I'm a Guelph grad also. I studied animal science, and that was my forte. I took a bit of crop science while I was there, and it is a real concern. I graduated in the early 1980s. I'm pretty old. That wasn't the case when I was there. For students, there was more public funding, and we researched and studied basically whatever was pressing on the day as far as consumer demand was concerned, or where we thought consumer demand was going to be, or whatever animal health issues we thought were going to be at the cutting edge.
It is a concern. I still do some work with the university, working with projects as a consultant and sitting on a couple of committees, and it has really split the faculty. The need for publicly funded research not tied to industry is hugely important. The University of Guelph has been nicknamed the “University of Monsanto”, and there are greenhouses on the campus exclusively the property of these chemical companies.
You referred to food sovereignty, and one of the tenets or central hubs of food sovereignty is that citizens and farmers are central to determining agriculture and food policy nationally and globally. We don't have that today; we have companies, such as Monsanto and Cargill and ADM and Syngenta and Dow, who are the drivers of agriculture, not only in Canada but also globally. I've travelled to African countries, I've been to India, and I've spent a lot of time in Australia and European countries, and these guys are bullies. They're not only influencing our educational institutions, but unfortunately they also have a huge amount of influence on our governments. I'd like to see citizens starting to be able to determine what our food and agricultural policy and system actually looks like, and start meeting their needs.