Ag Policy Connection: Rethinking funding for plant breeding, with Jason Reinheimer

Canada's agri food system is complex and its future depends on bold thinking and open dialogue. The Canadian Agri Food Policy Institute is an independent think tank bringing together diverse voices to advance future looking policy solutions. By providing a trusted space for conversation, CAPI helps ensure growth and prosperity for the sector. Visit CAPI ICPA CA to learn more. You're listening to the Ag Policy Connection. Brought to you by Real Agriculture. In partnership with the Canadian Agri Food Policy Institute. We're connecting the dots between the people. And the policies that shape agriculture and. Farming today and into the future. Welcome to the Ag Policy Connection, a podcast where we talk about the big ideas and fresh thinking needed to solve the big challenges and seize the big opportunities facing Canadian agriculture and food. I'm one of your hosts, Tyler McCann, the managing director of the Canadian Agri Food Policy Institute. I've been working in ag policy and politics for 20 years and I'm a policy wonk. And I'm not. But I'm your other host, Elise Bigley, the Director of Strategic Projects at CAPI Canada's agriculture and food think tank. In this podcast, we'll be talking to leaders across agriculture and food about their big ideas to create generational change in ag policy. That's right, Elise. We think the time has come for ag policy to catch up with the changes happening on farms, in processing facilities and across the system that produces food and more and gets it to customers in Canada and around the world. We are excited to work with Real Agriculture to bring some of the big ideas for change to you. Make sure to visit capi's website to subscribe to our mailing list. Follow us on our socials and on YouTube to keep up to date. And with that, let's get started. So today we're joined by Jason Reinheimer. Jason is the head of cereals and pulse research at Lima Grain Field Seeds, where he leads global breeding and innovation programmes across key cereal and pulse crops. He has over 20 years of experience in plant breeding in Canada and North America and more than a decade with Australian grain Technologies, working across wheat hybrid wheat, triticale and durum. We're excited to hear from him today. Jason, welcome. Thanks for having me. So, let's just jump right in. Jason, what's your big idea? My idea is, if Canada wants generational change in agricultural innovation, we need to transform our policy around how we fund plant breeding. Nice and succinct. So before we dive more into that big idea, we want to hear about your journey that led you here. So can you tell us about Your career and experience in plant breeding? Sure. It all started back when I was born, so that's going a long way back. And, and so I grew up on a farm in southern Australia. I grew up on a farm where we grew wheat, barley, canola and pulse crops and it really drove my passion in that area of agriculture. And after high school I went to university and I discovered a career, an area where innovation took place and that was plant breeding. I didn't know it existed before entering university and instantly fell in love and knew that that's what I wanted to do. So after, after university, I was lucky enough to. To lead plant breeding programmes straight out of university and that was Australian Grain Technologies. Then after that took me to Canada where I spent six and a half years there leading a spring wheat breeding programme. Then after that I've gone on to lead really just management of plant breeding across the globe, now in France. So, Jason, as a non science person, what made you fall in love with plant breeding? What specific aspect of it? It's just the diversity in what it asks of people who work in this industry, in this discipline. There's many aspects to being a successful plant breeder and it goes right across from basic agronomy, understanding of farming systems, through to statistics, genetics and business management, logistics and a range of different disciplines. And it really reminds me of the diversity in farming. You know, you're the jack of all trades and the master of none and it's sort of a bit of an analogy for me in plant breeding and it also, I guess, also ticked the box for me in my passion to deliver value to farmers. Jason, I've had the opportunity to work with some plant breeders over the years and I once had somebody tell me that what you do as a plant breeder is walk out through the fields and listen to the different varieties talking to you, or the different genetic strains talk to you and you kind of pick the best ones that are there. How do you, what do you actually do as a plant breeder? When you think about the actual genetics work that you're doing, how does that actually work? And I'm curious as to how that's changed over your career, because I can imagine the new technologies are changing the work that plant breeders are doing. Yeah. What you describe is a very romantic way to think about plant breeding and it's not the reality. I wish I could say that I was some sort of magician that can listen to plants and, and speak to wheat and they could tell me which one's going to perform and that's not the case. It's quite sophisticated. There's a lot of technology involved to do this job. Well, there's a combination of a lot of different disciplines working in conjunction with each other to bring together data, to bring together different ways to evaluate the performance of the potential new varieties. So that includes, as I mentioned before, statistics, there's genomics, there is complex chemistry in wheat in terms of wheat quality, there's disease screening, there's a whole range of different disciplines. And so that takes a lot of investment and a lot of time. And I guess at the end of the day, you know, when you look at the result of what you've done, you have a handful of seeds in your hand and you think it may not look like much, but the amount of technology that's in those seeds is quite substantial. So, yeah, it's a complex job, but it's a lot of fun. How do you measure success as a plant breeder? How do you know if, at the end of the day you've done what you need to do with that when you've got that handful of seeds in your hand? It's really about the amount of acres, to be honest with you, that your variety is able to get onto farmer's fields, because that's the ultimate acid test, right? Like, unless this is what I say to my when I mentor people coming through, you know, all of the research you do, even though it could be fun and sexy, until it's on a farmer's field, it has no impact. And so that's the ultimate aim and the ultimate evaluation, if you like, is if farmers see value, they're willing to put their hand in their pocket and invest in this technology, which is what it is, really technology. They're willing to invest and put it on their farmer's fields. And then, you know, yes, I've contributed something to helping that farmer be successful. Daisy, we maybe take a step up above plant breeding before we come back down to ev, but we've been doing quite a bit of work on innovation over the last couple of years, and I'm learning a lot more about the innovation system in Canada. I would imagine there are kind of parallels around the world and the kind of. The piece that you just talked about on adoption, again, it sounds very clear to you, the point of what you're doing is to get things adopted at the end of the day, but that is at times not something that everybody agrees to kind of that focus on adoption at the end of the day, or adoption as the metric of success of the innovation system. Sometimes seems more controversial than I would think, than I would think that it is. How do you think about kind of that as the purpose in the clarion call? And is that something that you think is broadly agreed to or is that kind of one of the challenges that we've got, that not everybody's thinking about the purpose of the innovation system the same way? I guess it just depends on where you are in the innovation chain. You know, the beauty of what we do is that we are the last link before, you know, seed production in the farmer's field. So, you know, plant breeding is really trying to wrap up all of the great innovation that has been done for us into a nice package that, that then can be utilised by a farmer. So for me, in plant breeding, that is the ultimate acid test, as I said. But up the stream, there are other metrics that we can use to evaluate how we're innovating. There is what I like to call pre breeding or pre competitive research that happens in Canada. There is a lot, it is world class and there are, you know, different ways that people can contribute to the innovation pipeline. But again, unless you're able to hand that on that innovation on to a plant breeder, if it's in the plant research space and then they can take it and hand the baton on to farmers, then I think it has less impact. I want to jump kind of back to this idea of timelines. You're talking a lot about it, but plant breeding operates on very long timelines and we're in a society that wants things really fast. So how does the 10 to 12 year development cycle affect how we should think about kind of funding decisions today? Or how does that, how does that timeline impact how you interact in the sector? Yeah, it's, it's a challenge. You know, when you, when you work in a company like I do, you know, there is expectations of, you know, investment and return on investment. And I'm lucky to work in an organisation that's owned by farmers so they understand well what it takes to the time needed to be successful. But I guess to your point, this is, this is the difficult thing with really observing issues or observing success and the health of a plant breeding industry is because there's a lag phase. And so if there is a problem today, we're not going to realise the result of that for, you know, as you said, eight to 10 years. If we're doing something well to fix an issue, then we won't see the result for the same sort of time scale. So the react is not as high as a lot of other industries. So this is where I think we need to be very careful and very mindful to not wait until, you know, there's a dumpster fire type scenario before we react. And I guess that's something that leads into my idea of today. Okay, before we get back to the question, just have a question for you. How do you remain optimistic about the future sector working kind of against these reactive timelines? How am I optimistic? I just. The industry is so passionate and everyone, even though we, we have different ideas around how to get to success, everyone wants it so badly. And I just love working in that environment. And, you know, you can. I guess the other thing is just how direct this industry is and how clear people are. People share their ideas clearly and passionately, which I like. And so I think my optimism comes from the fact that I know everyone really wants this to be a success. And so I have an idea. I'll continue to share it because I believe in it and I guess relating to Canada, you know, I spent six and a half years in Saskatoon. I absolutely love the place and it's my second home and the people there are just great people. And so I think we can work this out together. It's taking some time, but I'm confident we can get there together. That's great. So, kind of building on that, let's go back to your big idea. How do we do this together? So you've argued that Canada needs to rethink how it supports variety development. What's changed that makes this conversation urgent now? And we're asking this question days after kind of learning. AOC is planning to shrink its research apartment, likely will maintain its breeding programme. But again, we don't know all the details. But in answering that question on why your big idea is needed, I also appreciate your insight on what the future holds. Given this uncertainty, does this change your big idea? Yeah, sure. So it's funny, we organised this podcast several weeks ago and then what's happened since then on this topic has been quite significant. So, yeah, it is timely that we talk about this topic, but I guess for me, people who know me, they know me when I was in Canada, I've been beating this drum for some time. Maybe some people are sick of me, but it's very important because, you know, the conditions that I see in Canada have a lot of parallels to a lot of other countries around the world where, you know, we ended up in a point where major change was needed. And so the conditions that I see, one, it's just around funding, you know, even before the recent announcements, and again, we don't know specifically what they're touching within afc. But even before this point, you know, there was signals coming through different channels suggesting that the investments in implant breeding through the public sector, particularly through afc, were looking to decline. And that was putting a lot of pressure on, on the public breeders who are relying on that funding to continue to innovate at the level that they had been previously. And I just want to say straight off the bat that looking backwards in what has happened in Canada in terms of innovation and the contribution of plant breeding in the public sector to farmers success have been substantial. My idea here is not to critique what's happened in the past. It's really to say, look, I can see some conditions here which are going to make that model and that system of funding plant breeding not sustainable into the future. So it's not to say we want to change something that's bad, we just want to future proof something that's good. And so for me, with this pressure on public funding, you know, with the difficulties that that fact brings, I can see from other countries where these conditions really brought about the, the ability for farmers to take innovation through plant breeding really back into their own hands and out of the government's hands and really gain some control back. And that was really through adopting a value creation system in every country where significant amount of wheat acres are being grown currently, all except for a few that ex communist or communist countries. Every other country has adopted some value creation system that has really encouraged investment competition which has really driven innovation, not just maintaining pre change levels or public investment levels, but really accelerating the rates of genetic gain, the rates of value creation in those countries which has really benefited farmers and again has really put the control of innovation in the hands of farmers, which is really important. Jason, I think one of the things that you touched on is kind of the looking back and kind of the long term tailwinds and one of the things that I think it's been interesting to watch over the last couple of days as groups have reacted to the cuts that I Canada announced is that there's, there's some, I think a heightened level of awareness of shock to the cuts that are there. But I think you touched on this and it's worth just confirming, right, the changes that Ag Canada has been making to its breeding footprint go back probably 20 years. At this point in time, as that footprint has shrunk over and over again, they have effectively wound down most of their eastern Canadian breeding programmes, they got rid of their flax programme, they've kind of really shrunk their approach, they've kind of opened up or they've, they've wound down breeding programmes in some pulse crops. So, so the idea that change is coming is it should, should. That should not be controversial in and of itself. I Canada is changing its footprint and it's so, so Icanna is changing its footprint, it's not changing its funding model. What you're saying is we need to change the funding model in order to catch up to that, that kind of reality. But, but that's not entirely a new idea, Jason. Right. We've been around this again. I worked at the Sea Trade association at the time, whenever this became quite a big public, public issue. Is this just something that is inevitable, right, that that event, like eventually the system will break if we don't change the funding model or how is this different than going to be kind of past, kind of the past efforts to make these changes? How does this fit into where we're at today? Yes. So I would like to say nothing is inevitable. But in every country, as I mentioned before, where wheat is significant part of the, the agricultural system, this has happened and just where it's been caught along the decline has changed depending on how forward thinking and what leadership has been taken in the different countries. For example, in the uk there was a direct decision by the government to have a policy change and they went in a different direction in places like the us, just over time, due to the attractiveness of ability to get a return on investment, there has been a slow changeover of public versus private breeding and investment. But in all cases, in all cases, a value creation of a capture model has emerged as a result of a realisation that without a way to directly fund plant breeding, that there is either a disaster that has happened or is going to happen. So I feel as though, as I said before, the conditions are the same in Canada and to your point before, it's not new idea, but I think it's worth discussing, particularly in the current context because, you know, the urgency from my perspective is high and therefore I think it's something that we need to renew to ensure that this, that everyone engages and ensures that, you know, we are in control of the future and not making decisions because we're forced to, because it's too late. And certainly if you think about the footprint, kind of the role that I Canada plays today in breeding, I think in wheat, it's about 80% of the acres are grown within I Canada variety. Today, this is a big change and this is a big change that gets felt by farmers. I'm curious, Jason, you talked about how in the UK the government said, we're changing the policy, we're doing this differently. I think you've talked a lot about the farmers should be engaged in this and make this change. At the end of the day, do you think that this is something, who do you think needs to go first on this change? What do you think that this looks like? Is this something that farmers should take the lead on or is this something that you think government just needs to say, look at the old way of doing things, the status quo isn't good enough anymore and we need to change. Being a farmer myself, I would like to say that farmers would step up and say, look, relying on government sometimes is successful, sometimes it's not. I'm not going to comment on governments because that's a very touchy subject. But for me, this is something that's really critical for farmers. It's a key piece of technology and innovation that drives profitability and prosperity for farmers. So I would hope that farmers could step forward through commissions or other representative bodies and say, look, we believe that you, as our representatives who do put funding towards plant breeding, currently, we need to acknowledge that as well there is farmers directly investing in plant breeding through cheque offs, that they need to step forward and say, right, we want to control the next steps, we want to be part of the conversation and we want to be the ones who make the decisions around how our invest, our previous investments continue because they have made significant investments in public programmes and also how we want to stimulate innovation in this space into the future. Obviously I have a solution for that, which is the variety use agreement, but maybe we can talk about that at a later time. Well, I kind of want to talk Bring us the future. So you discussed who's going to take the lead on just how this change happens, but what does this look like on the ground for producers? Like the result of it? Like, what would this, how would this change impact producers and breeders and really what would that look like for them? So the change would be really around how plant breeding is funded. So I guess in terms of today, what farmers would be seeing is that the great investment that has been done and the great innovation and the great work that breeders have done over the, the past many decades, but particularly in the last 15 years, they're seeing varieties come to their farms that are valuable and they're growing them. Right. And so to date, maybe they're not Seeing an issue, which is understandable because as we discussed earlier, there's a lag between an issue and seeing it in the farmers fields. So if we transition to a system where farmers directly pay to the developer of that variety for the use of that technology through some system like the variety use agreement or in other countries, there's other systems that work, then they would be, instead of contributing to a levy which they then would, the commissions would use that levy to invest in plant breeding. They would directly reward those organisations that are actually bringing innovation. And what we're talking about investment is quite small per acre in terms of the total input costs. So today I think for wheat, the VUA per acre of a farmer saved seed is $2 per acre. So that is quite small compared to the, to the total investment, even though we don't want to keep piling on cost of farmers. Again, I'm a farmer, I know this. But the investment is small, but it's really directly, more directly investing in organisations that are delivering farmers value, which is really rewarding innovation directly rather than the old funding model as we see it today. So Jason, one of the interesting pieces around cost, right, is that you're not necessarily talking about something that costs farmers more money because farmers are already making these investments through cheque offs that they're paying to commissions, they pay it through their tax dollars today. We all contribute to plant breeding today. You know, what you're saying is we need a funding model that says when you use a variety, you pay directly to the developer of that variety, the cost of developing that variety. That effectively this is what you're doing is you're simplifying the equation. And I'll say some of the things that we've tried to do from our policy work is to map out kind of with the flows of money from everybody involved. And it is complicated and, and messy. And one of the challenges is I don't think anybody has a really good sense as to how much money Canada is actually spending on variety development. We don't know. I think everybody, the assumption is that that amount is shrinking over time, but we don't actually know that that amount is shrinking over time. The commissions know how much money that they're putting into it through their core breeding agreements. But your proposal is to say again, we effectively need to cut out the middleman farmer that uses a wheat variety should pay the developer of that wheat variety for the variety that they use. Right? Like that is at its core what you're talking about at the end of the day, right? Yes, it is, it is what I'm talking about. And we need to remember as well that the checkoff dollars that are being contributed by farmers are not only going to plant breeding or variety developing. There is a lot of investment going on. Market development, in agronomy, work in pre breeding research, in a lot of great stuff that is really vital for the success of our industry. And so some of that money is currently going into variety development. And so, yeah, what I'm suggesting is we don't need to go through that system. We can open up a direct relationship between the developer and the farmer and really encourage an open and competitive landscape where anyone, big or small, whoever you are, can come and give it a go. And if you're delivering value, then you'll get rewarded for that and you'll have more money to invest back into more breeding. So, yeah, it's really simplifying the model. And I want to get into some of the barriers. But again, you have a benefit, right? But always good to declare potential conflicts. You potentially, lcrc, would stand to benefit from the system, but you only benefit from that system if somebody actually buys your varieties and uses your varieties. Right? Like that is kind of, that, that's the value proposition, that's the back and forth that you need to make with farmers, is that this only works if you're producing something that they use. Right? Yeah, you're right. So today, you know, if we have a VUA attached to our varieties that we've, we've launched in the marketplace and we've had, you know, some success. However, the biggest beneficiary of a change like this would be the public sector, right? They have 80% market share, so that would be even worse for us because our main competitor is getting more money. And so I guess, yes, it would be beneficial to us if we all played by the same rules. You would even up a lot of the playing field. However, I just, I see a lot of benefit to enable other players into the market. We know of other companies who are interested but would not enter until something is well established in terms of value creation. And as to your point, if we're not good enough, then we're not good enough. We're not asking for any other handouts or any other government support or anything else. It's just what we've seen from other markets is when you move in this direction, then it brings a lot of investment, a lot of innovation and, and the people who do it the best, the organisations, public or private, who do it the best, they're the ones who are able to have money to reinvest and to continue to bring innovation. So at the end of the day, what I have seen is farmers win. Because if you have a competitive, healthy, competitive marketplace, then you will see farmer benefit always, always come first. So let's go quickly just through a couple of the reasons why farmers don't like this. Right? So one, you know, farmers today, through those checkoff dollars, spend about $10 million in Ag Canada's breeding programme. So they say it's not fair to put a royalty on seed coming out of those aganada programmes because we've already paid for those varieties. What's your answer to that, Jason? So I would say that as to my point before about, okay, cheque offs and the dollars being invested in AFC is not just in direct variety development. I would say checkoffs keeps the whole industry strong and royalties will keep the plant breeding innovation strong. And so I think there is, you know, farmers would understand that both of these investments are beneficial to them. But I think there is a confusion about separation between those two things at times. The way that it's been presented that not all dollars are going towards plant breeding. And the second thing is that I had this exact same conversation with my dad when we went through the same transition in Australia. And it's like I'm paying twice. And the reality is, during the transition phase, that is somewhat true. Let's not shy away from that because there has been investments made and then there is, then there is a royalty that's going to go on top of that as we transition from, you know, from a granting system to a direct royalty system. So we're going to have to manage that. But it's a short period of time and soon, you know, those royalty investments will start to really hit the innovation and farmers will get the benefit. So, yeah, I think we can manage that as an industry and just acknowledge, you know, exactly where the dollars are going and what for. Jason, I want to talk about what is the risk if we don't change? So you have mentioned that, you know, the system works fine, there's farmers that don't see a problem and, you know, there's a lot of really good foundational work that we don't want to ignore. Is, is there a point where if we don't change, things will kind of fall apart or are we just going to continue being just okay? Yeah, that's a good question. I think if we don't do anything, then companies like LCRC won't exist. We've already seen others leave and maybe that's a good thing, I'm not sure, but I don't think it is. But I would really hope that more companies were here to compete against us. I'd really enjoy that because that would suggest we have a healthy plant breeding industry. But I think what we will see is a continual decline in terms of performance of Canadian ag and plant breeding. Improvement is one component of, of continuing to be competitive. We work in an international marketplace and so I think we would fall behind in terms of our productivity to some other countries and be less attractive. And therefore the value we can continue to deliver back to farmers would reduce. And then the whole system gets squeezed. So I think it'll just be a gradual decline. I don't think we'll see a big explosion unless the key breeders in the public sector decide to do something big. But I think it would just be a slow burn. I know, Jason, that we're still as we acknowledge, we know that Canada is shrinking its footprint. We know that those cuts have been happening over the last 20 years. We know that that may have sped up or we think that that may have sped up last week. So we know that there's kind of, there's a trajectory that we're on. But, but today, if we sit to you today, what do you think the world will look like in five years when it comes to how we fund plant breeding in Canada? What, what do you think the answer is? What do you think will be different from 5? I hope, optimistically, I hope that we've adopted a system like vua, which is a Canadian made solution by the way. It's not something we've brought from anywhere else right across all crops in Canada. And if AFC decide to stay in variety development, then the money generated from the varieties that they have released will go back into, to help, you know, the breeders who are very innovative themselves and they can do the job, but they just need, they need the investment to be able to continue to grow their innovation. So there will be, if whoever decides to be in plant breeding will have the opportunity, if they are successful enough in delivering farmer benefits through improved varieties, they will be successful. And so that would mean that it's not going to be just afc, cdc, other universities and lcrc. There's going to be the kwse, the Bayers, the Syngentas, the, whoever wants to come. Even local companies that start up. We've seen some Jodi Suda, for example, start up her own breeding company. You know, people like that say we see them really innovating and generating value they're getting rewarded and being able to build themselves up as a viable business in Canada. So optimistically, that's what I see. And it doesn't take long once the decision is made to, for the industry to adopt. You know, I saw it in Australia when I was there when the switch was made to adopt endpoint royalties. The investment came from everywhere, local, international, everywhere. And so the innovation really, really sped up and it was a very vibrant industry to work in. And there's still a lot of space for research, which is very important and it stimulates even the pre competitive research as well, because you have a lot more players, a lot more ideas and a lot more avenues to deliver your pre competitive, pre breeding research to farmers. So this is. Okay, I'm getting a bit excited here, I'm sorry, but this is the ultimate aim and it's not going to take much for us to, you know, we have the system, it's already developed. You know, we have varieties already in the system. We just need to move forward as an industry to widely adopt. And then, and then we're there. The rest will just fall behind. Elise, can I speak in one last question? I just want Jason touched on something that. Jason, you talked about the pre competitive research. Do you think that Canada's leaving kind of pre considered pre competitive research on the table because ag Canada's in the breeding game and is taking resources away from resources it should be spending on pre competitive research? That's a difficult question to answer. You know, they're so linked in the public sector. You know, I have a clear definition between the two that I use because it ensures that we stay in the competitive space and we don't venture too far into places where, where universities and others should be. But yeah, for me I wouldn't critique what's happening today, but I think it's an opportunity. You know, if there is this other source of funding that's supporting variety development, then by definition we should have resources that are more resources that are freed up to be able to invest more in this space, to continue to bring up our great researchers in Canada to support their research and continue to deliver. So I think I'll spin it that way, Tyler, that there would be a big opportunity. How big it is, I'm not sure. So Jason, I get the pleasure of asking the last question. I was going to say this would be. I'm going to challenge you to be optimistic. But you are incredibly optimistic, which has made this conversation so fun. So we always ask everyone on the podcast, what is one thing you Want people to take away from your big idea, from this conversation and going back to your optimism, we'd ask that you end on an optimistic note. Okay, well, pressure, this solution to this issue is very simple. It's so simple, it's, it's almost unbelievable. And that is just the adoption of VUA across the industry. You know, it's ready made, it's ready to go. The system is made for Canada. You know, farmers can engage and decide whether they want to make that investment or not, depending on the performance of the variety. And so by making that choice though, you're really going to stimulate an industry to really invest in innovation, continue to innovate, to really future proof Canada in the ag innovation space and really take back control of how we invest in this space in Canada. Because you vote with your dollar directly, you reward directly the best innovators in this space, like you do with many other technologies you use on your farm. So I think it's quite a simple solution. It's going to take some courage, it's going to take some leadership because you know, this space cannot be popular when you're suggesting an additional investment, even though it might be small. So I think we need some real people with real vision to step forward and say, come on guys, let's go and farmers just to engage and understand how important this decision is and then we can really re kick start this industry and encourage the investment to drive innovation for generations to come. Innovations for generations to come. Sounds like a good note to end on. Jason, thank you very much for taking the time to be with us today. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's been fun. One thing that really stuck out for me was this idea that the solutions are simple, but the pushback or the road to get to that solution is really complicated. And I think we see that in a lot of our work, Capi and just. And in the policy space there's so many different players and I think what makes the sector so great is that we don't work in silos. But that also means that getting to these solutions that are right in front of us makes it really difficult. And it is compounded when there is a, when there can be political pushback, right where, where there is potentially a fear of change or reluctance to do things a bit differently, which I think is kind of very clear in this, in this case, when it comes to plant breeding and variety development and how it gets funded in Canada, is that the solutions may be simple. I think for a lot of people looking at it, especially people on, on the outside, it is pretty, pretty straightforward. You know, this idea, when a farmer uses a variety, they should pay for the use of that variety, they should fund the variety development cost and they should fund it directly to the person that did the variety development work. Seems pretty simple. That's kind of how life works and almost everything else that we do, but much more complicated than that. Yeah. And to bring it kind of down to the. Not down, but back to the producers of if things are working decently fine, like why, why change? I think we see that a lot of. Yeah, if it's working for you, why, why push for these big changes that could have really big impact but down the road when what you're doing right now works for you? And it's an interesting space that again, I think is kind of this constant current in our innovation work where a lot of people that are in the space will talk about how we're in a crisis or we're very close to a crisis in ag innovation. But unlike trade market access crisis, that when a kind of a market closes, commodity prices fall right away, you can kind of feel that. Or when you're in a drought, you see your yield go down and you can see the plants wither kind of right away. This is not something that happens right away. The farmers will feel those impacts not today, not tomorrow, but kind of 5, 10, 15 years from now as the innovation pipeline constricts and as variety development kind of gets gets worse. And so it's hard to talk to people about the problems in the system, because what a farmer is doing today is really experiencing how the system was 10 or 15 years ago. And as kind of seems to be very clear, the system is getting smaller and the footprint is shrinking. And that has impacts on a variety of development, but has impacts on everything else in that innovation space. I want to ask you, because I know you've had your finger on the pulse of the AFC funding. If we did have a world where, you know, VUA is there and we have way more competitive space for this and more innovation, would cuts like this? And I know we don't know the details, but just speculating here, would it have as much of an impact as it is right now in our conversations and in the sector? So I think that there's a big. So the short answer is yes, it should be positive, right? It should. A Canada should be able to run kind of a self sustaining, fully funded breeding programme, especially if it's got the right value creation capture kind of that mechanism for farmers when they're using these varieties to fund it. The problem is we get mixed messages from Agana. Like at times you hear the department effectively say this isn't about whether or not we can fund the programme or not. This is about. We don't think variety development is a game. That is a space that I Canada should be in. I Canada should be doing more of that pre commercial work that we talked a bit about the end. So it doesn't matter kind of the funding or not it. What matters is this kind of more philosophical view around what the role that I cannot be doing is. We do hear kind of talk about, you know, I Canada doesn't want to crowd out other players, private companies like LCRC or the Crop Development Centre at. Not a private company but like, like the Crop Development Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. But at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, we seem to be in the worst of all worlds where they are there, there is no good value creation mechanism, there is no good royalty system in order to fund the I candidate programme, but they're staying in the programme. So they are kind of destabilising the competitive marketplace and kind of messing up the ability of other players to come into the marketplace. And yet they're not doing it in a way that puts them on a level level playing field. And, and so I think going back to kind of your comment earlier about this is a simple solution. The simple solution just would be put a royalty on everything, treat every breeding programme the same. So don't take away kind of the competitive advantage that EYE Canada gives itself today through this by not putting a royalty on it. And, and if you, if everybody was putting royalty on it, then again I Canada would be on the same level playing field as LCRC or the CDC and, and it would kind of create a. Yeah. A place where, where different people could compete and the best variety developers, the best plant breeding programmes would, would win. But instead, I don't know. I think we're in the worst of all. All worlds. Yep. Well, I want to thank our listeners for joining us. If you have any big ideas yourself, we want to hear from you. So contact us and get in touch if you. If you have a big idea for change in Canadian ag. Thanks for tuning in to capi's Ag Policy Connection, a podcast where we talk about the big ideas and fresh thinking needed to solve the big challenges and seize the big opportunities facing Canadian agriculture and food. Thanks Elise. Thanks Tyler. See you next time. It.