June 14, 2023 • 37 mins
Ian Affleck discusses how science has played a pivotal role in ensuring Canadians have safe, affordable and abundant food. The advancements in plant breeding to gene editing have ensured Canadian farmers can use modern technology in an effort to be more environmentally friendly and produce the food the world needs.
Host: Clinton Monchuk
Clinton Monchuk grew up on a mixed dairy, beef and grain family farm outside of Lanigan, Saskatchewan. He received his Bachelors of Science in Agriculture majoring in Agricultural Economics from the University of Saskatchewan and Masters of Business Administration in Agriculture from the University of Guelph. Clinton has enjoyed numerous roles across Canada, the United States and Mexico as a researcher, educator, manager, economist and director of trade policy.
In 2016 Clinton accepted the role of Executive Director with Farm & Food Care Saskatchewan to promote farming and ranching to consumers. Clinton understands the value of increasing public trust in agriculture and actively promotes engagement between the agriculture industry and consumers.
Clinton, Laura and their children Jackson and Katelyn, continue to be active partners on their family grain and layer farm in Saskatchewan and cattle ranch in Oklahoma.
Guest: Ian Affleck
Ian Affleck is the vice-president of plant biotechnology for CropLife Canada. In this role, Affleck works with domestic and international agricultural stakeholders and governments on the development of policies, regulations, and science related to plant biotechnology.
Prior to joining CropLife Canada, Affleck worked at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for 10 years. His work there focused on the regulation of novel plants and new varieties.
Affleck holds a bachelor of science in agriculture from the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, concentrating on agronomy and pest management. He also holds a master’s degree in agriculture from the University of Guelph, specializing in horticulture and plant breeding.
Affleck has been involved in agriculture from an early age, having grown up on a potato farm in Bedeque, Prince Edward Island.
Resources:
PlantsThat Defend Themselves
Growing Better Crops
What is Gene Editing
Episode Credits: Research and writing by Dorothy Long and Penny Eaton, Produced and edited by Angela Larson and Michael Jordan, Music by Andy Ellison-Track title: Gravel Road
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
From Canadian Food Focus , this is Ask a F armer.
I'm y our host C lintonMonchuk. A Saskatchewan farmer.
I n this podcast, we t alk tofood experts t o answer your
questions about your food.
Clinton Monchuk (00:27):
We are very privileged to have Ian Affleck
with us. Ian, how are you doingtoday?
Ian Affleck (00:31):
Good, how are you?
And thank you very much forinviting me on to chat about
agriculture and science and allthings in between.
Clinton Monchuk (00:38):
Today we're, we're going to be talking a
little bit about how sciencehas kind of changed in food
production and we sense alittle bit of that I think on
the consumer side that they'renot too sure how things have
changed. But before we get intothat, Ian, I think everybody
needs to know a little bit moreabout you .
Ian Affleck (00:55):
So I grew up on a potato farm in Prince Edward
Island. Nothing stereotypicalabout that at all. Growing up
in that space and seeing kindof all the innovations that
came with agriculture and justgot me really excited about
what science was delivering.
And I've since seen my mom anddad put that to work on the
farm. So then I went off to theNova Scotia Agriculture College
and did a degree in agronomythere. And then from there I
(01:18):
went to, as you mentioned,University of Guelph and did my
master's in horticulture. Solooking at some different
crops, touched a lot on plantbreeding and statistics there.
So that kind of got me into theplant breeding science side of
things. Then I went, did 10years at the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency in productsafety, seed regulations,
government-related stuff there.
(01:39):
And then have been here atCropLife Canada for about the
last eight or nine years as theVice President of Plant
Biotechnology. So focusing onworking with the sector in
terms of what's new andexciting innovations and
solutions are the plant sciencecompanies which belong to our
trade association. What arethey trying to bring to the
market to help farmers kind ofdeal with what mother nature is
(02:01):
constantly throwing at them orhow to improve the economic and
the environmentalsustainability of their
operations? So it's been kindof a longer journey, but yeah,
from the farm to university tothe government and now in the
private sector working on thesebroader goals.
Clinton Monchuk (02:15):
So Ian, one of the things that, I think a lot
of consumers are, they'reremoved from the farm, right?
So, we have generations removedfrom the farm and they're not
too sure how food is beingproduced. Can you explain maybe
how some of these advancements,I guess, have changed since the
(02:36):
1970s, 1960s. Those were thepractices that they kind of
understand like the science ofplants have changed so much
since then. And do you want tojust talk about some of those
advancements and just whythings ch ange t oo, right?
Ian Affleck (02:51):
Yeah, I think that things have changed. I think
that that's one thing, but Ithink what some folks have, if
you haven't had a chance tospend time on a farm or if you
aren't fortunate enough to knowsomeone that's in farming, is
that farming has always beenchanging from the dawn of time
of farming. So go back 10,000years when the first caveman
figured out that, you know,instead of being a hunter
(03:11):
gatherer, I'm going to dropthese seeds outside my hut and
I'm just going to pull thoseout of the ground instead of
having to run out into a meadowsomewhere, picking individual
wheat plants out of the ground.
They were your firstgeneticists. They didn't know
it back then, but when theywere keeping the tallest stock
or the biggest seeds for thenext year, they were selecting
the best genetics. So that wasa slow march toward progress
(03:33):
over about 10,000 years.
Domesticating all these wildvarieties into things that
worked for agriculture. Youknow, we didn't have Brussels
sprouts until 600 BC. Sometimespeople think that agriculture
was this static box up untillike the 1950s and then all of
a sudden i t started changing.
But it's always been changing.
Maybe we haven't had thetechnology to make those
(03:55):
beneficial changes asefficiently as we're making
them now, but we've always beenchanging. The grapefruit didn't
exist until 1750. That's notgene editing, that's not
genetic engineering or GMOs.
That's just people figuring outthe genetics of plants and how
to make them better and betterfor agriculture. And then I
think, as you mentioned kind ofright there in the sixties is
when we had the greenrevolution. And you'll often h
(04:19):
ear people talk about the greenrevolution. But the details of
what happened there was kind ofa better understanding of
genetics, the ability to makevarieties that just produce
more food, and then theaccessibility to all the other
tools that help a farmer dothat on scale. So farm
machinery , fertilizer,pesticides to protect the
crops. Information aboutagronomy just became more
(04:42):
widely available. The abilityto distribute textbooks on how
to grow wheat better. So thiswhole revolution of information
and machinery and chemistry andfertilizer and then the plant
genetics-- it all came togetherat the same time. And that's
when we were able to move thattechnological bar forward. You
(05:02):
know, instead of every 5,000years we were doing it by the
decade, but we had to, becausethat's how we brought so many
people out of starvation overthat time. That's not
minimizing that there's notstill people suffering today,
but we made some really greatgains in being able to grow
food and deliver food aroundthe world. So that's what I
kind of see from it. It's notthat it wasn't changing , it's
(05:24):
that people might not haveknown all the change in the
past and then this change thenout of context seems like
something quite drastic. Butit's really just a continuation
of that same effort to makethings better and better. And,
y ou know, working in the seedspace, it all starts with the
seed, right? T he maximum youcan get o ut of a field is only
(05:44):
the maximum potential of thatseed. And it's all about taking
the seed with the mostpotential and then getting a
hundred percent of thatpotential at the end of the
year. Meanwhile, the lack ofrain or the bugs or
everything's going to try torob you of that opportunity and
how ar e y ou going to get itto that great outcome?
Clinton Monchuk (06:00):
The fact that we've advanced so much on the
plant side, yet we have fewerpeople who are starving
worldwide. Right? We don'treally understand how good we
have it until you kind of goback and look at the stats. Do
you want to talk a little bitabout how much that
productivity has actuallyincreased to kind of feed this
(06:23):
world? Obviously, we have morepeople now and we're projected
to have even more up untilabout 2050. Maybe just talk
about some of thoseadvancements and how we've done
it.
Ian Affleck (06:34):
And I think this is one of the hard parts of the
discussion. It's in no wayminimizing that there's still
work to be done. There's stillmore people that need to be
brought out of poverty. There'sstill more food security needed
around the world. Absolutely.
But what we were able to dothrough genetics, and I'll
focus on genetics becausethat's my background. That's
where I'm the most comfortabletalking, but it's that green
revolution. The beginning ofthat was really about dwarf
(06:55):
varieties of wheat and rice. Soagain, we're not into GMOs or
gene editing yet. This is justNorman Borlaug, an amazing
scientist, who figured out howto make shorter wheat varieties
that produced more grain. Theydidn't fall over in the wind as
much. There are more robust andthat led to so much more food
being available around theworld in the same space that
you were farming in, you werejust able to produce more food.
(07:17):
So as you keep moving thatforward, as we get better and
better varieties and we addthings like , genetic
engineering technology on thetable, or what's going to be
very new soon i s the geneediting technology that's all
about the same idea. What newqualities can we give these
plants that's g oing t o letthem produce more food on the
same land with even lessinputs? And I think that's
(07:40):
something that comes along i s,we ta lk a bout the green
revolution in f ertilizers andpesticides and machinery and
sometimes that conjures up anuncomfortable view for folks.
Maybe you could speak to thisClinton, but I know at m y
farm, my dad never wanted toput a dollar into that crop
that he didn't absolutely haveto. If there's any opportunity
(08:01):
to use less seed, less water,less land, less fertilizer,
less pesticide, you're takingit. There's no desire to put
more stuff into the field.
Every minute you're not in thefield, you're optimizing some
other part of your operation.
So I think that's whatsometimes it gets lost. It's
all about efficiencies andsustainability and how you can
make those varieties that do somuch of that work within the
(08:24):
seed so that you don't have todo it outside the seed. And
GMOs were a great example ofthat and a success worldwide:
450 million acres of GMOsgrowing around the world is
just a testament to how muchthey've been able to help
agriculture in that foodproduction challenge that we
have.
Clinton Monchuk (08:41):
There's a lot of confusion or uncertainty
around it. So they see the namegenetic engineering or GMOs and
they're not too sure what thatactually involves. Do you want
to just talk about like whatdoes that mean?
Ian Affleck (08:54):
The Canadian Center for Food Integrity did
some really good public pollingon this just recently and they
asked a question that justnever occurred to me to ask,
even when I'm having thisdiscussion with friends about,
like they're asking about GMOsand I'm explaining the
technology to them. And I neverasked is like, what do you
think of plant breeding,period. Like before we talk
about genetic modification andgene editing and this new cool
(09:15):
like headline-grabbing stuff.
How do you feel about plantbreeding? Which, like I said,
we've been doing that for like10,000 years. It's the basis of
agriculture, to breed betterplants every year. What's plant
breeding? People breed plants?
Like, is that a real thing?
Like I've sat in focus groupswhere people said that's not a
real job. Like nobody has thejob plant breeder. Right? And
(09:35):
you're like, , whoa,there's whole university
programs on this. It's, it'shuge. So in that Centre for
Food Integrity piece, insteadof saying what's your comfort
level with GMOs, the firstquestion is, what's your
comfort level with plantbreeding? Only 7% of Canadians
said they had a positive viewof plant breeding and 11%, or
it might be the other wayaround, it might be 11 and 7.
But either way, a very smallgroup were positive and about
(09:57):
the same amount had a negativeview of plant breeding period.
So then when you add GMOs ontop of that, you get 15 or 20%
of people have a comfortableview of it, 30% have a negative
view or, or a negativereaction. If 11% weren't
comfortable with plantbreeding, it's totally
acceptable. It's totallyexpected to have 30% not be
(10:17):
comfortable with GMOs. You'rebuilding on something. So this
is within the context ofgenetic improvement of crops
over 10,000 years. And this isnow just, we're more and more
precise about the way that wedo it. And I think about
technologies like, just as Iwas preparing for this and
thinking of the greenrevolution and realizing my dad
really started farming in, youknow, the late sixties, early
(10:40):
seventies. So he came in rightat that point when all that
technology was arriving at thefarm. Not GMOs yet at that
point, but I remember going upinto the attic of the barn and
there was this thing that waslike a wheelbarrow and it h ad
almost looked like a riverboatcruise kind of propeller on it.
And I'm like, what is that? Andhe's like, oh, that's what I
(11:02):
did when I was 10 years old.
I'd walk that through thepotato fields and the big flaps
would knock the Colorado potatobeetles off the top and into
the net at the bottom. And thatwas the only thing we had to
get those bugs off the plants.
So before that piece oftechnology, it was your
fingers, how many acres can youcrush bugs with your fingers in
(11:24):
a day? He's like, and then wegot this thing which allowed us
to like grow three times asmuch potatoes because I can
move so much faster. Then comespesticides which allow you to
do it even more efficiently.
And he's like, even the best Iwas doing, getting it off with
this wheelbarrow thing, by thetime I got to the other side of
the field, I could see how muchmore damage they had done since
(11:45):
when I started on the othercorner of the field. Right? You
just couldn't move fast enoughto keep up with these bugs. So
you go forward to GMOs, take BTcorn, insect-resistant corn. So
now the corn can keep the bugsoff of it using a natural
soil-based bacteria that thebugs don't like. Now the farmer
doesn't have to go into thatfield at all. Saves them time,
(12:06):
saves them fuel, doesn't haveto spray another chemical. So
it's saving them money overall,your operation's more
efficient. So like this is justthis march of progress in
agriculture about how we canprotect that potential within
the plant . So this is justanother solution to the
problem. We've been fighting with agriculture since
the beginning of time, which isweeds, diseases and bugs.
(12:30):
They're constantly trying totake your stuff and a lack of
rain. So drought tolerant,things like that as well. So
that's where it becomes socritical to find new
technologies like this. Andthat's not unique to GMOs, it's
not unique to gene editing.
There's a great wheat midgetolerant wheat variety that's
used in western Canada andthat's not GMOs and it's not
(12:50):
gene editing, it's just greatplant breeding. So
it's, they're all justdifferent ways to get to the
same en dpoint a n d t hat'sprotecting your crops. But
yeah, that really stuck out tome that we as a scientific
community and as a plantbreeding community, we really
have to do outreach on whatplant breeding is, period.
Because it doesn't feel fair toexpect the consumer to suddenly
(13:11):
be comfortable with aniteration on something they
didn't know you were doing inthe first place. You have to
give them that opportunity toget comfortable.
Clinton Monchuk (13:19):
We had a huge garden growing up in Lanigan,
Saskatchewan and we wouldtypically sell a few potatoes
off the farm just to locals inthe town. We would go out there
and pick the bugs by hand atthat time. And I think later on
as we got older and we weredoing other things, t hen we
had the powder that they'd puton the top to prevent that from
(13:40):
taking place. But y eah, all tosay that...
Ian Affleck (13:43):
That's the cool thing about that powder, right?
Like that powder is the, isbacillus thuringiensis. So
that's the soil bacteria inpowdered form that you would
throw on top of the potatoes.
What's in the corn is the samething. They just put it in the
leaf. So I think this is what'sso cool about GMOs is that like
a pesticide you can use inorganic agriculture, which is
(14:06):
that bacillus thurangensispowder is what the GMO is
doing. So it's like it doesn'tmatter where the solution comes
from (14:13):
organic agriculture, conventional agriculture, GMOs,
it's all about using all thesetools, figuring out how to put
them together in a way thatmakes it the most effective for
the farmer to use it.
Clinton Monchuk (14:23):
Yeah, 100% .
And you had mentioned a littlebit about different, say the
saw fly or midge or whatever ithappens to be with wheat and
some of the plant breedingthat's taken place. Like we had
crops of wheat that wereabsolutely decimated with midge
or sawfly would kind of cut thestem and the whole plant would
fall over so then you couldn'tharvest it.
Ian Affleck (14:43):
And that's the amazing dedication of plant
breeders, right? Like it takeslike 10 years to put one of
those varieties on the market.
That's just constant work inthe field. Those plant breeders
trying to develop that newtechnology. And this is where I
think maybe I'll give a quickexplanation of like what GMOs
are and what gene editing is. Ithink those are two kind of
things you're hearing in thisspace a lot. So when a plant
breeder i s trying to develop anew variety like wheat m idge [
(15:05):
tolerant] or whatever it mightbe, there's dozens of different
plant breeding tools on t hetable and they'll use a mixture
of these tools to try to, youknow, guide the genetics toward
the outcome they're looking forwhen it comes to disease
resistance and often insectresistance. It's not usually a
simple one gene just controlsthe whole thing, especially in
disease resistance. There'susually like a dozen different
genes that all play intodisease resistance.
(15:27):
So it's really hard to make a new variety that's more disease
resistant than the last one andkeep all the other good
qualities that variety had. Sothis is where newer tools like
GMOs and gene editing come inhandy. So if you imagined a
plant as like a novel and ifyou see another book on the
other side of the desk and sayif page 47 was just in this
(15:48):
book, it would be so muchbetter. So with GMO technology,
I'm going to take that wholepage out and I'm going to stick
it in this book and now thisbook's better. Gene editing is
kind of going, if I could justchange the "and" to an "or" on
page 107, this would be so muchbetter and maybe I need to
change an "and" to "or" on sixdifferent pages.
Ian Affleck (16:09):
So you're not bringing in entirely new DNA
from another plant, you're justtweaking the DNA that's already
in there, which is what youwere doing anyway with
conventional breeding. You canjust do it really precisely now
instead of waiting for therandom changes in the plant to
give you that new makeup thatyou were looking for. So that's
kind of the difference for mebetween GMOs and gene editing.
It's kind of the cut and pasteof a whole new page or just
(16:32):
word editing the little thingyou need to do in that plant in
order to create a new variety.
So what this does is it givesplant breeders even more tools
to get to those outcomes evenfaster than they did before. So
instead of 10 years and 5million dollars to bring a new
variety to market, maybe youcan do it in six years and 3
million dollars. And thatmatters because I think people
(16:53):
also don't understand that alot of the research that goes
into varietal development,some's private sector, some's
funded by farm groups who havemoney that goes into research
piles to try to figure out howto make these new crops. So
it's a lot of this research isboth private company, it's
cooperation between privatecompany and farmers or research
institutions. And anything youcan do to make that more
efficient will allow us toadapt to the changing world
(17:16):
around us and the battles thatfarmers are into. And maybe,
the other thing I often mentionis people will go, that's a GMO
variety and if I was a plantbreeder, I'd be annoyed by that
because you're like, okay, sowe GMO'd a trait into that at
the end, but I bred thatvariety , like I still
took eight years to make thebase of the variety that you've
(17:38):
put the trait into. I think itgives the impression that you
walk into a lab, you press abutton and you make a GMO
variety. Like it's still yearsand years of plant breeding
that someone had to put intothat before you get to add i t.
I don't know where I got thisfrom, but it wa s l ike when
someone builds a beautifulhome, you don't celebrate the
hammer, you celebrate thecarpenter. So the tool
(18:01):
is genetic engineering. Yeah.
But it's the plant breeder whoreally made the magic happen to
put all those pieces togetherand I think they're the ones
that deserve the credit forcreating that tool at the end
of the day.
Clinton Monchuk (18:11):
You worked with the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency for 10 yearsyou said. So maybe touch a
little bit on how theregulatory process works
because again, now listenersunderstand that there is a long
process just to get thatproduct to a commercial state.
But what's that regulatoryprocess that ensures the safety
(18:34):
of that new product coming ontofarms and eventually onto
tables?
Ian Affleck (18:37):
Something that's really important is kind of
that general statement thatfoods on our shelves are safe,
right? There's standards andregulations, whether it be from
finished foods right through toagriculture that farmers and
food production companies haveto meet specific to new plant
varieties in Canada. It doesn'tmatter if it's conventionally
bred, you know, any of thedozens of plant breeding tools,
(18:59):
GMO, gene editing, it has tomeet the environmental, animal
feed and human food safetystandards that are set out by
the CFIA , the Canadian FoodInspection Agency and Health
Canada. And then within thatthere's times at which certain
products they're going to wantto do an analysis of before
they go on the market. Soyou've got to meet the
standards no matter what.
Sometimes the government wantsto check your homework, a nd
(19:22):
they've got clear guidance ofwhen that happens. And then
they do post-market monitoringto make sure your food is
always safe. They're alwayschecking the marketplace to
make sure that food remainssafe. So whether it's a GMO
variety, a gene edited variety,the public can be very
confident that those things aresafe. You know, we've been
growing GMOs in Canada foralmost 30 years in Canada and
around the world, I think Isaid earlier, 450 million
(19:44):
acres, 18 and a half millionfarmers around the world are
growing it. About 60% of theGMO acreage around the world is
in resource-poor or developingcountries. So I think that's
something that often getsmissed is that all of these
countries, the 29 countriesthat grow GMOs, every one of
them has done an independentsafety assessment on all of
(20:07):
those GMOs. It's been provensafe over and over. I think
there's something like 4,500independent safety assessments
of the GMOs on the market. Andthen when they move out into
the world, they're seeing thatit's the resource-poor farmer
who has had some of thegreatest benefits of this value
added technology. So you canimagine here in North America,
(20:28):
we could go buy the tractor, wecould get the crop protection
products, we could get theaccess to the fertilizer or the
irrigation. There's anothermassive part of the green
revolution that I missed wasirrigation. If you're coming up
in a really resource-poordeveloping nation, you don't
have access to just go b uy atractor, you can't get the
loan, you can't get thetractor. So if you can e mbed
(20:52):
the technology that's going toprotect the crop in the seed,
you don't need the tractor toput the crop protection on
there. You don't need i t touse the insecticide because
you've already got somethingthat's going to protect the
crop before you plant it. Youdon't need irrigation because
you might have drought tolerantor water e fficient crops. So
this is so huge for thesefarmers who can't get access to
(21:13):
the same technology that we areso lucky to have free access
to. And that doesn't mean it'sa silver bullet, right? Like
plant breeding or GMOs or g enee diting. Is t hat a silver
bullet? T wo o f the world'sagricultural challenges. It's
just one of the many parts of abigger solution. So it's just
one cog in the wheel.
Clinton Monchuk (21:32):
Why is it, do you think, that there's
acceptance of other geneticmodified products like insulin
with humans and that seems tobe more readily accepted than
maybe some of the GMOs? And,I'd just be curious to hear
your thoughts on that because it was one thing, you know, it's
been around for a w hile andeverybody who's diabetic now
(21:56):
uses a GMO insulin product.
Right?
Ian Affleck (21:59):
Yeah. I think there's a couple things that
come to my mind there. And someof this is just my own personal
trying to understand thismyself, right? I think the
first generation of GMOs werereally focused on farmer
problems. So it was focused onmanaging weeds, managing
insects, that was the big partof it. So if you haven't had
those challenges in your lifeof growing food and trying to
(22:21):
keep the bugs off and the weedsout, it's probably not going to
make a ton of sense of why thisis so important, right? Because
you haven't had that problemand that's not your fault as a
consumer. Like there's nothingwrong with that, you just don't
need that. So when you add anew technology and you're
asking folks to be comfortablewith it, but they don't see a
direct benefit to them. Itdoesn't mean there isn't
(22:42):
massive benefits, which we cantalk about in a minute, but i t
doesn't impact their directdaily life. To pair with that,
in those early years when thetechnology was coming out, the
companies viewed it as, and Ithink our industry sees we made
an error here, w ell we'll talkto our customers and our
customers a re the farmers, sowe'll explain the science and
the benefits and the value tothe farmers. And our customers
(23:05):
aren't the consumer, so someoneelse will talk to them. N o: w
rong, incorrect, poorassumption. It's not the
grocery store's responsibilityto educate the consumer on
agricultural technology, their job is to sell
the consumer what theconsumer's looking for, right?
So I think we've learned thatand hopefully with gene
editing, I think we're tryingto do a better job of getting
out and engaging with thepublic sooner to explain the
(23:27):
technology. So I think therewasn't anything really directly
for them in it, it was foragriculture an d w e didn't
talk to them to explain whywhen a farmer controls their
weeds, when it's easier and youhave less greenhouse gas
emissions and more carbonsequestration in the soil and
less food waste and moresustainability on the farm, why
(23:47):
that's good for you, theconsumer. Whether it's food,
price or environment, we justdidn't make that connection for
them. And then the narrativegot away from us after that.
But I will say too that it'strue that folks, you know, at
times are concerned about it orthey have a negative reaction,
but people will say we don'twant it to be a failure. Like
(24:08):
GMOs, 450 million acresworldwide and 18 and a half
million farmers isn't a failureof an agricultural technology.
It's been a massive success,huge success. PR challenges, I
think we'd be remiss not tonote < laugh>, it didn't have
the easiest ride from a PRpoint of view, but hugely
successful in terms of anagricultural technology and
what it's provided. So I thinkthat's part of it for me is
(24:30):
just, it's difficult for folksto see the direct value, but
when you have new technologiescoming to the market, like the
non-browning apple and thenon-browning, non-bruising
potato and the consumer's like,this is great. Now it's less
about being comfortable withit, but you're more likely to
trust in your institutions andthe governments that are
(24:50):
consistently providing you withsafe food and go, oh well it's
safe so I'm cool with it and Isee a value. So I don't feel
the need to go I'll just stickwith status quo. So that's you
know, as we get moretechnologies that matter to the
public, people need to seevalue. If they're going to
prioritize learning a subject--because that's what you're
(25:11):
asking them to do, studygenetics to a small amount. If
they're going to put theirtime, which they don't have
much of, they better see abenefit. So you got to explain
to them why the technologymatters and then they'll get
interested and they'llunderstand.
Clinton Monchuk (25:32):
This brings us to our fun farm fact. Did you
know that without the use ofplant science in food
production, we'd have 50% lessfood around the world? And
you've already mentioned thefact that we're using this
plant science to grow morefood, trying to use our
(25:53):
resources to the best of ourknowledge and benefit being
environmentally friendly. Allthese things go hand in hand to
make sure that we're producingfood. And if we didn't have
that technology, if we didn'thave that science, there'd be
just be less people on theworld period. Right?
Ian Affleck (26:12):
Yeah. And you get it, like there's a couple
different unfortunate ways thatgoes. If you're growing 50%
less food, then that means togrow that food you need 50%
more land and 50% more time andequipment and inputs and
fertilizer and water. So ifyou're going do that, if you
weren't able to leveragetechnology like we do, you'll
(26:33):
be looking at a whole differentlandscape. And one of the best
ways to keep land in its mostenvironmentally positive form
is to leave it in the forest asmuch as we possibly can. Now
that's tough for agriculturetoo, right? Because when a
farmer's cutting down trees tomake a field, we have to
realize that as our citiesgrow, our cities are covering
(26:54):
the best farmland in thecountry. So it's pretty
incredible, when you look atthe land we farm in Canada by
acreage, it's almost flat forlike the last 30 years I think.
We haven't really changed our[agricultural] acreage, but we
have changed our acreagebecause city footprints have
grown significantly. So we'vehad to find new fields in order
(27:14):
to make up for the fields thatare being lost to the cities.
But we've still managed toproduce 50% more food on the
same amount of land because ofall the technology we've been
able to put to agriculture. Sothat's a real challenge for the
agriculture community and thatland that goes under Toronto or
you know, Montreal or thesecities that are expanding,
(27:35):
that's your prime, number oneland. And the land you're
opening up somewhere else isn'tas good as that land. So not
only have we produced more foodon the same quantity of land,
we've produced more food on thesame quantity of less
productive land. That'sharder land to farm because the
best land is, it's being..
Clinton Monchuk (27:56):
Gobbled up.
Ian Affleck (27:56):
You know , under the Yorkdale Mall in Toronto.
Clinton Monchuk (27:59):
So getting back to consumer level and you
talked a little bit about theCanadian Center for Food
Integrity and we use a lot oftheir research every year when
they do their studies. The topconcern among Canadians was the
rising cost of food. So puttingthis all into context of how
all this different plantscience is h elping, how's it
(28:20):
helping control a little bit ofthat price of food for
consumers? I think consumersare seeing it in the grocery
stores that prices are going upbut without some of the science
and technology that we have,want to fathom a guess where
the price of food would be at?
Ian Affleck (28:38):
Oh , in some of the work that we've done, you
know, an average food bill,this is pre-inflation for the
average family of four, if youdidn't have access to plant
science innovations, you'd seeabout a $4,400 increase in your
annual food bills, which ispretty significant. And I think
as we, in this moment ofinflation, and again, plant
(28:58):
science is no a silver bullet,but this is the difference
between the food inflation rateand the total cost of food. So
if you're producing food at alower cost, then when inflation
hits k ind o f like compoundinterest, you're multiplying a
smaller number. You know, if aloaf of bread's $2 when you
start and then you getinflation, it goes to $4 bread.
(29:20):
If you're starting with $4bread, it goes to $8 bread.
That's a big difference in howmuch you're paying for food. So
this is where helping farmersstay efficient on the farm
keeps the cost of productionlow, allows the farmer to make
a better living and keeps thatcost of production as a factor
of overall food costs as low aswe can. It's not going to
(29:42):
reduce inflation, it's notgoing to turn global inflation
numbers down, but it can makesure that our base number that
we're working with stays assmall as it can so that it's
not there to be multiplied byinflation. And it allows the
farmer the best opportunitythey have to make profit on
what they're doing. Because ifthe farm's not economically
(30:03):
sustainable, then it, one, itcan't exist and it can't afford
to be as environmentallysustainable as they want to be.
I think that's like aneconomically sustainable farmer
is the most environmentallysustainable farmer. If we
restrict access to technology,that puts the farmer in a
really tough spot.
Clinton Monchuk (30:21):
Your family farm, my family farm, we have
access to all thesetechnologies in Canada and we
talked about the regulatoryprocess to make sure that new
things will come to market thatwe can use into the future.
What we're seeing over in theEuropean Union is a little bit
different now. Right. Sothey're now maybe backing off a
(30:41):
little bit on the science.
That's now starting to affecttheir ability to produce food .
So from your point of view, howwould a process like that harm
us here in Canada?
Ian Affleck (30:55):
There's a couple different layers because
Europe's a complicated space,right? You have so many
countries with so manydifferent approaches to
governance all trying tocooperate together. But what it
does seem is that they continueto politicize their
science-based decision makingsystems. So in the development
of their most recent farm tofork policy or the green deal,
you see them making decisionson scientific topics based on
(31:18):
the politics around it, insteadof making t he scientifically
correct decision and thenexplaining why, even though
that conversation might bedifficult. And I think that's a
really challenging spacebecause w hat it's doing is
it's limiting their ability toproduce food. And when their
ability to produce food islimited, someone has to produce
that food for them. Becausethey're importing all that food
(31:39):
from Canada, the United States,Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, you
name it, Australia. So thefood's getting grown somewhere.
It's just, where is it going toget grown ? So if you're not
using technology in yourbackyard, well then we need the
technology so we can fill yourfood needs. You can say, okay,
you're, your your ownjurisdiction. You can kind of
make whatever good or baddecisions you want to make. But
(32:01):
when you start applying thosedecisions to the rest of us and
saying, you can't export thingsto us that don't meet our
political ideals, now you'rereaching out and limiting
Canadian farmers' approach toagriculture because of your
domestic policies in Europe.
And this is the rub point we'reat right now. This isn't
happening all the timeeverywhere, but there's
(32:21):
indications of it happeningmore and more. And it's very
disappointing when there's somany great innovations
available that just aren'tbeing used. And I think we've
seen in the news there's beentractor demonstrations in
Europe. Frustration of farmerson this, you know, I think ,
one that would kind of standout, it's not i n the biotech r
oute. They've always had achallenging approach to
(32:41):
biotechnology for GMOs whereall the GMOs that we have here
are approved in Europe, butthey're not allowed to be grown
by their farmers. Specificallynot for scientific reasons,
just for s ocial reasons theydon't want them. But what's
really unfortunate about thatmeans our farmers get the
benefit of them and theirfarmers don't. They buy all
(33:01):
those products from us anyway,so it's really unfortunate. But
recently with the kind ofpolitical discourse on neonic
seed treatments, for example,and they took a really hard
line in Europe that wasn'tbased on science and they said
we're banning the neonics seedtreatments, and then they gave
out 600 exemptions a year toevery commodity group that
needed that pesticide. So theysaid they banned it, but they
(33:24):
really didn't ban it becausethey were just letting
everybody use it anyway justbecause it was safe. But now
after a recent court decision,which was saying, I don't think
we're going to allow you toprovide exemptions now. They're
really putting theiragricultural production in a
bind. You know, politics issomething that should stay in
that space and make sure thatyou're leading with science
when you make your decisions.
(33:44):
Because farming is science. Idon't know if people make that
connection enough, is that afarmer, we often say, you know,
ia a, a s a welder, ia acarpenter, ia a mechanic, and t
hey're also scientists. Theamount of high technology and
complex science that is u sedon a farm day to d a y, and
this is just me, like I leftthe farm in, s o 1998 and so it
(34:07):
's, you know, just between 98and now, Cl int, you must hav e
se en so man y te chnologicaland sc ientific advancements on
your farm that I wasn't evenaround for when I was on the
farm.
Clinton Monchuk (34:17):
Yeah. It's amazing. My dad, who's in his
mid seventies has a tough timereally even getting in our
equipment with all the sensortechnology and variable rate
this and that. He's just notused to it, right?
Ian Affleck (34:31):
You say your dad, I was home in PEI last summer
and I took my son home and wegot into the planter. I had no
idea how that thing worked .
, I was doing that job20 years ago and I sat in the
tractor and I was like, I don'teven know how to put the
planter down into the ground.
And I don't know what all thesescreens do anymore. Like, it
was wild how much technologyhad come into the cab of that
(34:55):
tractor to just make thefarming so precise.
Clinton Monchuk (34:58):
It really is amazing how, how it's changed
and not only the machinery, butthe science and the new
technologies in there. So I dowant to say thank you very
much, Ian, for being part ofthe podcast today. It's great
to just hear the progression ofscience, so everybody can get a
little bit more understandingand knowledgeable about the
(35:19):
subject.
Ian Affleck (35:20):
Yeah, thanks. And I think, you know, the new
thing on the block for plantbreeding is that now you'll see
GMOs called traditional GMOs because gene editing's
like the new cool k id on theblock. So now it's l ike
traditional GMOs and I love that GMOs are now old s chool
tech. Like I love that they'rethe super Nintendo to the Xbox,
right? It's like, those are,those are old sc hool G MOs.
(35:42):
But as gene ed iting c omesalong, I think that's the
really exciting part in plantbr eeding r ight now, which is
our ability to tweak thosegenes that were hard to tweak
and get that diseaseresistance. An d w hile th ere
w o uld b e big flashy thingslike high fiber wheat or you
know, high oleic soybeans orhealthy heart tomatoes and
stuff like that. Wh ere s omeof the biggest advancements are
(36:03):
going to be is instead ofgetting a 6% more disease
resistant wheat, you're goingto get a 12% more disease
resistant wheat and th en t henext va riety i s g oing to be
12% again instead of six. Andthat compound interest of
moving those things forwardfaster is going to be just as
impactful as the really flashykind of cool stuff, which wi ll
b e really important. But thebasic ability for plant breeds
(36:27):
to move varieties forward, Ithink is something that's going
to be really, really helped bythis technology moving forward.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
I want to thank you for taking the time to listen
to our Ask A Farmer podcast. Weat Canadian Food Focus value
the input from our listenersand ask that you share this
podcast with your friends andfamily. Remember, this is a
two-way street, so we seek yourinput for future segments that
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(36:59):
please click on the Ask Us iconat the top of our website,
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follow our numerous socialmedia links and sign up for our
newsletter. This segment wasproduced and edited by Angela
Larson, research and Writing byDorothy Long and Penny Eden .
Music by Andy Elson .
From Canadian Food Focus , this is Ask a F armer.
I'm y our host C lintonMonchuk. A Saskatchewan farmer.
I n this podcast, we t alk tofood experts t o answer your
questions about your food.
Clinton Monchuk (00:27):
We are very privileged to have Ian Affleck
with us. Ian, how are you doingtoday?
Ian Affleck (00:31):
Good, how are you?
And thank you very much forinviting me on to chat about
agriculture and science and allthings in between.
Clinton Monchuk (00:38):
Today we're, we're going to be talking a
little bit about how sciencehas kind of changed in food
production and we sense alittle bit of that I think on
the consumer side that they'renot too sure how things have
changed. But before we get intothat, Ian, I think everybody
needs to know a little bit moreabout you .
Ian Affleck (00:55):
So I grew up on a potato farm in Prince Edward
Island. Nothing stereotypicalabout that at all. Growing up
in that space and seeing kindof all the innovations that
came with agriculture and justgot me really excited about
what science was delivering.
And I've since seen my mom anddad put that to work on the
farm. So then I went off to theNova Scotia Agriculture College
and did a degree in agronomythere. And then from there I
(01:18):
went to, as you mentioned,University of Guelph and did my
master's in horticulture. Solooking at some different
crops, touched a lot on plantbreeding and statistics there.
So that kind of got me into theplant breeding science side of
things. Then I went, did 10years at the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency in productsafety, seed regulations,
government-related stuff there.
(01:39):
And then have been here atCropLife Canada for about the
last eight or nine years as theVice President of Plant
Biotechnology. So focusing onworking with the sector in
terms of what's new andexciting innovations and
solutions are the plant sciencecompanies which belong to our
trade association. What arethey trying to bring to the
market to help farmers kind ofdeal with what mother nature is
(02:01):
constantly throwing at them orhow to improve the economic and
the environmentalsustainability of their
operations? So it's been kindof a longer journey, but yeah,
from the farm to university tothe government and now in the
private sector working on thesebroader goals.
Clinton Monchuk (02:15):
So Ian, one of the things that, I think a lot
of consumers are, they'reremoved from the farm, right?
So, we have generations removedfrom the farm and they're not
too sure how food is beingproduced. Can you explain maybe
how some of these advancements,I guess, have changed since the
(02:36):
1970s, 1960s. Those were thepractices that they kind of
understand like the science ofplants have changed so much
since then. And do you want tojust talk about some of those
advancements and just whythings ch ange t oo, right?
Ian Affleck (02:51):
Yeah, I think that things have changed. I think
that that's one thing, but Ithink what some folks have, if
you haven't had a chance tospend time on a farm or if you
aren't fortunate enough to knowsomeone that's in farming, is
that farming has always beenchanging from the dawn of time
of farming. So go back 10,000years when the first caveman
figured out that, you know,instead of being a hunter
(03:11):
gatherer, I'm going to dropthese seeds outside my hut and
I'm just going to pull thoseout of the ground instead of
having to run out into a meadowsomewhere, picking individual
wheat plants out of the ground.
They were your firstgeneticists. They didn't know
it back then, but when theywere keeping the tallest stock
or the biggest seeds for thenext year, they were selecting
the best genetics. So that wasa slow march toward progress
(03:33):
over about 10,000 years.
Domesticating all these wildvarieties into things that
worked for agriculture. Youknow, we didn't have Brussels
sprouts until 600 BC. Sometimespeople think that agriculture
was this static box up untillike the 1950s and then all of
a sudden i t started changing.
But it's always been changing.
Maybe we haven't had thetechnology to make those
(03:55):
beneficial changes asefficiently as we're making
them now, but we've always beenchanging. The grapefruit didn't
exist until 1750. That's notgene editing, that's not
genetic engineering or GMOs.
That's just people figuring outthe genetics of plants and how
to make them better and betterfor agriculture. And then I
think, as you mentioned kind ofright there in the sixties is
when we had the greenrevolution. And you'll often h
(04:19):
ear people talk about the greenrevolution. But the details of
what happened there was kind ofa better understanding of
genetics, the ability to makevarieties that just produce
more food, and then theaccessibility to all the other
tools that help a farmer dothat on scale. So farm
machinery , fertilizer,pesticides to protect the
crops. Information aboutagronomy just became more
(04:42):
widely available. The abilityto distribute textbooks on how
to grow wheat better. So thiswhole revolution of information
and machinery and chemistry andfertilizer and then the plant
genetics-- it all came togetherat the same time. And that's
when we were able to move thattechnological bar forward. You
(05:02):
know, instead of every 5,000years we were doing it by the
decade, but we had to, becausethat's how we brought so many
people out of starvation overthat time. That's not
minimizing that there's notstill people suffering today,
but we made some really greatgains in being able to grow
food and deliver food aroundthe world. So that's what I
kind of see from it. It's notthat it wasn't changing , it's
(05:24):
that people might not haveknown all the change in the
past and then this change thenout of context seems like
something quite drastic. Butit's really just a continuation
of that same effort to makethings better and better. And,
y ou know, working in the seedspace, it all starts with the
seed, right? T he maximum youcan get o ut of a field is only
(05:44):
the maximum potential of thatseed. And it's all about taking
the seed with the mostpotential and then getting a
hundred percent of thatpotential at the end of the
year. Meanwhile, the lack ofrain or the bugs or
everything's going to try torob you of that opportunity and
how ar e y ou going to get itto that great outcome?
Clinton Monchuk (06:00):
The fact that we've advanced so much on the
plant side, yet we have fewerpeople who are starving
worldwide. Right? We don'treally understand how good we
have it until you kind of goback and look at the stats. Do
you want to talk a little bitabout how much that
productivity has actuallyincreased to kind of feed this
(06:23):
world? Obviously, we have morepeople now and we're projected
to have even more up untilabout 2050. Maybe just talk
about some of thoseadvancements and how we've done
it.
Ian Affleck (06:34):
And I think this is one of the hard parts of the
discussion. It's in no wayminimizing that there's still
work to be done. There's stillmore people that need to be
brought out of poverty. There'sstill more food security needed
around the world. Absolutely.
But what we were able to dothrough genetics, and I'll
focus on genetics becausethat's my background. That's
where I'm the most comfortabletalking, but it's that green
revolution. The beginning ofthat was really about dwarf
(06:55):
varieties of wheat and rice. Soagain, we're not into GMOs or
gene editing yet. This is justNorman Borlaug, an amazing
scientist, who figured out howto make shorter wheat varieties
that produced more grain. Theydidn't fall over in the wind as
much. There are more robust andthat led to so much more food
being available around theworld in the same space that
you were farming in, you werejust able to produce more food.
(07:17):
So as you keep moving thatforward, as we get better and
better varieties and we addthings like , genetic
engineering technology on thetable, or what's going to be
very new soon i s the geneediting technology that's all
about the same idea. What newqualities can we give these
plants that's g oing t o letthem produce more food on the
same land with even lessinputs? And I think that's
(07:40):
something that comes along i s,we ta lk a bout the green
revolution in f ertilizers andpesticides and machinery and
sometimes that conjures up anuncomfortable view for folks.
Maybe you could speak to thisClinton, but I know at m y
farm, my dad never wanted toput a dollar into that crop
that he didn't absolutely haveto. If there's any opportunity
(08:01):
to use less seed, less water,less land, less fertilizer,
less pesticide, you're takingit. There's no desire to put
more stuff into the field.
Every minute you're not in thefield, you're optimizing some
other part of your operation.
So I think that's whatsometimes it gets lost. It's
all about efficiencies andsustainability and how you can
make those varieties that do somuch of that work within the
(08:24):
seed so that you don't have todo it outside the seed. And
GMOs were a great example ofthat and a success worldwide:
450 million acres of GMOsgrowing around the world is
just a testament to how muchthey've been able to help
agriculture in that foodproduction challenge that we
have.
Clinton Monchuk (08:41):
There's a lot of confusion or uncertainty
around it. So they see the namegenetic engineering or GMOs and
they're not too sure what thatactually involves. Do you want
to just talk about like whatdoes that mean?
Ian Affleck (08:54):
The Canadian Center for Food Integrity did
some really good public pollingon this just recently and they
asked a question that justnever occurred to me to ask,
even when I'm having thisdiscussion with friends about,
like they're asking about GMOsand I'm explaining the
technology to them. And I neverasked is like, what do you
think of plant breeding,period. Like before we talk
about genetic modification andgene editing and this new cool
(09:15):
like headline-grabbing stuff.
How do you feel about plantbreeding? Which, like I said,
we've been doing that for like10,000 years. It's the basis of
agriculture, to breed betterplants every year. What's plant
breeding? People breed plants?
Like, is that a real thing?
Like I've sat in focus groupswhere people said that's not a
real job. Like nobody has thejob plant breeder. Right? And
(09:35):
you're like,
programs on this. It's, it'shuge. So in that Centre for
Food Integrity piece, insteadof saying what's your comfort
level with GMOs, the firstquestion is, what's your
comfort level with plantbreeding? Only 7% of Canadians
said they had a positive viewof plant breeding and 11%, or
it might be the other wayaround, it might be 11 and 7.
But either way, a very smallgroup were positive and about
(09:57):
the same amount had a negativeview of plant breeding period.
So then when you add GMOs ontop of that, you get 15 or 20%
of people have a comfortableview of it, 30% have a negative
view or, or a negativereaction. If 11% weren't
comfortable with plantbreeding, it's totally
acceptable. It's totallyexpected to have 30% not be
(10:17):
comfortable with GMOs. You'rebuilding on something. So this
is within the context ofgenetic improvement of crops
over 10,000 years. And this isnow just, we're more and more
precise about the way that wedo it. And I think about
technologies like, just as Iwas preparing for this and
thinking of the greenrevolution and realizing my dad
really started farming in, youknow, the late sixties, early
(10:40):
seventies. So he came in rightat that point when all that
technology was arriving at thefarm. Not GMOs yet at that
point, but I remember going upinto the attic of the barn and
there was this thing that waslike a wheelbarrow and it h ad
almost looked like a riverboatcruise kind of propeller on it.
And I'm like, what is that? Andhe's like, oh, that's what I
(11:02):
did when I was 10 years old.
I'd walk that through thepotato fields and the big flaps
would knock the Colorado potatobeetles off the top and into
the net at the bottom. And thatwas the only thing we had to
get those bugs off the plants.
So before that piece oftechnology, it was your
fingers, how many acres can youcrush bugs with your fingers in
(11:24):
a day? He's like, and then wegot this thing which allowed us
to like grow three times asmuch potatoes because I can
move so much faster. Then comespesticides which allow you to
do it even more efficiently.
And he's like, even the best Iwas doing, getting it off with
this wheelbarrow thing, by thetime I got to the other side of
the field, I could see how muchmore damage they had done since
(11:45):
when I started on the othercorner of the field. Right? You
just couldn't move fast enoughto keep up with these bugs. So
you go forward to GMOs, take BTcorn, insect-resistant corn. So
now the corn can keep the bugsoff of it using a natural
soil-based bacteria that thebugs don't like. Now the farmer
doesn't have to go into thatfield at all. Saves them time,
(12:06):
saves them fuel, doesn't haveto spray another chemical. So
it's saving them money overall,your operation's more
efficient. So like this is justthis march of progress in
agriculture about how we canprotect that potential within
the plant . So this is justanother solution to the
problem. We've been fighting
the beginning of time, which isweeds, diseases and bugs.
(12:30):
They're constantly trying totake your stuff and a lack of
rain. So drought tolerant,things like that as well. So
that's where it becomes socritical to find new
technologies like this. Andthat's not unique to GMOs, it's
not unique to gene editing.
There's a great wheat midgetolerant wheat variety that's
used in western Canada andthat's not GMOs and it's not
(12:50):
gene editing, it's just greatplant breeding
it's, they're all justdifferent ways to get to the
same en dpoint a n d t hat'sprotecting your crops. But
yeah, that really stuck out tome that we as a scientific
community and as a plantbreeding community, we really
have to do outreach on whatplant breeding is, period.
Because it doesn't feel fair toexpect the consumer to suddenly
(13:11):
be comfortable with aniteration on something they
didn't know you were doing inthe first place. You have to
give them that opportunity toget comfortable.
Clinton Monchuk (13:19):
We had a huge garden growing up in Lanigan,
Saskatchewan and we wouldtypically sell a few potatoes
off the farm just to locals inthe town. We would go out there
and pick the bugs by hand atthat time. And I think later on
as we got older and we weredoing other things, t hen we
had the powder that they'd puton the top to prevent that from
(13:40):
taking place. But y eah, all tosay that...
Ian Affleck (13:43):
That's the cool thing about that powder, right?
Like that powder is the, isbacillus thuringiensis. So
that's the soil bacteria inpowdered form that you would
throw on top of the potatoes.
What's in the corn is the samething. They just put it in the
leaf. So I think this is what'sso cool about GMOs is that like
a pesticide you can use inorganic agriculture, which is
(14:06):
that bacillus thurangensispowder is what the GMO is
doing. So it's like it doesn'tmatter where the solution comes
from (14:13):
organic agriculture, conventional agriculture, GMOs,
it's all about using all thesetools, figuring out how to put
them together in a way thatmakes it the most effective for
the farmer to use it.
Clinton Monchuk (14:23):
Yeah, 100% .
And you had mentioned a littlebit about different, say the
saw fly or midge or whatever ithappens to be with wheat and
some of the plant breedingthat's taken place. Like we had
crops of wheat that wereabsolutely decimated with midge
or sawfly would kind of cut thestem and the whole plant would
fall over so then you couldn'tharvest it.
Ian Affleck (14:43):
And that's the amazing dedication of plant
breeders, right? Like it takeslike 10 years to put one of
those varieties on the market.
That's just constant work inthe field. Those plant breeders
trying to develop that newtechnology. And this is where I
think maybe I'll give a quickexplanation of like what GMOs
are and what gene editing is. Ithink those are two kind of
things you're hearing in thisspace a lot. So when a plant
breeder i s trying to develop anew variety like wheat m idge [
(15:05):
tolerant] or whatever it mightbe, there's dozens of different
plant breeding tools on t hetable and they'll use a mixture
of these tools to try to, youknow, guide the genetics toward
the outcome they're looking forwhen it comes to disease
resistance and often insectresistance. It's not usually a
simple one gene just controlsthe whole thing, especially in
disease resistance. There'susually like a dozen different
genes that all play intodisease resistance.
(15:27):
So it's really hard to make a new variety that's more disease
resistant than the last one andkeep all the other good
qualities that variety had. Sothis is where newer tools like
GMOs and gene editing come inhandy. So if you imagined a
plant as like a novel and ifyou see another book on the
other side of the desk and sayif page 47 was just in this
(15:48):
book, it would be so muchbetter. So with GMO technology,
I'm going to take that wholepage out and I'm going to stick
it in this book and now thisbook's better. Gene editing is
kind of going, if I could justchange the "and" to an "or" on
page 107, this would be so muchbetter and maybe I need to
change an "and" to "or" on sixdifferent pages.
Ian Affleck (16:09):
So you're not bringing in entirely new DNA
from another plant, you're justtweaking the DNA that's already
in there, which is what youwere doing anyway with
conventional breeding. You canjust do it really precisely now
instead of waiting for therandom changes in the plant to
give you that new makeup thatyou were looking for. So that's
kind of the difference for mebetween GMOs and gene editing.
It's kind of the cut and pasteof a whole new page or just
(16:32):
word editing the little thingyou need to do in that plant in
order to create a new variety.
So what this does is it givesplant breeders even more tools
to get to those outcomes evenfaster than they did before. So
instead of 10 years and 5million dollars to bring a new
variety to market, maybe youcan do it in six years and 3
million dollars. And thatmatters because I think people
(16:53):
also don't understand that alot of the research that goes
into varietal development,some's private sector, some's
funded by farm groups who havemoney that goes into research
piles to try to figure out howto make these new crops. So
it's a lot of this research isboth private company, it's
cooperation between privatecompany and farmers or research
institutions. And anything youcan do to make that more
efficient will allow us toadapt to the changing world
(17:16):
around us and the battles thatfarmers are into. And maybe,
the other thing I often mentionis people will go, that's a GMO
variety and if I was a plantbreeder, I'd be annoyed by that
because you're like, okay, sowe GMO'd a trait into that at
the end, but I bred thatvariety
took eight years to make thebase of the variety that you've
(17:38):
put the trait into. I think itgives the impression that you
walk into a lab, you press abutton and you make a GMO
variety. Like it's still yearsand years of plant breeding
that someone had to put intothat before you get to add i t.
I don't know where I got thisfrom, but it wa s l ike when
someone builds a beautifulhome, you don't celebrate the
hammer, you celebrate thecarpenter
(18:01):
is genetic engineering. Yeah.
But it's the plant breeder whoreally made the magic happen to
put all those pieces togetherand I think they're the ones
that deserve the credit forcreating that tool at the end
of the day.
Clinton Monchuk (18:11):
You worked with the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency for 10 yearsyou said. So maybe touch a
little bit on how theregulatory process works
because again, now listenersunderstand that there is a long
process just to get thatproduct to a commercial state.
But what's that regulatoryprocess that ensures the safety
(18:34):
of that new product coming ontofarms and eventually onto
tables?
Ian Affleck (18:37):
Something that's really important is kind of
that general statement thatfoods on our shelves are safe,
right? There's standards andregulations, whether it be from
finished foods right through toagriculture that farmers and
food production companies haveto meet specific to new plant
varieties in Canada. It doesn'tmatter if it's conventionally
bred, you know, any of thedozens of plant breeding tools,
(18:59):
GMO, gene editing, it has tomeet the environmental, animal
feed and human food safetystandards that are set out by
the CFIA , the Canadian FoodInspection Agency and Health
Canada. And then within thatthere's times at which certain
products they're going to wantto do an analysis of before
they go on the market. Soyou've got to meet the
standards no matter what.
Sometimes the government wantsto check your homework, a nd
(19:22):
they've got clear guidance ofwhen that happens. And then
they do post-market monitoringto make sure your food is
always safe. They're alwayschecking the marketplace to
make sure that food remainssafe. So whether it's a GMO
variety, a gene edited variety,the public can be very
confident that those things aresafe. You know, we've been
growing GMOs in Canada foralmost 30 years in Canada and
around the world, I think Isaid earlier, 450 million
(19:44):
acres, 18 and a half millionfarmers around the world are
growing it. About 60% of theGMO acreage around the world is
in resource-poor or developingcountries. So I think that's
something that often getsmissed is that all of these
countries, the 29 countriesthat grow GMOs, every one of
them has done an independentsafety assessment on all of
(20:07):
those GMOs. It's been provensafe over and over. I think
there's something like 4,500independent safety assessments
of the GMOs on the market. Andthen when they move out into
the world, they're seeing thatit's the resource-poor farmer
who has had some of thegreatest benefits of this value
added technology. So you canimagine here in North America,
(20:28):
we could go buy the tractor, wecould get the crop protection
products, we could get theaccess to the fertilizer or the
irrigation. There's anothermassive part of the green
revolution that I missed wasirrigation. If you're coming up
in a really resource-poordeveloping nation, you don't
have access to just go b uy atractor, you can't get the
loan, you can't get thetractor. So if you can e mbed
(20:52):
the technology that's going toprotect the crop in the seed,
you don't need the tractor toput the crop protection on
there. You don't need i t touse the insecticide because
you've already got somethingthat's going to protect the
crop before you plant it. Youdon't need irrigation because
you might have drought tolerantor water e fficient crops. So
this is so huge for thesefarmers who can't get access to
(21:13):
the same technology that we areso lucky to have free access
to. And that doesn't mean it'sa silver bullet, right? Like
plant breeding or GMOs or g enee diting. Is t hat a silver
bullet? T wo o f the world'sagricultural challenges. It's
just one of the many parts of abigger solution. So it's just
one cog in the wheel.
Clinton Monchuk (21:32):
Why is it, do you think, that there's
acceptance of other geneticmodified products like insulin
with humans and that seems tobe more readily accepted than
maybe some of the GMOs? And,I'd just be curious to hear
your thoughts on that because it was one thing, you know, it's
been around for a w hile andeverybody who's diabetic now
(21:56):
uses a GMO insulin product.
Right?
Ian Affleck (21:59):
Yeah. I think there's a couple things that
come to my mind there. And someof this is just my own personal
trying to understand thismyself, right? I think the
first generation of GMOs werereally focused on farmer
problems. So it was focused onmanaging weeds, managing
insects, that was the big partof it. So if you haven't had
those challenges in your lifeof growing food and trying to
(22:21):
keep the bugs off and the weedsout, it's probably not going to
make a ton of sense of why thisis so important, right? Because
you haven't had that problemand that's not your fault as a
consumer. Like there's nothingwrong with that, you just don't
need that. So when you add anew technology and you're
asking folks to be comfortablewith it, but they don't see a
direct benefit to them. Itdoesn't mean there isn't
(22:42):
massive benefits, which we cantalk about in a minute, but i t
doesn't impact their directdaily life. To pair with that,
in those early years when thetechnology was coming out, the
companies viewed it as, and Ithink our industry sees we made
an error here, w ell we'll talkto our customers and our
customers a re the farmers, sowe'll explain the science and
the benefits and the value tothe farmers. And our customers
(23:05):
aren't the consumer, so someoneelse will talk to them. N o: w
rong, incorrect, poorassumption. It's not the
grocery store's responsibilityto educate the consumer on
agricultural technology,
the consumer what theconsumer's looking for, right?
So I think we've learned thatand hopefully with gene
editing, I think we're tryingto do a better job of getting
out and engaging with thepublic sooner to explain the
(23:27):
technology. So I think therewasn't anything really directly
for them in it, it was foragriculture an d w e didn't
talk to them to explain whywhen a farmer controls their
weeds, when it's easier and youhave less greenhouse gas
emissions and more carbonsequestration in the soil and
less food waste and moresustainability on the farm, why
(23:47):
that's good for you, theconsumer. Whether it's food,
price or environment, we justdidn't make that connection for
them. And then the narrativegot away from us after that.
But I will say too that it'strue that folks, you know, at
times are concerned about it orthey have a negative reaction,
but people will say we don'twant it to be a failure. Like
(24:08):
GMOs, 450 million acresworldwide and 18 and a half
million farmers isn't a failureof an agricultural technology.
It's been a massive success,huge success. PR challenges, I
think we'd be remiss not tonote < laugh>, it didn't have
the easiest ride from a PRpoint of view, but hugely
successful in terms of anagricultural technology and
what it's provided. So I thinkthat's part of it for me is
(24:30):
just, it's difficult for folksto see the direct value, but
when you have new technologiescoming to the market, like the
non-browning apple and thenon-browning, non-bruising
potato and the consumer's like,this is great. Now it's less
about being comfortable withit, but you're more likely to
trust in your institutions andthe governments that are
(24:50):
consistently providing you withsafe food and go, oh well it's
safe so I'm cool with it and Isee a value. So I don't feel
the need to go I'll just stickwith status quo. So that's you
know, as we get moretechnologies that matter to the
public, people need to seevalue. If they're going to
prioritize learning a subject--because that's what you're
(25:11):
asking them to do, studygenetics to a small amount. If
they're going to put theirtime, which they don't have
much of, they better see abenefit. So you got to explain
to them why the technologymatters and then they'll get
interested and they'llunderstand.
Clinton Monchuk (25:32):
This brings us to our fun farm fact. Did you
know that without the use ofplant science in food
production, we'd have 50% lessfood around the world? And
you've already mentioned thefact that we're using this
plant science to grow morefood, trying to use our
(25:53):
resources to the best of ourknowledge and benefit being
environmentally friendly. Allthese things go hand in hand to
make sure that we're producingfood. And if we didn't have
that technology, if we didn'thave that science, there'd be
just be less people on theworld period. Right?
Ian Affleck (26:12):
Yeah. And you get it, like there's a couple
different unfortunate ways thatgoes. If you're growing 50%
less food, then that means togrow that food you need 50%
more land and 50% more time andequipment and inputs and
fertilizer and water. So ifyou're going do that, if you
weren't able to leveragetechnology like we do, you'll
(26:33):
be looking at a whole differentlandscape. And one of the best
ways to keep land in its mostenvironmentally positive form
is to leave it in the forest asmuch as we possibly can. Now
that's tough for agriculturetoo, right? Because when a
farmer's cutting down trees tomake a field, we have to
realize that as our citiesgrow, our cities are covering
(26:54):
the best farmland in thecountry. So it's pretty
incredible, when you look atthe land we farm in Canada by
acreage, it's almost flat forlike the last 30 years I think.
We haven't really changed our[agricultural] acreage, but we
have changed our acreagebecause city footprints have
grown significantly. So we'vehad to find new fields in order
(27:14):
to make up for the fields thatare being lost to the cities.
But we've still managed toproduce 50% more food on the
same amount of land because ofall the technology we've been
able to put to agriculture. Sothat's a real challenge for the
agriculture community and thatland that goes under Toronto or
you know, Montreal or thesecities that are expanding,
(27:35):
that's your prime, number oneland. And the land you're
opening up somewhere else isn'tas good as that land. So not
only have we produced more foodon the same quantity of land,
we've produced more food on thesame quantity of less
productive land.
best land is, it's being..
Clinton Monchuk (27:56):
Gobbled up.
Ian Affleck (27:56):
You know , under the Yorkdale Mall in Toronto.
Clinton Monchuk (27:59):
So getting back to consumer level and you
talked a little bit about theCanadian Center for Food
Integrity and we use a lot oftheir research every year when
they do their studies. The topconcern among Canadians was the
rising cost of food. So puttingthis all into context of how
all this different plantscience is h elping, how's it
(28:20):
helping control a little bit ofthat price of food for
consumers? I think consumersare seeing it in the grocery
stores that prices are going upbut without some of the science
and technology that we have,want to fathom a guess where
the price of food would be at?
Ian Affleck (28:38):
Oh , in some of the work that we've done, you
know, an average food bill,this is pre-inflation for the
average family of four, if youdidn't have access to plant
science innovations, you'd seeabout a $4,400 increase in your
annual food bills, which ispretty significant. And I think
as we, in this moment ofinflation, and again, plant
(28:58):
science is no a silver bullet,but this is the difference
between the food inflation rateand the total cost of food. So
if you're producing food at alower cost, then when inflation
hits k ind o f like compoundinterest, you're multiplying a
smaller number. You know, if aloaf of bread's $2 when you
start and then you getinflation, it goes to $4 bread.
(29:20):
If you're starting with $4bread, it goes to $8 bread.
That's a big difference in howmuch you're paying for food. So
this is where helping farmersstay efficient on the farm
keeps the cost of productionlow, allows the farmer to make
a better living and keeps thatcost of production as a factor
of overall food costs as low aswe can. It's not going to
(29:42):
reduce inflation, it's notgoing to turn global inflation
numbers down, but it can makesure that our base number that
we're working with stays assmall as it can so that it's
not there to be multiplied byinflation. And it allows the
farmer the best opportunitythey have to make profit on
what they're doing. Because ifthe farm's not economically
(30:03):
sustainable, then it, one, itcan't exist and it can't afford
to be as environmentallysustainable as they want to be.
I think that's like aneconomically sustainable farmer
is the most environmentallysustainable farmer. If we
restrict access to technology,that puts the farmer in a
really tough spot.
Clinton Monchuk (30:21):
Your family farm, my family farm, we have
access to all thesetechnologies in Canada and we
talked about the regulatoryprocess to make sure that new
things will come to market thatwe can use into the future.
What we're seeing over in theEuropean Union is a little bit
different now. Right. Sothey're now maybe backing off a
(30:41):
little bit on the science.
That's now starting to affecttheir ability to produce food .
So from your point of view, howwould a process like that harm
us here in Canada?
Ian Affleck (30:55):
There's a couple different layers because
Europe's a complicated space,right? You have so many
countries with so manydifferent approaches to
governance all trying tocooperate together. But what it
does seem is that they continueto politicize their
science-based decision makingsystems. So in the development
of their most recent farm tofork policy or the green deal,
you see them making decisionson scientific topics based on
(31:18):
the politics around it, insteadof making t he scientifically
correct decision and thenexplaining why, even though
that conversation might bedifficult. And I think that's a
really challenging spacebecause w hat it's doing is
it's limiting their ability toproduce food. And when their
ability to produce food islimited, someone has to produce
that food for them. Becausethey're importing all that food
(31:39):
from Canada, the United States,Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, you
name it, Australia. So thefood's getting grown somewhere.
It's just, where is it going toget grown ? So if you're not
using technology in yourbackyard, well then we need the
technology so we can fill yourfood needs. You can say, okay,
you're, your your ownjurisdiction. You can kind of
make whatever good or baddecisions you want to make. But
(32:01):
when you start applying thosedecisions to the rest of us and
saying, you can't export thingsto us that don't meet our
political ideals, now you'rereaching out and limiting
Canadian farmers' approach toagriculture because of your
domestic policies in Europe.
And this is the rub point we'reat right now. This isn't
happening all the timeeverywhere, but there's
(32:21):
indications of it happeningmore and more. And it's very
disappointing when there's somany great innovations
available that just aren'tbeing used. And I think we've
seen in the news there's beentractor demonstrations in
Europe. Frustration of farmerson this, you know, I think ,
one that would kind of standout, it's not i n the biotech r
oute. They've always had achallenging approach to
(32:41):
biotechnology for GMOs whereall the GMOs that we have here
are approved in Europe, butthey're not allowed to be grown
by their farmers. Specificallynot for scientific reasons,
just for s ocial reasons theydon't want them. But what's
really unfortunate about thatmeans our farmers get the
benefit of them and theirfarmers don't. They buy all
(33:01):
those products from us anyway,so it's really unfortunate. But
recently with the kind ofpolitical discourse on neonic
seed treatments, for example,and they took a really hard
line in Europe that wasn'tbased on science and they said
we're banning the neonics seedtreatments, and then they gave
out 600 exemptions a year toevery commodity group that
needed that pesticide. So theysaid they banned it, but they
(33:24):
really didn't ban it becausethey were just letting
everybody use it anyway justbecause it was safe. But now
after a recent court decision,which was saying, I don't think
we're going to allow you toprovide exemptions now. They're
really putting theiragricultural production in a
bind. You know, politics issomething that should stay in
that space and make sure thatyou're leading with science
when you make your decisions.
(33:44):
Because farming is science. Idon't know if people make that
connection enough, is that afarmer, we often say, you know,
ia a, a s a welder, ia acarpenter, ia a mechanic, and t
hey're also scientists. Theamount of high technology and
complex science that is u sedon a farm day to d a y, and
this is just me, like I leftthe farm in, s o 1998 and so it
(34:07):
's, you know, just between 98and now, Cl int, you must hav e
se en so man y te chnologicaland sc ientific advancements on
your farm that I wasn't evenaround for when I was on the
farm.
Clinton Monchuk (34:17):
Yeah. It's amazing. My dad, who's in his
mid seventies has a tough timereally even getting in our
equipment with all the sensortechnology and variable rate
this and that. He's just notused to it, right?
Ian Affleck (34:31):
You say your dad, I was home in PEI last summer
and I took my son home and wegot into the planter. I had no
idea how that thing worked .
tractor and I was like, I don'teven know how to put the
planter down into the ground.
And I don't know what all thesescreens do anymore. Like, it
was wild how much technologyhad come into the cab of that
(34:55):
tractor to just make thefarming so precise.
Clinton Monchuk (34:58):
It really is amazing how, how it's changed
and not only the machinery, butthe science and the new
technologies in there. So I dowant to say thank you very
much, Ian, for being part ofthe podcast today. It's great
to just hear the progression ofscience, so everybody can get a
little bit more understandingand knowledgeable about the
(35:19):
subject.
Ian Affleck (35:20):
Yeah, thanks. And I think, you know, the new
thing on the block for plantbreeding is that now you'll see
GMOs called traditional GMOs
like the new cool k id on theblock. So now it's l ike
traditional GMOs and I love that GMOs are now old s chool
tech. Like I love that they'rethe super Nintendo to the Xbox,
right? It's like, those are,those are old sc hool G MOs.
(35:42):
But as gene ed iting c omesalong, I think that's the
really exciting part in plantbr eeding r ight now, which is
our ability to tweak thosegenes that were hard to tweak
and get that diseaseresistance. An d w hile th ere
w o uld b e big flashy thingslike high fiber wheat or you
know, high oleic soybeans orhealthy heart tomatoes and
stuff like that. Wh ere s omeof the biggest advancements are
(36:03):
going to be is instead ofgetting a 6% more disease
resistant wheat, you're goingto get a 12% more disease
resistant wheat and th en t henext va riety i s g oing to be
12% again instead of six. Andthat compound interest of
moving those things forwardfaster is going to be just as
impactful as the really flashykind of cool stuff, which wi ll
b e really important. But thebasic ability for plant breeds
(36:27):
to move varieties forward, Ithink is something that's going
to be really, really helped bythis technology moving forward.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
I want to thank you for taking the time to listen
to our Ask A Farmer podcast. Weat Canadian Food Focus value
the input from our listenersand ask that you share this
podcast with your friends andfamily. Remember, this is a
two-way street, so we seek yourinput for future segments that
are of interest to you aboutfood and farming . To do this,
(36:59):
please click on the Ask Us iconat the top of our website,
canadianfoodfocus .org . Whileyou're there, feel free to
follow our numerous socialmedia links and sign up for our
newsletter. This segment wasproduced and edited by Angela
Larson, research and Writing byDorothy Long and Penny Eden .
Music by Andy Elson .
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