Opinion
Submitted by Lauren Comin, Seeds Canada and Tyler McCann, CAPI
Canadian farmers’ increasing concerns about whether they will be able to continue to get the new varieties they need is warranted. Improved genetics, in the form of new varieties, are critical to boosting profitability and productivity on the farm, helping farmers manage disease pressures and more. Unfortunately, at a time of belt tightening in governments and the private sector, access to new varieties may be at risk. Fortunately, the solution to sustained variety development may be more obvious than we think.
Too often, talking about the future of variety development becomes political or ideological. Rightfully so, as changing the system comes with a lot of risk and uncomfortable questions: will changes cost farmers more, will more control be put in the hands of big corporations, will public plant breeding be put at risk?
If we want to protect the future of plant breeding in Canada, we need to move past these debates and finally take the steps that will safeguard our plant breeding framework.
In many of the countries that Canadian grain growers compete with, plant breeding is funded through royalties collected whenever the seed is used to grow a crop, both at the time of certified seed purchase and with farm-saved seed. This is critical to ensure that whoever is doing the plant breeding, whether government, university, not-for-profit organization or private company, has the incentive to keep breeding and the resources to fuel future innovation.
Canada does not take this approach, funding variety development through certified seed sales, taxpayer subsidies through program dollars and government capacity, and producer check-offs. It creates a complicated web where money gets from the farmer to the breeder but passes through many hands first.
After a breakdown in government-led consultations on a national royalty system which was intended to fix a poorly defined problem, the seed sector launched the Variety Use Agreement (VUA), a voluntary contract-based system, as a solution for sustainable plant breeding. The VUA requires farmers to sign a contract, declare the acreage they plant to saved seed, and then pay a royalty to the plant breeder on the use of that saved seed.
The VUA was needed in part because, despite both public and privately bred varieties contributing to producer check-offs, with few exceptions, private breeders do not receive commission funding. They also typically do not benefit from large public research grants and are not subsidized by taxpayers.
Private breeding companies, both big and small, only have the value of the intellectual property they develop in new varieties to sustain their innovation pipeline. And, when only 20% of the seed planted in western Canada is certified, there is not enough return to support private breeders.
However, the reason why growers are increasingly concerned is that, given cuts to public funding, this low return will not be sufficient to sustain public breeding either. The public breeding footprint is already shrinking as governments close, consolidate or offload breeding programs.
Wheat has been mostly spared to date, but barley, pulses and flax have already felt the impact. A better approach is needed.
Since 2020, the VUA platform has grown to include 27 varieties across several crop types. Apart from an oat variety in the east, none of the varieties on the platform were bred by AAFC. In fact, AAFC intentionally keeps their varieties royalty free, not only negatively impacting their own programs, but also private programs trying to offer competitive varieties to farmers.
Allowing a VUA on public varieties may be the simple solution that saves public breeding programs from the chopping block. You can estimate the benefit to AAFC of a VUA by looking at the variety acreage in provincial crop insurance data in the three prairie provinces from 2020-2024. If a $2/acre VUA was paid on the 19 AAFC bred varieties that were made available for sale and had uptake after the VUA’s introduction in 2020, AAFC would have received approximately $22 million of additional funding in that short time.
AAFC’s participation in a farm saved seed royalty framework, like the VUA, could make or break the future of public breeding programs at a time when governments are going to be looking under the cushions for every penny they can find. It will also help attract private breeding programs by levelling the playing field. It does not give any one an unfair advantage, and takes nothing away from farmers, while also making it easier for other breeders to compete.
It is true that amount would be in addition to the check-offs farmers already pay, but using new varieties is an investment in your farm’s future, and check-offs only represent a fraction of development costs. It will also make the public breeding programs less reliant on check-off dollars, meaning those amounts could be directed to agronomic research, market development, or other gaps that desperately need to be filled. This model also ensures that when the farmer pays a royalty the money goes to the breeding programs producing varieties rather than into a complex web of organizations and programs.
Changing the approach to royalties is not about a revolution in plant breeding. It is actually just a small step forward. A step towards putting Canada on a similar playing field to its competitors, to attracting more variety development and giving farmers more choice. Most importantly it is a step towards saving plant breeding in Canada.
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