Editorial - 26-18

You don't often hear industry championing the need for more basic research to safeguard its sector's global competitiveness. Yet, that's what farmers and commodity groups have been telling the Senate's agriculture committee as part of its year-long review of Canada's research and innovation efforts.

They're concerned that Canada's scientific capacity to conduct basic agricultural research — both within government and academia — has been on a downward spiral since the mid-1980s. It didn't help that the 2007 S&T Strategy failed to identify agriculture as a research priority for Canada. Recent austerity measures are also taking their toll: a 10% cut to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's budget and fewer grants being awarded to academics for agricultural research.

To its credit, the government's framework will see both the feds and provinces investing more in research and innovation, particularly in public/private partnerships such as clusters. This helps to ensure commodity associations and farmers have more influence on research priorities, but it also requires them to put real money — as opposed to in-kind — on the table, and for smaller commodity groups that may not be possible.

These challenges come as competing countries such as the US, EU, South Korea and Japan are investing more in agricultural R&D. Considering the high return on publicly funded agricultural research (30-50%), revitalizing this sector's basic research capacity should be a no brainer. Canada cannot risk losing its agricultural competitive edge.