Agriculture Committee on May 5th, 2014

[Bill Emmott]

But it's where we're going. Science is so tight now, and getting better—and will get better.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Good. Thank you.

Jim, let me turn to you and perhaps ask questions in the same vein.

What sort of science and research has greatly helped your industry over, let's say, the last 10 to 20 years? Has it been meaningful for the sector?

[Dr. Jim Brandle]

Yes, it has been meaningful, just to answer the last question first.

As to examples, I like to look at the greenhouse industry and to see how it has developed from a very small set of operations in Leamington and Niagara, in Ontario, as an example, into this burgeoning industry worth literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. It bristles with technology. It starts with what Bill just mentioned, with good genetics. You can imagine all those tomato varieties and all those cucumber varieties, the flower varieties that grow in those greenhouses and exactly how much work and effort has been put into those to absolutely optimize their performance in those houses.

Then there's the energy technology, the lighting technology, the skin of the greenhouse, the steel, the way the heat is distributed and how the air moves, and all of the research and all of the energy that's been put into that. This has been Canadian work and spillover work from Holland. I would say that in that space in particular we've done extremely well.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Yes, I was going to say I would imagine that....

Is that my time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Yes, I just wanted to let him finish.

Now I'll go to Mr. Eyking, for five minutes, please.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Gentlemen, thank you for coming.

My first question will be for you, Mr. Emmott, about the dairy industry.

I read in the brochure that you sent, on page 3, “Examples of Innovation in Dairy”, and you mentioned the thousands of cheeses that are developed and the yogourt varieties.

As you're well aware, there is a European trade agreement coming up, and your industry is going to be probably one of the hardest hit with this agreement. You're been informed that the federal government is supposed to offer assistance to help you get through this, because there will be thousands of tonnes of cheese coming in.

As part of that innovation, what would you be looking for? First of all, we have no knowledge that any money has been announced, so I'm asking you first whether any has been announced. What would you be looking for? If you had the money and the tools at your disposal, what would you be doing in innovation to help you adjust to the European...I don't know whether you call it the shock, but to what is going to happen with your industry?

[Bill Emmott]

There's been no money announced or any programs announced at all.

What we're looking for is something that's going to help create excitement in the marketplace so that the consumer will still be able to differentiate what is Canadian cheese and what is European cheese. We're not opposed to the consumer having a choice; they just need to have a choice that they know they are actually making, not one that they're making by mistake.

What we'd like to see is some way, whether through different packaging or otherwise, of differentiating it. Does there need to be more advertising? That remains to be seen.

We all know that most people like to buy local, and so we're looking to help the local artisans who have developed a lot of the specialty cheese market, both in Quebec and Ontario, to differentiate their product in the marketplace.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you very much. Hopefully that happens and you guys can adjust to it and increase your production.

Mr. Brandle, it's good to see you. I had the pleasure last year of visiting your research station. I think every person in this committee and most Canadians should visit it. It's amazing what you do and the research you're doing there. I walked right through your facilities: the greenhouse, the vegetables, the orchards, and even the nursery crops. You do a lot of work on that.

After our tour, we had a meeting with some of your group. One of the key things that came up was funding. It is federal research.... I think what we realized is that you're a very key partner for southern Ontario for development of technology, and you have stated that.

There was a concern about the funding for your facilities—in the past, it has been declining, but also about the future. The demands are going to be greater for us to compete with the world, I guess, because it's what we're selling to besides Canadians.

Can you give us a snapshot about what you're facing in those terms? How has the federal funding been over the last few years? What is it now, and what is it going to be? How are you adjusting, and where does it all sit with you?

[Dr. Jim Brandle]

To be completely frank, we're doing pretty well. Recently, maybe it was last week, there was a joint federal-provincial announcement of $26.5 million of federal-provincial funding for the next five years to take us to 2018. That provides for us half of what we need to operate. The other half we get out of—and I'll put it in quotes—“the marketplace”. That means other research grants, other programs, such as the existing agricultural innovation programs, but provincial programs, and we bring in a lot of industry money.

We're operating right now at break-even. That's where a not-for-profit tends to like to be. I'd say the funding scenario looks pretty good for us.

Really, what the challenge is now is to really deliver the goods, to be better innovators and all of that. I would say, in our situation in our subsector, that it is reasonably looked after. The question is how we build it across the country and engage everybody else in a similar focus on research and innovation.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

I was visiting some of the farmers in the area, and one of the biggest concerns at that time was climate change. It's either too hot sometimes, or they had frost damage and were trying to deal with it because the blossoms were coming.

What is your research station doing with helping that area adjust to conditions, whether it's frost or dryness or various conditions that they're facing, to adapt to climate change?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Give a very quick answer, please.

[Dr. Jim Brandle]

I don't know whether this is a word, but part of it is what I'd call the “greenhouse-ification” of agriculture. One of the ways to mitigate against climate change is to put product under a controlled environment structure. We're starting to see, for example, more strawberries or other berries under tunnels and fruit trees under tunnels. We have a Cravo, which is a retractable roof production system. Those are made in Brantford.

As another way to mitigate against climate change, we have a genomics project in which we use a method called reverse genetics to create plants that are more resistant to drought, and ones that can grow at lower temperatures.

There's a bit of a thousand points of light. It depends on the particular industry as to what exactly the impact of climate change will be. Sometimes it's a question of water; sometimes it's temperature. We try to address those impacts from a production standpoint, bringing the genetics around to help adapt to those situations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Eyking.

We'll go to Mr. Dreeshen for five minutes, please.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today.

Mr. Emmott, you were talking about the three jobs waiting for every agriculture graduate. I think we also tied that in to the discussion about the perceived brain drain perhaps being a brain gain as well. Of course, I think it's important that we speak about the concept of exporting the knowledge that we have as we work with different countries and are able to bring all of those types of things together.

I'm curious as to whether you can talk about some of the programs you have seen and perhaps about the analysis of work that you have in the cluster, things that are international in scope, so that we can get a feel for what is happening in that regard.

[Bill Emmott]

There's a thing called mastitis, which is a disease of the udder. Part of the cluster is some of the scientists are in New Zealand, some are in the U.S., and some of them are in Europe, and with the magic of the Internet and everything now, they could quickly transfer this knowledge back and forth. I think that's one way they keep up on what's going on.

There are many professorships where they exchange professors and they learn on the job when they're in another country. There's nothing better than hands-on in another country to learn that what you're doing here is normal here but it's not normal everywhere.

When you get to see that up close and personal through these types of programs, I think it really does help you not only export your knowledge but import, as was said, the knowledge so that you get the best of all worlds.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Brandle, could you perhaps expand somewhat too on the cluster approach that you're working at, plus some of the international work that people in your field have been able to deal with as far as research is concerned?

[Dr. Jim Brandle]

Clusters, as you know, be they physical or virtual, bring people together to make innovation happen. It's an important thing that we're all together rubbing shoulders and talking and competing, and creating ideas and creating forward momentum. That's the concept. How you do it again depends on the organization, but it's important that you do it. Working in isolation is never the right way.

In terms of what we do that's international, I have a couple of particularly interesting examples. One would be sweet potato breeding. If all of you have been out for dinner to a restaurant in the last little while, you'll realize that sweet potato fries have become quite popular. Our production in Canada is not very high because they are not a crop that's well adapted to low temperatures. We do okay, but our quality is not great for processing, so we collaborate internationally to develop sweet potatoes that are adapted to production in Canada to try to capitalize on the opportunity that the huge boost in consumption has brought.

Another interesting element would be something we call feeding diversity, or world crops. As you know, there's a demographic shift in Canada based on new immigration patterns that has us with larger populations of people from India and China, who bring with them their own culinary traditions and needs for vegetables that they would normally eat at home. Of course we have broad international collaborations to try to bring in seed, material, and plants, and understand how to grow those crops so that we can again capitalize on the opportunity that immigration has created for the country.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Brandle, you also mentioned how we are doing well as far as research is concerned, but there needs to be more work done as far as innovation is concerned. I wonder if you could talk about the need for each of those components in a total research package.

[Dr. Jim Brandle]

The research part creates the discovery. That's where the real value is. It's something new, something better, something we've never seen before. You have that idea, that concept, and then now you need to do the work it takes to get it to the marketplace. There's adaptive research, applied research. There are all the partnerships you need to bring that kernel of a concept all the way along. We invest very heavily in that upstream part.

What I'm suggesting to the committee is that we should invest just as heavily in that second part. How we do it is part of the discussion. One of the ways to do it is to create a purpose-built organization like mine that's there to say, “Okay, you take those ideas and deliver them into the marketplace as best you can. Build the relationships, the science partnerships, the business partnerships, the grower partnerships in order to do that.”

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

That's working its way through agri-innovation, and as different groups are working with them as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dreeshen.

Now we'll go to Madam Raynault, please, for five minutes.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for joining us this afternoon.

Mr. Emmott, in your brief, you mention that journalists who visited a robotic dairy farm were surprised at how popular the back scratcher was. The cows really enjoyed having their backs scratched by the automatic scratcher. I represent the riding of Joliette in Quebec. When I toured farms in the region, there was a dairy farm that had the same apparatus, and the cows seemed to like it.

A lot of innovation is at work. In that particular farm, the milking was done automatically. Cows didn't necessarily go based on their needs, because the robot recognized they had just been milked. If a cow was developing mastitis, the milk would go into another container, not the milk tank. It's a very innovative local farm.

What are your facilities like in Quebec, and what are your operations?

[Bill Emmott]

Well, 6,000 of our 12,000 members reside in Quebec, and they're very strong in our association. One of our vice-chairmen, in my position, is Bruno Letendre. He and I correspond it seems on a weekly basis. Some of the research that goes on in Quebec...the research farm is in Lennoxville. It's federally funded. It's a tremendously good, new facility. The cows are well cared for. I've been impressed with it the three times that I've been there. I'm quite jealous, as a matter of fact. It's a really good facility.

Quebec is a very strong supporter of the dairy industry in all of Canada. As you well know, there are about 400 robotic barns now in Canada. It's becoming a significant player. It's not a large player yet, but it's a significant player.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Less than 5% of Canada's farms are robotic, but I have no doubt we'll see more and more of them over time, given the flexibility robotic farms offer families. Of course, it's very costly and requires a tremendous investment on their part.

Turning to cheese now, I heard you say in your presentation that we needed to do more to promote Canadian-made cheeses. Some people are quite glad to have more French cheeses coming to Canada, but at the end of the day, our cheese farmers are going to lose money.

What can we do to make our cheeses more popular?

[Bill Emmott]

I think it's quite simple in that most people want to buy local; they want to buy from somebody they know. If it's a producer who's in the next township, or in the next town, they're more likely to want to buy from them because they can say, “I support farmer Smith just around the corner.” You have to get that across to them. They know what the standards are in Canada. There's never a question about our standards; they're very high here for the quality, in the way it's made, and all that. I think that the consumer will support Canadian product.