch, said Olson.

Lupin has a moderately deep, thick taproot which increases its ability to scavenge water and nutrients, wrote Olson. However, he noted it responds best to moderate to high, evenly consistent moisture and was concerned that yields would not be economical in the arid Palliser Triangle.

However, research has shown lupin varieties to be resistant to aphanomyces root rot, Choi told the Alberta Seed Guide in May.

At the time, Choi was director at Koralta Agri-Business, which was leading the development of lupin crops in Canada, the report said.

Lupin seeds are eaten as pickled snack food in the Mediterranean, Latin America and North Africa, the Alberta Seed Guide said. Lupin pea flour is also used in Europe and Australia mixed with wheat flour. This enhances flavour and lends a creamy colour to foods, the article added.

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A recent media release from Protein Industries Canada, the federally funded ‘supercluster’ that’s tasked with growing this sector said Mera Food Group, Mera Developments and Benson Farms are going in together to use oats, lentils, hemp, fava beans and chickpeas — to develop beverages and other products for consumers in Western Canada before targeting Asian markets in the second phase.

“Collaboration is the key to driving Canadian innovation,” said Navdeep Bains, minister of innovation, science and industry in the prepared release. “This project is yet another example of how Protein Industries Canada is helping to build relationships along the value chain from farm to fork.”

The Saskatchewan-based companies will all contribute to the undertaking based on their area of expertise.

Benson Farms will help determine the best varieties of the commodities to use via trial plots. Mera Food Group and Mera Developments, meanwhile, will focus on developing the plant-based protein products and ingredients, including an outside partnership with Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL). Together, Mera Food Group, Mera Developments and Benson Farms are investing $3.6 million into the project, with Protein Industries Canada investing a further $3.6 million.

This $7.2-million project is Protein Industries Canada’s 13th project announcement. Together with industry, they’ve committed $272 million into the plant-protein sector through active technology projects. They are currently accepting their third round of ‘expressions of interest.’

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That was the message Bill Greuel, CEO of Protein Industries Canada shared with the Farm Forum Event earlier this winter.

He told the virtual event that agriculture in Western Canada has a lot going for it — innovative producers, a supportive research and development sector, great trade relations with other countries, and a reputation as reliable suppliers of quality food products around the globe.

“You don’t have to go too far to know that people really value the Canadian brand and export markets,” said Greuel. It’s a reputation as old as the first shipment of high-quality milling wheat from the region just after European settlement. That reputation persists and the fundamental elements of the industry remain solid but the world is changing.

Just this year, there have been geopolitical challenges with exporting pulses to India and canola to China. And of course, supply chain disruption became an issue with COVID-19.

“We need an agriculture economy that’s much more resilient to trade disruption,” said Greuel.

As a CEO of an agri-food-tech incubator, it’s not surprising Greuel dedicated a significant portion of his presentation to innovation. He points out that, despite all of our strengths, we lag in terms of investments in innovation on the international stage.

“We’re about half of the OECD average in terms of investment in science and innovation.” That means, just to keep pace with the OECD average, we would have to double our investments in science and innovation across all sectors.

“And that gets us nowhere near some of the most innovative economies that will be looking at transforming their agriculture sectors in the future.”

Despite the lag in innovation funding, Greuel is optimistic. He points to a Barton Report that came out a couple of years ago saying Canada’s agri-food sector could grow from being the 11th largest agri-food sector in the world, to the fifth. According to Greuel, that goal is realistically attainable but not without a significant contribution from value-added processing.

Citing work Protein Industry Canada recently did with Stuart Smyth, a professor in bioresource economy at the University of Saskatchewan, Greuel notes that if value-added processing was increased by 10 per cent across the board in Western Canada (which he acknowledges as a tall order), it would represent about a $6-billion annual incremental value for Canada.

“I really think the opportunity is there,” he said.

When it comes specifically to plant protein, Greuel says there are some significant opportunities for growth.

“We know that there is growing demand in Europe, in North America, in Asia… and that the plant protein market compound annual growth rate year over year is quite large,” he said.

Studies by JPMorgan Chase Barclays Research pegged the global plant protein market at $100 billion to $150 billion by 2035. But Greuel points out that it’s only seven per cent of what the global meat industry is projected to be by then and doesn’t include the growing global demand in the meat replacement market, which will likely be over $100 billion by 2035.

“The opportunity is quite staggering,” he said.

However, accessing those opportunities requires capital and lots of it. Some of the large-scale science and innovation projects Protein Industries Canada leads run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. So, one crucial aspect of the equation is making sure capital is available for future projects.

“We really need to engage the capital community,” said Greuel. “We need to make sure that they really understand the opportunity that plant and value-added processing presents, so we’re doing a lot of work with educating both the capital community and trying to help small- and medium-size enterprises get better and get ready at making that pitch to the capital community.”

Similarly, it’s important to engage the entrepreneur community.

“We’ve got a lot of great multinationals, we’ve got a lot of great small- and medium-size enterprises, but we really need to breed and foster an entrepreneurial community, not only the plant protein sector but also across agriculture in agri-food space.”

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The PBO reported the governing Liberals 2017 Innovation Superclusters Initiative has been slow to select projects and spend money. In 2017, five “superclusters” were given a total of $918 million to spend over five years on collaborative research.

One of the superclusters created was Protein Industries Canada.

According to the federal government, the Prairie-based supercluster was set up to “use plant genomics and novel processing technology to increase the value of key Canadian crops, such as canola, wheat and pulses that are coveted in high-growth foreign markets, such as China and India, as well as to satisfy growing markets in North America and Europe for plant-based meat alternatives and new food products.”

The federal government says the Protein Industries Supercluster would add more than $4.5 billion to the GDP over 10 years and create more than 4,500 jobs over that same time span.

Overall, the Liberals claim the superclusters will create 50,000 jobs and increase GDP by $50 billion over 10 years.

According to the PBO, “Most of the federal spending to date relates to administrative and operating costs (59 per cent), with the remaining distributed over 45 specific research projects (41 per cent). In addition, some $97 million has been committed, but not necessarily spent, on the 45 announced projects.”

Based on current estimates, the report says 355 projects would need to be selected in order to meet spending targets while still falling short of the job and GDP targets.

“PBO estimates that if supercluster partners spend all the money that has been announced, roughly 27,000 direct jobs would be created as a result. However, the nature of these jobs, whether they will be full time, part time, permanent or temporary, is unknown at this point,” said the report, released Oct. 6. “Based on a review of the literature and the experience of other jurisdictions, PBO finds it unlikely that the objective of increasing GDP by $50 billion over 10 years will be met.”

The data and the analysis of the report was based on information gathered prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bill Greuel, CEO of Protein Industries Canada, says the report only shows a snapshot in time.

“The data and information used to pull that report was drawn on March 6, so I don’t think it took into consideration the progress Protein Canada has made in the intervening time frame,” he said. “If you think about the life cycle of our organization, we only have a five-year mandate so seven months in the life of a supercluster that has a five-year mandate is a significant amount of time.”

According to Greuel, Protein Industries Canada has invested $99.9 million into 14 active projects, while leveraging $172 million from industry in doing so.

“I personally don’t think that our pace was slow, when you balance off a need for due diligence and wanting to find the right projects,” he said. “If you think about the five-year mandate that we have, we’re right where we want to be in terms of approved projects.”

He said it was “unfortunate” the PBO didn’t reach out to individual superclusters to receive the most up-to-date information, noting that there was a seven-month gap between the information gathered and the report’s release.

“You have to balance a little bit of due diligence and funding the most amount of projects that will lead to job growth and GDP numbers that we want. We’re looking at doing collaborative research and trying to build out large-scale science and innovation projects that address the biggest issues facing the value-added processing sector, and that takes time.”

Greuel said the pace of some of the research being done by the supercluster has slowed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but said they remain on track to meet 2023 timelines.

And, roughly half of the investments made by the supercluster have come since the middle of March.

“That’s a really strong indication of the strength of the sector,” he said.

Conservative Party of Canada Agricultural Critic Lianne Rood said the Liberals are picking winners and losers by funding superclusters.

“Justin Trudeau’s supercluster program has just been a failure. Like too many Liberal promises, it’s more focused on buzz and words than actually supporting hard-working Canadians,” she said, saying it won’t grow the economy.

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The ‘Thought Leaders Summit’ was designed to get stakeholders in the plant-based protein value chain singing from the same song sheet, albeit in four-part harmony as the industry attempts to leverage the $153 million in federal funds it has to spend.

That means setting aside regional differences and traditional loyalties to focus on how the four pillars of this strategy — developing higher-protein crops, growing them, processing them, and marketing them — can advance the sector as a whole.

The hype and the optimism were reminiscent of an event 22 years ago when the Manitoba Pork Advantage was launched with similar fanfare. Its goal was to rope in the investments needed to rapidly scale up hog production in the province. That goal was achieved, but it hasn’t been painless and it hasn’t always been profitable.

Many of the assumptions guiding the decisions of the time took turns that no one in those heady early days predicted — the availability of cheap feed following the end of export grain freight subsidies, currency fluctuations, environmental constraints, the ability to keep out disease, public trust, and just plain old politics.

To its credit, the Protein Industries Canada initiative is showing no interest in repeating history. If anything, the two-day meeting was as much a cautionary tale of what must be overcome as it was a celebration of the growing global demand for plant-based protein.

Every step of the value chain has what speakers identified as “pinch points,” with the availability of skilled workers and investment capital cited as common themes throughout.

In the seed-development phase, there are concerns with declining protein density in key crops. While yields have been rising in concert with global demand, the protein content in major crops such as soybeans and canola has been trending down over the past two decades, said research economist Owen Wagner of LMC International, a U.K.-based agribusiness consulting firm.

Plant breeders have been chasing increased yield and oil content of these crops due to the demand for vegetable fats and the policy-driven biofuels market. The advent of biotechnology accelerated their ability to select for desired traits.

“Our feeling is that lost in that process was the consideration for protein,” Wagner said. “Protein became a secondary concern and that’s catching up to us now in the form of these lower protein concentrations.”

Relative to the early 1990s, those declines equate to a loss of about 350,000 tonnes of canola protein for Canada and 1.5 million tonnes of soy protein for the U.S. It’s worrisome because much of the increased demand for protein used in animal industry will be for poultry and aquaculture, both of which require protein-dense feeds.

In the production phase, farmers’ ability to take full advantage of the digital revolution is hampered by a lack of internet access in rural areas and the fact that the multiple data-collection systems aren’t compatible with each other, said Rob Saik, an agrologist and digital-farming consultant.

Processing technology must move from the basics to novel processes that can capture more value, which is why that link in the chain is likely to receive as much as 40 per cent of the resources the supercluster has to allocate, participants were told.

As for selling what comes out of this pipeline, Carlo Dade, director of trade and investment research with the Canada West Foundation, cautioned against placing too much stock on today’s market outlooks.

It’s a given that demand for all forms of protein will grow as population grows and incomes rise, and also that Canada is well positioned to meet that demand in any form it takes. But where and how that demand manifests, is subject to change.

“We are constantly shocked by how global demand shifts,” he said.

Dade cited the sudden surge in demand for chocolate by Chinese consumers as an example of why the industry, and the regulatory framework it operates within, needs to be nimble.

“We have to be ready for the Chinese chocolate surprise,” Dade said.

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Until now.

Protein Industries Canada (PIC) says it’s going to make Western Canada a global leader in plant protein as an ingredient in human food and livestock feed.

With world population on the rise both are in increasing demand.

The pan-Prairie, industry-led alliance of more than 120 private sector companies, universities, colleges, and other stakeholders across the West and elsewhere, was one of five ‘superclusters’ to win millions of dollars in federal government funding in February to help bolster Canada’s economy.

In addition to $153 million in federal funds to be awarded over five years, PIC has raised $280 million of ‘in-kind’ contributions from the industry and $150 million to set up a new-venture capital fund called Emmer TechVenture Capital.

Unlike traditional funding clusters, based on one crop with a focus on variety and market development, PIC involves multiple crops, including pulses, canola and hemp.

Its scope is wider too, including the development of new products and technologies, PIC’s new CEO Bill Greuel, said in an interview Oct. 4 during PIC’s ‘Thought Leaders Summit’ in Winnipeg.

Two-hundred and eight delegates were registered for the two-day meeting.

To reach its objective PIC says post-secondary institutions will have to provide the new employees and entrepreneurs the sector needs to not only breed new varieties and develop new ingredients, but invent the digital platforms all along the value chain.

If PIC succeeds it will help generate an estimated $853 million in new commercial activity, add $15 billion to Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) and create 50,000 jobs.

PIC’s headquarters will be in Regina, but it will also have offices in Manitoba and Alberta.

Part of its job is to break down provincial, academic and commercial silos and encourage collaboration and competition, PIC chair Frank Hart told the summit.

PIC will establish an independent committee to select projects to fund.

PIC will also identify areas of research, including fixing the slide in protein levels in crops such as soybeans and canola.

Disrupters should apply, Hart said

“We’re in a world of disruption in this area already,” he said. “If we don’t ride the disruption we’ll lose. We’re going to get disrupted if we stay in the commodities business. It’s just going to get harder and harder to make money in the business and we’re going to be finding ourselves competing with Kazakhstan, which we already are, and pulses in China. We’re never going to win that game so we have to move up the value chain.

“We’ve got to find the disrupters and encourage them or we won’t be successful.”

Farmers will also be key.

“We know that at the end of the day if we can’t make a profitable business out of something it’s probably not worth doing,” Hart said.

Having domestic processors to deliver to also reduces some of the risks farmers face, including poor rail transportation and market access, Greuel said.

Keith Jones, general manager of Rowland Farms, a 40,000-acre organic crops producer in Alberta, told the summit his organic peas shipped to China just dropped 10 per cent in price due to Donald Trump’s trade war.

Jones’ peas are being fractionated in China and the protein and starch exported to Canada to be used in food products here.

“If we can get value added in Canada to serve these high-value markets it’s going to benefit farms, it’s going to benefit communities, it’s going to benefit our local economies so it’s really important to do that,” Jones said.

All Western Canada can benefit from PIC’s initiative, Carlos Dade of the Canada West Foundation told the summit.

“The opportunity comes along, as you saw with demand, once in a lifetime,” he said. “This is our opportunity to seize it and we really have to be ready.

“We’ve been waiting forever for something like this to come on the Prairies. It’s finally here and it’s time that we have the ambition to match the opportunity.”

PIC is looking for 450 members from throughout the value chain, including farm organizations, Hart said. Memberships will cost large organizations $5,000 and small ones $500.

Members will be able to apply for money to fund projects, obtain information, find partners and to influence the plant protein industry, Hart said.

PIC hopes to grant some project funding before March 31, 2019 and even more in the 2019-20 fiscal year, he said.

PIC’s annual meeting will be held in June. A slate of eight directors will be up for election to replace the interim board, Hart said.

PIC’s board will be gender balanced. Three more women are needed for the board, Hart said.

PIC’s eight elected board members will appoint four independent directors, he said.

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Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains on Thursday announced Protein Industries Canada (PIC) as one of five “superclusters” which will receive a piece of a five-year, $950 million federal funding commitment from the Innovation Superclusters Program.

PIC’s share of the federal support isn’t yet finalized — spokespeople for the group see an amount somewhere between $150 million and $200 million — but they expect it to supplement roughly $400 million in support the group has already secured from its members in cash, in-kind commitments and venture capital.

Over the next six weeks, PIC acting president Ron Styles said in a release, the group will work with the federal ISED department to “finalize a funding agreement that together with our proposal will form the framework for implementation going forward.”

PIC, which bills itself as a “pan-Prairie” industry-led alliance of over 120 private-sector companies, schools and other stakeholders across the West and elsewhere, is focused on “fully developing the potential of plant-based proteins from crops such as canola, pulses, grains, hemp and flax.”

“This has huge implications for the western Canadian economy,” PIC chairman Frank Hart said Thursday. “Farmers, service companies, value-added processors, academic institutions, consumers and, through spinoff benefits, everyone on the Prairies and throughout Canada will stand to benefit.”

PIC’s goal, the government said, is to use plant genomics and novel processing technology to increase the value of the crops “coveted” in high-growth foreign markets such as China and India — and to feed demand in North America and Europe for plant-based meat alternatives and new food products.

From the farmer’s perspective, PIC board member Ray Bouchard, of Manitoba’s Enns Bros., sees gains if Canada can become recognized as a plant protein leader — in terms of expanded domestic and export markets, increased crop processing, increased income from crops grown and increases in sustainable productivity.

PIC has laid out four pillars for its efforts over the next five years, including crop breeding, crop production, value-added processing and export development. Shares of funding will be allocated to each pillar, though not necessarily equally, said Hart, the chief risk officer for Regina-based Greystone Managed Investments.

The cluster doesn’t plan to focus strictly on crops which have the most visible protein profiles, such as pulses, Hart said, noting “a lot of ‘hidden’ protein” in crops such as canola.

For example, he said, much of the protein in canola seed remains in the meal and goes to livestock feed, but if it’s possible to separate the seed’s hull from its contents, there may be ways to extract more of its protein for food use.

Across PIC’s four pillars, it’s expected that new operations and facilities will need to be set up to develop new technologies, including software to handle the data required on the crop production side.

Immediate tasks at hand include setting up a headquarters for PIC, along with offices across the Prairie region, Bouchard said Thursday. As a “convening” organization, he said Thursday, “we need boots on the ground in all three (provincial) jurisdictions.”

Bouchard came to the group from the Manitoba-based EMILI (Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative) supercluster proposal that merged last November into PIC, ahead of the Saskatchewan-based group’s second-phase application to the Innovation Superclusters Program.

Once an agreement is in place for the federal contribution, he said, “I think we’ll start seeing projects funded by the fall.”

For Prairie residents, Bouchard and Hart said, the PIC projects may eventually lead to new employment opportunities across the region as facilities such as pulse fractionation plants are built close to their crop base — and for consumers generally, the initiative is expected to ultimately lead to “lots of interesting food choices.”

Commercial activity

Beyond the 120-odd PIC- and EMILI-affiliated companies and organizations, Bouchard said the supercluster also plans to foster collaborations including companies and groups which weren’t in on its initial bid.

PIC players so far include the Universities of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia, Regina, Lethbridge, Guelph, Toronto and Ottawa; companies such as ADM, Canadian National Railway, Cargill, DowDuPont, G3 Canada, Mosaic Co., Parmalat and Richardson International; and various national and provincial crop commodity groups and federal, provincial and municipal agencies.

Looking beyond the five-year federal funding commitment, Bouchard said, the PIC board hopes that within three years it will have its plan in place for years 5 to 10, to fund and maintain these collaborations.

The federal supercluster initiative was launched last year as a challenge to Canadian businesses “of all sizes” to collaborate with institutions on “bold and ambitious strategies that would transform regional economies and develop job-creating superclusters of innovation, like Silicon Valley.”

From an industry perspective, Bouchard said, the supercluster model “has really kind of forced a lot of dialogue” between various stakeholders, of various sizes, as to how they can all benefit.

Furthermore, he said, where research clusters have mainly operated at the university level, the government has moved to make the supercluster model business-led, working in tandem with schools and research agencies, which “may change the way we partner going forward.”

Once it made the federal government’s shortlist of nine supercluster proposals, the combined PIC and EMILI group was “cautiously optimistic” that it would make the final cut, Bouchard said.

Ottawa, he noted, has been looking for ways to implement the recommendations of the Barton report released in February by the government’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth. That report pegged agriculture as a key sector with substantial growth potential.

PIC cites a study estimating its work could generate over $700 million in new commercial activity and “billions” in incremental gross domestic product over the next 10 years, creating about 4,700 new jobs.

Among the nine finalists, Canada’s ag sector was also represented by the Smart Agri-Food Supercluster (SASC), an Alberta-based, “pan-Canadian” group focused on sustainable innovations in food production. — AGCanada.com Network

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