Agriculture Committee on Sept. 18th, 2018

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

I want to get one last question in to the Alberta Pulse Growers. The committee did a trip in the spring session. Unfortunately, we were not able to make it to Alberta, but one of our stops was in Saskatoon. We visited the Saskatchewan food centre, and we got to taste some of the amazing products they're making out of pulses. It's really an amazing setting in a totally food-secure environment where people can use various rooms for different production, to see if it's actually commercially viable.

I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about some of the stuff you're doing in Alberta with respect to that, because we saw some great promise there. I'm really interested in how the feds can help out with that.

[Leanne Fischbuch]

Thank you.

Quite often, the Alberta Pulse Growers works in conjunction with our Government of Alberta colleagues at the Food Processing Development Centre in Leduc. It's similar to the centre you visited in Saskatoon. The centre there also has what they call an incubator, so small companies can come in and do some work there to try their products.

In 2016, for the International Year of Pulses, we did a specific project with the Food Processing Development Centre that looked at bringing more companies to the centre to work on inclusion of pulses in their products. From that opportunity we had probably about seven companies come in to take a look at incorporation. It was a bit of a show and tell. They incorporated the product and then we had a chance to taste some of the things. They were very good. They ranged from a jerky type of product to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Ms. Fischbuch, I apologize. I have to cut you off again. Perhaps you can continue later.

Mr. Joe Peschisolido, welcome. It's your turn for six minutes.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's great to see everyone back from our summer in the ridings.

Madam Fischbuch, if you want to continue your previous answer, you can.

[Leanne Fischbuch]

Thank you very much.

There was a range of products. It was very interesting to see, because for the companies that came to us for this work it was pretty much their first time using pulses and the ingredients that pulses can provide. Some of it was protein, and some of it was fibre. I think the products were really quite successful.

The challenge is that these small companies now have to go out and try to do this on their own. We encouraged them and provided a bit of funding from our growers for this type of project.

Is there a way to have something on the food processing side of things to encourage more of that trial and error in the development of new products? I think that's something that may have been in the FTP Calgary statement, to work on that. I think there is a good opportunity.

Of course, for Alberta it's small companies and medium-sized enterprises that are working on these types of things. A lot of the large companies have the funds to go out and do that.

Another thing that we are waiting to see is the development of the Protein Industries Canada supercluster, because there could be funds there as well. I think it's important to keep an eye on that for more development of value-added products.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Madam Fischbuch, last week our agriculture minister, Lawrence MacAulay, along with our chair, Mr. Finnigan, and one of our colleagues, Mr. Longfield, were at an announcement for $11.1 million for research into pulses. How could those funds, perhaps along with other funds, be helpful in attracting more companies into the industry?

[Leanne Fischbuch]

When we looked at our application for the agriscience cluster funding, we split it into four areas according to the priorities of the industry: working on projects that covered genetic advancement, agronomics, health and sustainability. Within those areas, I think we need to consistently provide a supply of product to the marketplace, which should secure value-added companies to come, because they're going to need that supply to make their products.

As long as our growers can consistently provide that money—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

I'm sorry, Ms. Fischbuch. Again, I have to interrupt. We have a vote that's going to take place in half an hour. Do we want to—

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

I want to ask about Nutella. I grew up eating Nutella.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Do you want to keep on for another five or 10 minutes?

Okay, we're back at it for another five minutes.

Ms. Fischbuch, you might be able to finish. Go ahead.

[Leanne Fischbuch]

I want to re-emphasize that, as long as our growers can consistently provide a nice supply of the product, that's what food companies want. They want consistency. They want something they can depend on when they move it through their formulations.

The investment, the $11.1 million that came to us, will help us provide that and enable our growers to give that supply to the marketplace, which is attractive.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you.

Are we going to continue, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

That's three minutes.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Mr. MacLean, thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation. In particular, I thought about my nonna, my grandma. I loved Nutella, and she would bribe me to eat pulses. I didn't know they were called pulses. They were just beans that I didn't like. Growing up, I had a lot of Nutella sandwiches. Who knew about hazelnuts, expansion, and all of that?

On a slightly more serious note, you were talking about vineyards. In my neck of the woods, in Steveston—East Richmond, we have blueberries. We have quite a few innovative entrepreneurs who are creating lovely blueberry wine. Do you have any projects that we can maybe apply to develop a vineyard based on blueberries?

[Gregor MacLean]

We've never been approached with that. The Niagara region is pretty spoiled, as Alistair mentioned, in terms of its beautiful climate for vineyards. We do have a food team that does product development of that nature. Basically, at a certain point, with farm land value, it's a bit of a debate on who gets it.

Right now, the vineyards are producing a lot of value. There's a lot of greenhouse value as well, but I imagine that they'd have to show pretty high value to justify the land acquisition.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

You were talking about automation and robotics. Some people view it as a positive; others may view it as a negative. Can you comment a little on that?

[Michael Duncan]

We've gotten both reactions. People don't want people replaced. At this stage, the way the farms are operating.... We've had conversations with a farmer we work with in the 42nd hour he's been sitting in his combine. They don't have a whole lot of spare employees.

There are a lot of tasks that could be done to improve crop quality that aren't being done because it's too hard to get people to go out in the field. I mean, there's dirt; there are flies, and it's hot. It's really hard work, but a robot could go 24 hours straight. That's what I'm trying to get our robotics partner to do, put a little generator on the thing and make it a kind of hybrid so that it can run 24-7 and have all the sensors you could need to detect powdery mildew or overheating in the crops.

Take soybeans. The soybean is described by Syngenta as a crop that tries to kill itself. The more robust it gets, the hotter it gets, and it dies. A simple idea would be to run smaller robots underneath to detect where the hot areas are and then just shred some leaves above them or something really simple. A lot of these really simple things could be done to help create better crops or create better conditions, and not necessarily replace people.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you.

I want to thank Niagara College and the Alberta Pulse Growers Commission for being here with us today.

Thanks to all the members as well.

The meeting is adjourned.