With an eye firmly fixed on Atlantic Canada’s agriculture sector, Genome Atlantic’s Dr. Richard Donald supported Canada’s Genomics Enterprise earlier this year in urging a prominent role for genomics in the Sustainable Agriculture Strategy now being developed by the federal government.
“There is an important role for genomics in agriculture in Atlantic Canada,” said Dr. Donald, Genome Atlantic’s agriculture specialist. He said a brighter, more sustainable future could be assured for agriculture in this region if genomics is given a major role in developing solutions to the climate change conundrum.
“Although our agriculture system is small compared to that of Quebec, Ontario or the Prairies, more than any other region of Canada, we have a very diverse agriculture ecosystem in Atlantic Canada” he said, “and the possibilities of implementing sustainable practices is greater, I think, than most parts of the country.
“We have huge diversity in what we grow from grains to fruit to blueberries to Christmas trees. And we have a big diversity in livestock as well – beef, dairy and poultry. That diversity is not apparent in all other big agricultural areas of Canada. For instance, if you think about Saskatchewan’s agriculture sector, it’s based on grains and oil seeds. We have a much more diverse system.”
Genomics offers potential solutions to many of the wide-ranging effects of climate change. For instance, the region’s fruit industry in Atlantic Canada is expected to confront bigger and more frequent storms as well as frosts that arrive earlier and/or later. Genomics presents opportunities to make crops more resilient to the changing climate.
“Our agriculture diversity means we can apply genomic solutions across a wide range of different commodities,” Dr. Donald said. “Spread widely, the results are likely to be better, because some sectors will be more amenable to genomics than others. So if you’re more diverse, you’ve probably got a greater chance of benefit.”
He is pleased the federal government, through its advisory committee, populated with industry experts, academics, producers and associations, and co-chaired by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, is tackling the agriculture sustainability issue to craft a national strategy. “Every developed country is facing the same problem,” he noted. Canada needed to get a handle on the issue to retain its role and reputation as an agri-food powerhouse.
