INDUSTRY PROFILE
Adaptation Council Pushing the Right Buttons
By Owen Roberts

The inherent wisdom of involving farmers in research decision-making is clearly seen by Ottawa’s renewed support of the Canadian Adaptation and Rural Development (CARD) Fund. In Ontario, the program has delivered more than $25 million to 122 innovative and relevant projects through the Ontario Agricultural Adaptation Council (AAC). And farm leaders are now hoping for an even bigger piece of the $60-million that federal Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister, the Hon. Lyle Vanclief has committed to the program.

Ontario’s farming community has been extremely supportive of the AAC. Ontario was quick off the mark when the program was announced in 1996, with leaders from 47 farming and rural groups and organizations coming together to collectively and cooperatively manage the program. They established their own funding priorities, elected a 15-member board of directors to implement that direction, and promptly got on with business.

The AAC is a well-oiled machine. To ensure swift feedback and turn-around time for project applications, the board meets every month, for as long as it takes to give the applications a fair hearing. Having established priorities helps keep members on track, whether they’re dealing with a light agenda – $100,000 or $200,000 worth of project applications – or something as weighty and widespread as the application for the Ontario Farm Environmental Plan (EFP), the AAC’s largest funded project at $8.6 million.

“Our members place a high priority on research, in order to have a competitive industry,” says Duff MacKinnon, AAC executive director. “No projects have ever fallen apart because we couldn’t meet their deadlines.”

Indeed, the Ontario model has been adopted by most other provinces, who’ve seen the reception it’s received by the farm community and Ottawa. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has been impressed with the project results, the leverage of substantial private money (about $7.4 million) into adaptation and rural development projects, as well as the leadership AAC has shown in using adaptation money. In just two-and-a-half years, the province’s agricultural community has enthusiastically subscribed to the four years worth of funding originally committed by Ottawa to Ontario.

“That rapid uptake of adaptation funding means the AAC has been very successful reaching the industry,” says Wayne Newman, chair of the Ontario Agricultural Commodity Council. “Ontario initiatives would benefit from an increased allotment of Ontario’s share of CARD funding.” He has his sights set on getting two-thirds of Ontario’s 25 per cent of the national CARD funding, which would see the AAC receive about $10 million a year, up from the $7 million it gets now.

To maintain leadership and relevance, the AAC surveyed its members early last winter and asked for research priorities, with the overwhelming response pointing to food safety and marketing. MacKinnon says farmers are concerned about consumer perception and consider the industry vulnerable to “scare stories” about food safety. “We need quality standards to combat that perception,” he says. “It will take a long time and a huge effort for those standards to be farmer friendly.”

Other priorities are equally long-sighted; the Asian economic flu has caused all kinds of trouble in the farming and rural community and competition for export markets – where a full 50 per cent of all Canadian agricultural production is headed – is expected to heat up. This is particularly relevant considering Ottawa has set its sights on having Canada’s share of the world food basket double to four per cent by 2005 – which will only happen through increased exports.

Food safety and environmental stability are the cornerstones of the AAC’s support of corn-related research. More than $1.3 million has been dedicated to five projects dealing with zone tillage, fusarium resistance, genetic improvement and nitrogen use. As well, $6.2 million of the EFP was dedicated to individual on-farm grants, of which corn producers received a significant portion.

Check the program website at www.adaptcouncil.org for more details about the AAC.

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