Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay announced just over $8 million in funding for smallholder crop research under the five-year Canadian Sustainable Agriculture Partnership framework.
The new diversified field crop cluster will be managed by Ag-West Bio Inc. and will focus on crops primarily grown in Western Canada, including camelina, carinata, flax, mustard and sunflower.
Agriculture and Food Canada says the research will focus on benchmarking greenhouse gas emissions from smallholder crops, understanding how these emissions are affected by nitrogen fertilizer, developing new oilseed crops adapted to low-quality soils, and improving the genetic resilience, yield and disease resistance of mustard, flax and sunflower.
“There’s no doubt that our nation’s farmers will be the first to feel the impacts of climate change, which is why we’re supporting this important research to improve yields and profitability across a diverse range of field crops and increase the resilience of our agriculture sector,” MacAulay said in a news release.
Ag-West Bio is a Saskatoon-based non-profit organization established in 1989 by the Saskatchewan government through the Ministry of Agriculture to foster the development of the then emerging agricultural biotechnology sector and support the bioeconomy.
Ag-West Bio also managed a diversified crops research cluster under a previous five-year Canadian Agriculture Partnership that ended in 2023. In 2019, Macaulay announced more than $13 million would be pumped into the cluster for research focused on flax, camelina, canary seed, sunflower, hemp, quinoa and mustard.
“Ag-West Bio appreciates your continued support of the Diversified Field Crop Cluster (DFCC),” said Karen Churchill, president and CEO of Ag-West Bio. “DFCC’s goal is to provide farmers with viable alternatives they can incorporate into their crop rotations, creating agricultural ecosystems that are more profitable and more resilient to climate change. By pooling resources, DFCC will be able to advance these crops more quickly.”
