Recently in Innovation Category

Policy decisions in agriculture often beget other changes - be they in behaviour, in technology and/or in the way that things are organized and decisions are made. The Danish sugar industry is a good case in point.

Last week's Illative Blog entry (see link) highlighted three issues that we think are critically in need of examination and analysis. This week we examine three additional issues, followed by a discussion of why the capacity to analyse these issues is limited.

The focus of this forum piece by KIS Collaborator Darwin Anderson is the application to prairie agriculture of an ecological theory put forward by C.S. (Buzz) Holling. Holling is a well-known ecologist, first with Forestry Canada, then at UBC, later at the U. of Florida, and now retired, still thinking and writing from a coastal community in Florida (Holling, 2006).

Holling's idea on ecological or environmental problem(s) is that as a resource-use problem is recognized, a solution is developed and implemented. The solution often works very well at first, but soon problems related to the application of the solution itself are apparent. The ecosystem(s) or land changes as well, often becoming less diverse and, consequently, less resilient. The solution becomes the new problem.

Anderson applies Holling's work to the adoption of summer fallow (SF) and how that ecological solution eventually became a problem that was solved by conservation tillage. Anderson then raises the question: Is conversation tillage following the same path as SF and becoming a problem that needs a new solution?

In the western Canadian agricultural sector, the value added per employed person is about 30% less than that of other sectors in western Canada. The real competition for the future viability of the agricultural industry is not with our international competitors - farmers in the US, EU, Mexico, China, and Australia - but rather with other domestic sectors that are able to out-compete local farmers and supply chain participants for access to land, labour, and capital. If we do not reverse this productivity gap, agriculture will become a sunset industry.