Thank you for the opportunity to speak, and thanks to the committee for your wisdom in conducting this study. Innovation and competitiveness in agriculture are so important to our collective prosperity.
As I understand it, to be competitive requires us to be innovative, so in that manner we'd be rapidly creating and deploying new technologies that keep us ahead. We're blessed in Canada with enormous natural resources, and the societal framework to be competitive. Now we seek to better develop the environment for competitiveness, and in particular the innovation element to that.
Why is all this so important, particularly in agriculture? I'd answer that by saying when you look ahead and see the world population growing to nine billion by 2050, and knowing that we need to feed them all, it's clear that we need to innovate. That said, I'm heartened by the fact that we're a rational species, and perhaps the committee might debate that after, but that's my thought. What we've done so far and what we'll continue to do is to think our way through our challenges. We did it thousands of years ago when agriculture itself was invented. Since then our collective innovation efforts in agriculture have allowed us to feed ourselves.
Now, with the burgeoning world population, globalization of markets, and climate uncertainty, our need for innovation in agriculture has never been greater. We need it to continue to compete and to prosper, and, as I said already, to feed ourselves. Simply said, innovation in agriculture is essential. It's essential for our economy, essential for our country, and essential for us as a species. Like the air we breathe and the water we drink, innovation in agriculture is worthy of public interest and, I'd argue, public investment.
If innovation and competitiveness are inextricably linked, then I'd have to say that if we are better innovators, we'll necessarily be better competitors. With that in mind, and seeing the Conference Board gave us our perennial D in innovation again this year, I'd agree we need to examine our circumstance and see if we can do better. It's really around the innovation element of the competitiveness equation that I'd like to share my experience with the committee.
It's important right at the start to understand the difference between research and innovation. Research is discovery and invention, and we do that well. Innovation is the implementation of those ideas to create new products and processes. It is there we need to do better, because innovation creates value for our economy and value for our society. It's also clear to me that part of being better innovators is ensuring that we apply the same resources to innovation that we apply to research, which doesn't mean that we need to reduce our investments in basic research. What it does mean is that we need to increase our investment in innovation so the two are equal.
With that investment must come a commitment to delivering outcomes, like the lower costs and differentiated high-value products that make us more competitive. Then we can transition from being the assimilators and adapters of the technology of others to being the converters of new knowledge into better products and processes. That then allows us to capture the dual benefits of agriculture, the production and processing of raw materials, and the creation of the genetics, the software, the traits, and the new markets that help us compete. After all, the technology base for our agriculture can create high-value jobs, high-value technology exports, and so that, along with all the crops we produce, is what we must also achieve.
I represent the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre. We're new and we work in horticulture—fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees, plants. Horticulture is about healthy eating and positive lifestyles. The farm gate is worth over $5 billion to the Canadian economy. We are a purpose-built innovation organization, an example of the new investment I just mentioned. Of course, the Government of Canada has invested a lot in Vineland, and we appreciate their confidence.
As an organization, though, we aspire to deliver real results, and that means acres in the field and shelf space in the grocery store. We are one of over 160,000 not-for-profit organizations in the country, and that means we're stakeholder focused: we exist to support innovation in the horticulture industry, and their prosperity is our measure of success.
Setting direction and priorities is a shared responsibility. We bring the science and what's possible, and industry brings its needs and new opportunities.
All of our projects are built to deliver real results. In order to do that, they need to have three parts. The first part is a validated consumer or client need that really creates impact. The second is great science, and great science partners. The third is business partners who can deliver the technology to the marketplace.
After all, we're an innovation organization. We're not a manufacturer; we're not a seed company; we're not a grocery retail store; so it's critical to have all three of those elements in place in each project. When you do, your probability of delivering the innovation and being successful are much higher. After all, the process is uncertain, and you want to set the odds in your favour.
Partnering is particularly significant because it builds the clusters that are so important to innovation. Those clusters are literally the place, and that's a virtual or physical place, where organizations can compete and collaborate and innovate.
We have over 160 partners, and that includes grower organizations, businesses, governments, universities, and it is the conversation between science and stakeholders that leads to innovation. The intersection between those two different cultures breeds better ideas and creates context for our work. An example of that work is the cost of production in horticulture, which we took on about three years ago. It's very high and its largely because of labour issues.
We have programs that address the labour supply problem, but the labour cost problem remains. The solution really is automation. We need to automate horticulture processes, as the harvesting of grain crops was automated by the combine back in 1880. The innovation is to lever Ontario's automation industry into horticulture and create robots that plant, harvest, and package crops in a way that best fits our industry and our production systems. This we have done.
With new models and new approaches, and actually setting out to build them so you have to do it, innovation can become Canada's competitive advantage, and it will be innovation that sustains our efforts in the long race that competitiveness is.
With that, Mr. Chair, I'll end my words.
Thank you very much.
