There are lots of questions that aren't answered, outside of the germplasm question. As we become warmer, we may have to look at different crops, and not just at whether or not we can find new and improved wheat: corn is becoming more of a reality in Manitoba now.
Some of us are still skeptical, because three times in the past it has increased in acreage and then has fallen. I think we're up to just over the acreage we were at in 1981, until we had an early frost and corn didn't look as promising, but if the global warming scenario is the reality it appears it will be, we can double our yields with things such as corn. That's certainly a possibility—just adding new crops and adapting things such as corn to our area.
There is another area I've been intrigued with, called biological farming. I did my master's work in zero tillage and I know there are a lot of advantages to it in building soil, but it's still a slow process.
Is there something that could be faster? In The Western Producer a couple of weeks ago, Dr. George Lazarovits, who used to be an Ag Canada employee and is now with A&L Biologicals, made note of a farmer in Ontario who got 300 bushels an acre of corn last year, whereas the neighbouring farms got 135 bushels. There is a case of doubling yields, but we don't know why it happened and why that farmer can do it.
I've tried some of these things on my own ticket under the auspices of biological farming. I can't get any ARDI support for it—that is, the Agri-Food Research and Development Initiative. Unfortunately, depending on the year.... Last year we got nothing from any of these things that we tried.
There is a role there for somebody to do something, and these are not things that the multinationals are promoting. If we can increase nutrient recycling in our soil in a faster way than using zero tillage and reduced tillage, nobody is working on such solutions.
That would be one example, but we're going to move very slowly unless we have some publicly funded dollars there.