Again, I love that question, so thank you.
Indeed, there is such an imbalance in research and development, and I think that needs to be fixed, because a lot of the great innovation leading us towards more sustainable practices is coming from ecological agriculture, partially through organic agriculture. Yet, when we only invest a quarter of one per cent in R and D for organics, especially when we know the organic sector in Canada is growing at an incredible rate.... It is now maybe only 2.7% of the market, but it's growing rapidly, and whatever comes out of organic research can be applied to all farmers. A lot of the best practices in terms of crop rotation diversity came out of organic agriculture.
Again, just to bring it back to seeds, that imbalance in research is definitely there. There is virtually no investment in plant breeding for seeds. All of the attention is going to genetic engineering or plant biotech. That needs to happen, but the sector of organic plant breeding is incredible. We have had great results in Canada showing that the seeds developed to perform well without inputs perform well both in years of drought and in years of flood when compared to conventional cultivars. Now, that is great for organic farmers, but those seeds could also be applied to conventional farmers to help reduce how much pesticides or fertilizers they use, and fertilizers are also a great source of greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture.
All that is to say that I think we need to invest in Canada. The biggest investment I remember from Canada was a $22-million investment last year in grains in the Prairies. We'd love to see an investment, not necessarily at the same scale, in organic agriculture, plant breeding.