It's somewhat tied to the question I answered before. For the most part, Canadian agriculture is based on being productive and competing at a world scale on both productivity and quality. Again, that's a minimum; it's always required for the agriculture that we practice.
I think commodity groups are looking for traits that distinguish their particular commodities to bring them to the attention of the public, particularly when they relate to health claims. We need science to back up those types of health claims.
We're increasingly looking at agricultural products for non-food uses. For example, we have a number of projects where plant fibres are incorporated into plastics that might be used in car parts. I'm involved in an bio-auto project.
This of course raises some societal questions. I think science-based research proposals are increasingly required to cast a broader net and include social scientists in the grant applications to look at the societal implications when crops are diverted to non-food uses. What are the long-term implications on the health of the field? How does it affect the distribution of food in our society? Again, I'm involved in a research project where we have economists as part of the research proposal.