The Canadian agriculture industry came out cheering in May of this year when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced its updated guidance on plant breeding innovation.

Now in its second year, the Palette Skills Automation and Digital Agriculture Specialist Program is intended as a gateway for much-needed, skilled digital professionals to enter the agriculture sector. The eight-week Digital Agriculture course is funded by the federal government and the Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative. Open to post-secondary graduates with minimum three years of work experience, it includes subjects such as AI, big data, drones, GIS, IoT and robotics.

Following a five-year gap, the federal government reintroduced extended interswitching to the rail system with its 2023 budget. The action was taken at the recommendation of the government’s National Supply Chain Task Force report released in October 2022. Western Grain Elevator Association (WGEA) executive director Wade Sobkowich believes interswitching legislation must go further to make rail freight shipment more competitive.

Last year, seeing the increasing need for collaborative leadership across the agriculture industry, Chamber members created its Food Supply Council. This cross-sector coalition of agribusinesses, associations and transportation companies strives to provide leadership that will advance Canadian agriculture and solve key industry challenges.

Agbee Kpogo saw an opportunity to conduct research on swine nutrition while completing an undergraduate degree in animal science in his native Ghana. Working for a company that dealt mainly with poultry, he realized there was a glaring gap in that region’s research materials on sustainable, large-scale pig farming.

The chronic agricultural labour shortage shows no signs of abating. Without a sufficient talent pipeline, even the agricultural retail sector has suffered. Working to alleviate the problem with the assistance of industry partners, Lakeland College has developed an innovative apprenticeship program that will prepare students for agri-sales careers. The institution’s agri-sales and customer relations certificate program is intended to produce sales professionals who possess in-demand skills. 

Those orange and red, blob-like areas on insect survey maps are a farmer’s cue to action. Fields seeded with certain crops and located in and around these hotspots may require individual assessment and population control. Among cereal farmers, the most anticipated of these maps are those for grasshoppers, wheat stem sawfly and wheat midge.

For two decades, Chris Eskiw has studied the human genome. An associate professor in the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Agriculture and Bioresources, his work has focused on how DNA regulates health.

Ontario senator Rob Black admitted he is not a soil scientist. Even so, when he was appointed to the Senate in 2018, he began pushing for a national soil study.

In 2022, the Government of Alberta announced multiple funding initiatives intended to improve mental health services in rural Alberta. In June of last year, it committed $6.75 million in funding over two years for Counselling Alberta, a division of the Calgary Counselling Centre. The funds allowed the immediate expansion of virtual mental health counselling services across Alberta and the expansion of affordable, in-person counselling options. This includes expansion of same-day addiction treatment through the Virtual Opioid Dependency Program.