Cereal seed business

[tweety]

To add to sumdum's question, what do you gain in upov91 that was not already legislated thru pbr and seeds act?

Secan isn't owned by farmers, its owned by a select group of seed growers. Secan, in the future, will have to start paying for that germplasm and varieties to farmers after the government breeder germplasm model is initiated. Your basically free ride would be over. Farmers would own and control all of that.

Note to Secan, careful for what you have asked for (upov91) because sometimes you get it.

That's if they (commissions) can get their shit together. Its all there for the taking with huge benefit to the farmer.

Or will we just keep whining about seed company control and price. The Sask3 way.

[grower99]

Tom, that is why it is essential to have Ag Canada...keep a significant role in breeding of cereals...

[furrowtickler]

Very good questions / points tweety .

[rkaiser]

[tweety]

Too bad they will never be answered.

We now return you to our regular scheduled whining.

[FarmRanger]

So, let's just play along with this scenario. The provincial commissions all create a company that buys the varieties out of AAFC, CDC, etc. and markets them. Like Tom said, isn't this what SeCan is doing already?
Or are you talking about farmers actually doing the breeding ourselves and becoming another CDC or AAFC breeding program? With the average variety taking 10-12 years from F1 to registered variety, there would be tens, if not hundreds of millions of checkoff dollars spent before anything came back into kitty in the form of royalties. When the royalties did start coming back in, there would be farmers thinking that they took all this money from my check for 10 years, I should get the variety for nothing.
Maybe there's a better business model out there, but the one I described above would be a nightmare for western Canadian farmers and any commissions that entered into such an endeavour.

[tweety]

Sure hope you're not on a commission.

The "we can't" attitude is astonishing.

The answer is, yes to the scenario. Own the germplasm WITH cdc AAFC, license the varieties collecting royalties reinvesting and building even better varieties. Work with them.

Let Secan be a distributor, but control the stipulation of being able to grow you're own seed not letting go of that priviledge.

You don't have to be a seed peddler to control how its marketed.

THAT's where the expense is, buying new seed every year for every acre. Like canola.

[tweety]

anywhere in the states, europe, or canada where farmers along with university and government are doing germplasm/variety research and development?

[FarmRanger]

So, you want Commissions to replace WGRF? I'm not sure how that changes things much from the way things are run right now?

Or are you suggesting that AAFC give their germplasm away to Commissions for free? Do we also inherit all the infrasture and personnel as well? The feds might have some objections if our business model depends on the government giving us 100s of millions of dollars in infrastructure. Even if they did, would the new entity break even, or would it require constant infusions of farmers money to stay afloat? Would you be happy if another buck a tonne was added to your checkoff for variety development especially if you still had to pay for any certified seed that came out of the new company? What the risk if a big life science company creates some new wheat that every farmer wants to buy and we all abandon the varieties offered by our own company?

I'm not saying it can't be done, but these are questions that would have to be answered satisfactorially before commissions could ever consider owning a breeding company.

Recent beefed up UPOV91 legislation enshrines farmer rights to saved seed and is a red herring to this discussion.

[tweety]

So how does Kansas do it? I heard from a friend down there they have an extremely functional farmer directed system in place that owns most of the newer varieties. He knew a bit about it but not too much.

Don't they work with the gov and university? Why is it impossible here?

[FarmRanger]

I don't know how Kansas does it, but they should be definitely one of the places that are looked at to see if their model could work up here.

[tweety]

Well, get er done! You sound like you are in the position to make decisions. Here in sask where i farm it may just slip away while discussing and discussing.