Evidence of meeting #53 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was biotechnology.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
But would you agree or not agree that if the demand is there, for whichever side of the issue, the production side, meaning farmers—I was a farmer as well in my former life—will adapt to that.
That's really the question I'm asking.
12:40 p.m.
Executive Director, FarmStart
Yes. Farmers tell me time and again, “Just tell me what I need to produce and how to do it and I'll do it.”
12:40 p.m.
Director General, Plant Biotechnology Institute, National Research Council Canada
I would agree; I think they would.... From my experience working with organic producers, when we had our business in organic, for some it was a philosophy, a way of life, and for others it was simply a straight business choice: “I can make more money selling that, and I need to make a living.” They made that choice.
You have a whole collection of people who were growing products organically for a different array of reasons. I think if the money and the market demand is there, people will respond to whatever production system.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you.
I will ask Mr. Bellavance to take the chair, please.
Mr. Easter, five minutes.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thanks, Chair.
And thanks, everyone, for the wide-ranging discussion.
Penny, when you talked about the Science Media Centre and what you do, I couldn't help but see Barry Wilson sitting there. I just can't imagine the media ever getting it wrong.
12:40 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
It might be a good idea to put a motion through this committee to set up a political media centre, so we could get it approved.
12:40 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Anyway, Christie, early on in your statement—I didn't quite catch it all—you said we should take a precautionary approach. Could you expand on what you were talking about?
12:45 p.m.
Executive Director, FarmStart
I think before the release of any new technologies we should understand the implications of those technologies.
I don't think we can ever actually know what will happen down the road. We have to balance the future implications of something we can't predict with what we want to get done today. I think the precautionary approach essentially suggests that we need to err on the side of precaution: don't jump into something if we haven't done enough studies.
That's not to say we should spend 50 years doing studies, but we should probably spend more than ten years doing studies on things that have lifetimes of replication and genetic modification potential. We need peer review trials. We need studies that come from other people than those who are developing the products.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
We have several areas, and I think we're finding on the biotechnology tour that we have organic, non-GMO, and GMO. Should that precautionary principle apply to all areas?
12:45 p.m.
Executive Director, FarmStart
Yes. A precautionary approach doesn't mean don't do anything. We have to ask, is this the avenue we should be going down, or should we be looking at other ways to reach the same ends that may have less serious implications, or may have implications that we can better estimate before we start down the path?
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
On research, you recommended funding appropriate research and extension. How do you think your area of research compares to non-organic and GMO? Do you feel that there isn't a proper balance? We have the organic centre in Truro, so there has been expansion in organic research. But is it enough to get us where we have to go? We're worried about the research cutback in the estimates, but where else does the Government of Canada have to go?
12:45 p.m.
Executive Director, FarmStart
From what I understand, the biotech sector has been receiving an annual amount of $7 million for approximately the past 15 years. The first money that the organic sector has received in research dollars is recent, and that's a three-year amount of $2.6 million. So just as a starting point, there's a discrepancy.
I think we also need to look at our business risk management dollars. Income support payments and the business risk management money we have in our agricultural policy framework could be spent differently. The risk management association in the United States funds a lot of local-level, strategic agricultural research through their risk management dollars. To me, helping farmers farm better and become more resilient is probably one of the best risk management strategies we have.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
I think that's an area where Frédéric is working.
We can't even get a handle on the numbers. We need to be able to get a handle on the numbers as a committee on what is being spent on research in total.
Mr. Konecsni, you talked about wheat and said that Canada is certainly behind Australia in production. Is it food wheat that we are talking about? Is it a result of genetically modified wheat in Australia that they're ahead of us? What's the reason why we're falling behind, according to you?
12:50 p.m.
Director General, Plant Biotechnology Institute, National Research Council Canada
There are probably multiple reasons for that. I'm not aware of any GM wheat grown anywhere in the world...or there's been research on it. I think it has been the amount and the focus of the research that's been done in terms of traditional breeding, breeding programs, and investment in wheat. Public sector investment has not been focused on wheat. That's an area where you now see a lot of marshalling of effort and resources starting to happen in the public sector.
March 3rd, 2011 / 12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I think the discussion we're having about biotechnology--and Christie had mentioned the precautionary principles that should be in place regarding biotechnology--is actually kind of what we are studying on this. We've had some witnesses come in front of committee who would just like to see a moratorium, certainly on GM, and perhaps even a wider swath of biotechnology. We've had others who have been strong advocates for it.
I think we're on the middle ground. We can't ban everything, and I don't think we want to. It's also not a free-for-all. We're somewhere in between, and part of this committee's work is to find out what processes we should put in place. When it comes to biotechnology, we went on a tour, as a committee, and we were briefed by a number of different organizations that there is a market approach type of process that somewhat limits just how far and wide biotechnology goes. And I think it ties into the numbers Jerome was talking about.
If you're going to develop a particular trait in a plant, it's in the $100 million to $150 million zone, and it takes somewhere in the 7-year to 15-year zone to come out at the far end of the process and actually have something that's marketable. As a result, research companies have to be focused on what it is they're doing, because they obviously want to remain in close communication with farmers, who are going to buy their product, because if the farmers aren't going to buy their product, what's the point of that investment and taking that risk?
However, there is also the other side, which is what I'll call the process and regulatory approach, which is what we're looking at.
Jerome, you had mentioned that from your point of view the biotechnology side of agriculture receives tremendous scrutiny. I wonder if you could elaborate on that, because it might address one of the concerns that Christie raised, which is that there might not be due oversight. I'm not suggesting there is enough or that there is too much. I'd just like your opinion, from what you've seen, based on the comment you made earlier.
12:50 p.m.
Director General, Plant Biotechnology Institute, National Research Council Canada
People who have been involved in commercializing biotechnology.... And I had moved down the path of developing a plan and a business case for commercializing a genetically engineered oilseed that would produce fish oil, so I have an idea. The product was still a couple of years away from commercialization when I left the company. But the investment and the required scrutiny analysis--the number of toxicity and safety studies that were done--were incredible. And yet we were marketing organic products and the scrutiny wasn't the same.
I was talking to the communications director from CFIA at one point in time, and he said that there were more health issues and incidents that they encounter in organic production than there were in a conventional or a GM production system. You've seen the example of the California spinach that had E. coli contamination. The ability to store and to treat food products in an organic system is limited compared to a conventional system.
The other thing I learned, being in the organic business for 10 years, was that not all organic certification bodies are created equal. They're not the same, and it's the certifying body itself that should be scrutinized.
One of the benefits of the organic system, and one of the things we argued in our company, was that we had to develop an identity preserve system and a traceability system that enabled us to trace any product back to its source so we could demonstrate it was organically certifiable. That same system could be applicable to a GM system, to keep the containment and the control. And in fact it does, and it was a very good system and we made a significant investment in the company to do that traceability.
But to put a new dietary supplement on the market you didn't need to go through any sort of regulatory approval. All you had to do was just accept responsibility. If it caused harm to somebody, you'd be liable.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Let me just finish off my time here. I think I just have one minute.
We did a study on the future of farming and we were talking to young farmers. I would say that if I could crystallize the main concerns we heard from young farmers, the first were barriers to getting into farming, and there were a number of them. And the second main one was profitability. In order for them to choose this lifestyle and live this lifestyle, there has to be profitability so they can raise their families, and feed their own family from the labour of their hands.
I see biotechnology helping with profitability. When you look at the farming of 30 or 40 or 50 years ago, and the technological advances that have helped farming become more efficient, more effective, with better yields, lower losses, perhaps less use of pesticides, less use of fuel--fuel is a huge input cost--I see biotechnology being an enticement to younger-generation people who want to get into farming.
Christie, I'll put this question to you. How do you see biotechnology in terms of marketing agriculture to young people to show them that this is profitable? This is a resource they have that they can use. They don't have to use it, but it's there if they want it.
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, FarmStart
Again I think it depends on what technology you're talking about. I think the history of genetic modification has been tied to the purchase of other chemicals from the companies that have been selling the genetically modified seeds. That sets up farmers in a power imbalance.
I think farmers who are operating in the commodity system exist within a very consolidated and concentrated agricultural system and they don't have a lot of choice.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Don't they have choice? Can't they decide that yes, they'll go with that GM product or they won't?
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, FarmStart
I think they can. I've talked to a lot of farmers who started using GM products and they've stopped, but then they're dealing with the recurrence of those crops, and that's what's led to increased used of herbicides, to deal with the volunteers who have come after they've used GM systems.
I think the question is understanding that you can approach agriculture in many different ways. The farmers we work with have a variety of different skills, and there's a different sweet spot for every scale where you use your equipment and your infrastructure most efficiently but you also have an economy of scope where you're integrating more than one or two types of cropping or livestock systems.
So the farmers we see entering the sector are trying to think of it differently because they don't want to be at the mercy of big corporations who are telling them what seeds to grow and how to feed their animals and what price they're going to get. They want to be more in control of the price they're getting. They want to be more in control of their operating costs and the costs they have to pay off farm to make those costs work.
I don't think our agricultural system that is dependent right now on chemicals and genetic engineering, or biotechnology, depending on how you want to define it, is profitable. We have $1 billion in income support payments and we have $1 billion out in debt servicing payments, not even paying down the capital. So we have a system that is based on debt. I don't think many farmers would say they're making a really good living as it stands; 60% of farmers in the sector are getting out of the business in the next 10 years. Eighty per cent are getting out of the business and 60% don't have people who want to take over their farms.
So I don't think the way we've set up agriculture right now is working for the farmers.
