FEATURE STORY
Gord Surgeoner: Making Agriculture Make Sense
By Owen Roberts

Inside agriculture – and out – Gord Surgeoner’s name has become synonymous with clarity, brevity and applicability. The 49-year old native of Newmarket, ON, is as comfortable talking to farmers and students as he is government bureaucrats and cabinet ministers. And they’re comfortable listening, because Surgeoner knows how to speak their language. It may not always be a message that pleases them, but there’s no question they’ll understand.

“I’ve been stirring the pot since day one,” says Surgeoner, who in January started a two-year leave of absence from the University of Guelph to serve as president of Guelph-based Ontario Agri-Food Technologies (OAFT). “You have to take the heat and stand up for what you believe in.”

Surgeoner, who replaces OAFT’s founding president Murray McLaughlin (see story in January’s newsletter), has marched to a different drummer all of his life. While other kids were dreaming of a future as a baseball or hockey star, he was trying to explain to his guidance teacher why he wanted to be a lepidopterist – a butterfly collector. Bugs pushed this lad’s buttons, and when the bug collection he put together for his Grade 8 science class earned him 50 out of 50, his destiny as an entomologist (bug scientist) was defined.

With bugs on his mind, the budding researcher turned his sights to the University of Guelph. In 1967 he enrolled in the science program, started meeting agricultural students and discovered an interesting fact: THEY received an $87.50 tuition waiver. To a student in the 1960s, that was a small fortune. Wanting a piece of the action, Surgeoner went to the top – the Dean of the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC), and the Minister of Agriculture – to get it, writing a letter asking for the waiver, which would clear his path into the agricultural science program. The minister agreed, and by 1968 Surgeoner was an Aggie.

He’s never looked back.

“The sense of camaraderie and being an Aggie became important to me,” says Surgeoner, “and it still is.” His Aggie enthusiasm rubbed off on the other Surgeoner siblings: his brother Don is involved in the western sales force for Cyanamid, and his sister Jean Szkotnicki is in charge of the Guelph-based Canadian Animal Health Institute.

Aggie camaraderie took many forms for the enterprising Surgeoner, including keg parties which – for a small admission fee – he hosted in his basement room in the University’s south residence, complete with entertainment, bouncers and beer. But one night the shindig was raided, and as the revelers scrambled for refuge Surgeoner found himself squeezing out the window with Shirley Vaughan, a Guelph consumer studies’ student whose father, Ted Vaughan, was the president of Cockshutt tractors in Brantford. It was an auspicious first encounter, but the chemistry worked...six years later they were married, and last month celebrated their 25th anniversary.

Surgeoner gives full credit to his wife and mother of their three children Brae, 20, Drew 19, and Jade, 17, for being the engine that kept their family going through his early academic and professorial years. “I had my nose to the grindstone and greatly appreciate the effort she’s made raising three fine children,” he says. “Her support has been instrumental.”

After completing his Master’s program at Guelph, in which he helped institute a successful biological and chemical program to control the alfalfa weevil, Surgeoner went on to his Ph.D. at Michigan State University in forest entomology. As graduation neared, he had pending offers from both Union Carbide in California and Penn State, but dreamed of returning to Canada. Nothing, though, was opening up...and with his usual go-to-the-top approach, he sent a letter to then - Prime Minister Trudeau explaining his plight. “I told him he’d invested all this money in my education,” says Surgeoner, “so why was he going to let me go to a job outside Canada?”

Time was ticking and the offers were going to dry up. Finally, as he was packing for California, a call came from OAC Dean Freeman McEwen. A faculty position for an entomologist had just opened up. So Surgeoner turned his eyes north again, and his Guelph career was launched.

Twenty-three years and 70 scientific publications later, he’s heading up OAFT, an organization dedicated to helping Ontario farmers reap the benefits of biotechnology. It’s a good fit – he’s garnered great credibility from both farmers and non-farmers for his deep understanding of soil and water stewardship and farmers’ intrinsic role in environmental health, having served as chair of the Ontario Environmental Farm Coalition for seven years. It’s an understanding he works hard to nurture, dating back to the days he spent as a young researcher volunteering on farms in Wellington County, talking and working with farmers. “I developed an appreciation for what they were up against,” he says. “I saw how hard they worked. Their faces come to mind when I think of why I’m here and what I’m doing.”

Surgeoner has a three-part strategy for making agriculture understandable to non-farmers. First, he says, farming must be personalized. People need to know how agriculture affects them _ if they eat, it does, and it can be a very clear, pertinent message. They also need to know agriculture is both a way of life AND a business, and that farmers must get a fair return for the food they produce. Finally, the very practice of talking about agriculture is an important step in helping others understand it. “Talk to the customer, like service clubs and consumer groups,” he says. “Primary producers are highly trusted in our society. We need to garner consumer trust, explain the benefits and risks of agriculture and underline we have safe food at reasonable prices.”

Surgeoner takes the helm of OAFT after completing a five-year term as plants program leader for the OMAFRA-University of Guelph agreement. As well, he recently returned from a four-month secondment from the University to the Ontario Ministry of Energy, Science and Technology as director of the provincial biotechnology secretariat. At press time, the ministry’s biotechnology policy was just being released.

1