Returning to the west coast for the two days of the Cultivating Resilience Summit this year was almost a return to form for me. I grew up in British Columbia but now my mindset is more informed by hundred-acre grain fields; in Vancouver, I had to relearn how agriculture looks in other provinces/territories. In many ways, this was the point of Cultivating Resilience, asking us to listen to the diversity of projects across the country (as food is incredibly personal to all of us) and inspiring action for a sustainable agricultural future, however that may look.
A Network of Solutions
We’re first welcomed into the space by Tsatsu Stalqayu, the Coast Salish Wolf Pack, who remind us that dialogue is all about respect toward each other and our surroundings, and that the generations to follow are key players in moving our knowledge forward. This theme was immediately carried by that day’s keynote, Dr. Tammara Soma, who acknowledged that, for most of us, the far-removed grocery store is our primary source of food information and interaction.
Stewards for the future falls loosely into the Seventh Generation Principle of the Iroquois, a philosophy that states our resource-use decisions should be sustainable for at least seven future generations. In modern terms, it has been adapted to what Dr. Soma and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) refer to as equitably transformative resilience. Here, resilience is considerate of indirect food factors like community structures, policy differences, capacity to change, knowledge networks, and need diversity. Most importantly, it recognizes the limitations of sustainability and that there is more than one adequate way to approach the global food crisis – a consideration Dr. Soma suggests separates climate-smart and climate-wise approaches.
Climate-smart can be split into two schools of thinking: outcomes, which all of us can agree are good goals to strive for, and practices, which are the actions we take in pursuit of the outcomes and can vary vastly. If you talk to Janet Dean, Executive Director of the Territorial Agrifood Association, she would point out that most Northern communities do not have formal climate-smart models in their food security initiatives. Similar comments came from Jared Qwustenuxun Williams, a Salish traditional foods chef who has spent the better part of the last 25 years revitalizing Indigenous and traditional agricultural systems. Revitalization, here, refers to increased recognition of food and production mindfulness, that community-based production is not separate from the food security discussion, and that resource distribution need not be a competition between Indigenous and conventional agriculture.
The Shared Marketplace
Lisa Ashton shared highlights from RBC’s annual Thought Leadership Report which details an “agricultural slump” in Canada: a declining trend in agrifood institutions, innovation investment, sustainability improvement incentives, and overall agricultural competition. By co-creating strategies with as many stakeholders as possible, Paul Thomassin suggests institutions are then free to be the support powerhouses they should be, instead of informing industry direction. Our own Stuart Smyth confirmed these sentiments, calling for the industry to embrace all options to combat the resiliency struggle and embed them in a long term, efficient framework. Security is the nature of resilience.
Dr. Theresa Burns, British Columbia’s chief veterinarian since 2022, took some time to highlight the necessity for downstream consultation to improve response timeliness, program accessibility, and reduce research redundancy. The success that can come from interdisciplinary channels is seen in Tech-Access Canada, which provides firms with tools and facilities to bring their products to market. Commercialization is an important end step for many agricultural innovations including for genetic outcomes. In genetics, the intellectual property is in the useful mutations that come from a variety of breeding processes.
That’s partially how Canada has been able to improve dairy cattle reproductive traits and why genetic databases and standards like the Resilient Dairy Genome Project, Canada’s Lifetime Performance Index, and (provincial) herd management benchmarks exist. More specific breeding projects have allowed researchers like Dr. John Church and Dr. Paul Adams to isolate the SLICK mutation for use in Canadian breeds. (The SLICK mutation is largely responsible for the improved heat tolerance in Senepol cattle.) However, consumer and market aversion to genetically modified products continue challenging genetic commercialization, despite how advantageous the phenotypes are for farmers.
Agriculture’s risk aversion to newness became a recurring theme throughout the summit, as the climate anxiety associated with terms like “war against climate change” do very little to inspire change. For this reason, useful innovations can get lost in the noise of investment potential. As beautifully put by Dr. Robert Newell: “Technology alone is not a sustainability solution;” it must also make economic sense. Owner-operator of the lettuce mix company UP Vertical Farms, Bahram Rashti, reminded us that Canada still competes with agricultural imports, and so our domestic offerings must be as price competitive. Improving local resilience, echoes Dr. Lenore Newman, is complementary to improving overall commercial resource efficiency. To succeed at our climate-smart initiatives, Canada needs both.
Now is the Time
The second day of dialogues circled around action – how can we apply our shared knowledge (even if it’s just a philosophy) to future food production? When Jared Qwustenuxun Williams returned for his keynote, he highlighted these sentiments, reminding all of us that, if we have the privilege of being food secure, there are at least three times a day in which we can make meaningful food decisions. Mindfulness can be inserted in any aspect of food culture; embracing sustainability, consciousness, humility, and respect in Canada’s food systems can only ever be an advantage.
With globalization and production specialization, it can be harder to justify the local sourcing of traditional foods. Neo-foraging suggests that while yes, locally sourced products should, where possible, make up the majority of purchases, we are spoiled for climate-smart choice, and should therefore take advantage of as many sustainably produced food sources as possible. Food systems, in general, says Mike Manion, are event responsive; we are not yet in a position to start choosing sustainability avenues to reject. As pointed out by Dr. Sean Lacoursiere, Chief Information Officer for mushroom-based protein company, Maia Farms, logistics matter and it can be naïve to assume that one working model is universally applicable. Rodrigo Santana, co-founder of BeriTech Inc. (a company bringing year-round berry production to Canada), claims Canada still acts like 13 separate provinces and territories and still thinks of innovation as high tech. Mohamed Imam of AREA Research further acknowledges that right now, Canada has many miniature climate-resilient success stories, but the connections and supports required to scale those innovations are still missing.
It was Dr. Rachel Friedman who challenged us to rethink the climate-smart outcome vs. practices dichotomy, asking us to consider whether, personally, the definition of climate-smart with which we operate is overly focused on mitigative practices. Farmers, in general, do not think in climate-smart frameworks which Dr. Jeffrey Liebert and blueberry farmer, Navtej Bains, note limits the realism of large on-farm investments (especially if there is uncertainty in sustainability outcomes). In the extreme, the fixation on on-farm changes has essentially forced medium-sized farms out of the sector. There are benefits to individual farm mitigation, especially if it matches farm logistics, but it does nothing to address the sector-wide shifts occurring in factors like farm costs, farmer age, and labour requirements.
Huy tseep q’u
If I can give you one takeaway from Cultivating Resilience, it’s to act. There are so many opportunities in this country to share the information you have, to work with others (especially those with different skill sets than you), and simply start thinking about what we put on our plates and how it got there, that there is very little excuse for remaining uninvolved. Just look at the suite of Interdisciplinary Challenge Teams in the Climate-Smart Agri-Food Network and you can see the promise. Independent of your view of climate-smart agriculture or the direction of the industry, we can all agree that innovation is successful when we collaborate.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share my Cultivating Resilience experience!
Interested in discovering more in the AG-ACt network? Read the introduction blog or visit the AG-ACt website to stay involved in industry collaboration.
