:
Thank you very much for the invitation. Three times lucky: we finally got here. We had cancellations and votes and all kinds of things going on, so it's nice to finally be here and meet with you.
I'm happy to come here to talk to you about the role of the seed industry as the foundation for agricultural innovation and competitiveness. I bring apologies from our president who is unable to come to Ottawa on this short notice. He is from Winnipeg and I don't fly him in unless it's a certainty, so you're stuck with me, but I'll do my best to make a contribution to your study.
The Canadian Seed Trade Association brings together 132 member companies. Our members are involved in all aspects of seed, from plant breeding and variety development, to production, processing, packaging, marketing, sales, and trade.
Our members range from single grower retailers to the large multinational companies, and from distributors of small packet organic herb and spice seeds to the world's giants of biotechnology. We have a very diverse membership. Our members have diverse interests and objectives. Many are competitors in the marketplace, but they come together as the Canadian Seed Trade Association in support of our mission, which is to foster seed industry, innovation, and trade.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has estimated that nine out of every ten bites of food taken around the world starts with the planting of a seed. Seed is the foundation of the world's food supply and it's an important contributor to its supply of fibre, fuel, and industrial products.
Seed is the driver of the innovation that the world's farmers are going to need in order to meet the goal of feeding, fuelling, and clothing a world population that is expected to reach over nine billion people in about 35 years.
Studies have shown that over half of the yield in gain of most crops is from the genetic improvement that's delivered by seed, so farmers are looking to the seed sector, my members, to provide them with superior genetics so that they will improve productivity and protect the environment in which they operate.
Almost every week there is another announcement of a significant achievement in plant breeding and research by public and private investors and researchers. The impacts are already substantial. According to Science Daily there has been a step change in speed and cost-effectiveness. What previously took six generations to achieve can now be done in just two.
Recent achievements, ranging from the discovery of a gene that can improve photosynthesis, to genome sequencing for wheat and chickpeas, to the development of insect-tolerant wheat varieties promise future yield increases of more than 50% in the world's staple crops.
In the shorter term, advances are being made in drought and heat resistance, efficiency of water and nutrient use, disease resistance, and in the quality and health benefits of oils and meals. All of these and other advances are entering the innovation pipeline at a rapid pace and they hold great promise for farmers and consumers.
The question then is whether and how Canadian farmers will be able to access these advances. The answer is only when Canada's policy and regulatory environment facilitates investment.
Where the private sector is able to generate a return, it does invest. In 2012 CSTA's members invested over $109 million in research, plant breeding, and variety development. That's 5% of their combined sales and represents a 94% increase from the five years previous.
Most of that investment, however, has only been in three crops, canola, corn, and soybeans, where the operating environment facilitates a return on that investment in order to reinvest in the development of even better varieties.
Breeders and developers working with these crop kinds operate in a more flexible regulatory environment. For example, corn is not subject to variety registration, and canola and soybean registration has evolved to meet the needs of the marketplace.
These crops also have access to better tools to protect their inventions: new traits, attributes, and varieties. The development of hybrid corn and hybrid canola means that farmers purchase seed every crop cycle in order to continue to get the superior aspects of those hybrids. Improved performance and attributes in canola, corn, and soybeans have also been developed with the use of modern biotechnology, which allows for the use of more effective intellectual property protection tools like patents and technology use agreements.
However, private sector investment in some of Canada's other major crops, like wheat, barley, oats, flax, and pulse crops, has lagged. In 2012 only 8% of private sector investment was in cereals, 2% in barley breeding, 1% in flax breeding, and there was no significant investment in the breeding of oats or pulse crops.
To date, the Government of Canada has been the largest investor in plant breeding in these crops. But the government has been reducing and redirecting investment in plant breeding and research and is looking to the private sector to fill in, either on its own or in partnership with public institutions. The private sector is keen to increase its role, but that can only happen in a policy and regulatory environment that will foster investment.
First, our members need a continued commitment to regulatory and trade decisions that are founded in science. Science is reproducible and measurable. Regulatory processes that are based on science ensure that innovation is assessed in a consistent manner, giving confidence to consumers and to the developers of innovation. Public opinion, market acceptance, and other socio-economic factors are not consistent over time or geography, and they must not enter into regulatory and trade decisions made by governments.
Second, private sector investors need flexible, predictable, and enabling regulatory environments. The government has taken some substantial steps toward improved regulatory systems, including the removal of kernel visual distinguishability as a requirement for wheat variety registration, and the development of a framework that could, but doesn't yet, facilitate more efficient variety registration for all crops. However, there is still so much more to do. While I'm speaking of variety registration, I need to point out that the so-called three-part registration system implemented five years ago has not yet improved registration because even within the system, changes that should be simple have to be made by regulation.
We look forward to some of the provisions contained in Bill , the agricultural growth act, which we hope you will soon have before you, and we hope that we will be appearing on it. Specifically, we support the ability to use foreign data for registration purposes and the ability to incorporate some documents by reference. The review of the registration system that was launched last fall is also positive for plant breeders and developers. We hope that it will give crop value chains the opportunity to design systems that will best suit their needs.
Third, in order for the private sector to invest, it needs to be able to generate a return that will cover its costs. That has not generally been the case in crops like wheat. One of our members provided us with a real-life example, FT Wonder, which was developed in Ontario. The company invested nine years and over $900,000 to develop and bring this soft red winter wheat to the market. After three years in the marketplace, the company had not even recovered half of its investment. Obviously, this is not sustainable.
Effective protection of intellectual property means that plant breeders and developers can set conditions on the use of their varieties for a specified period of time. The conditions can, and most often do, include remuneration or a royalty. For crops like cereals, pulse crops, flax, and other crops, the only real form of intellectual property protection is plant breeders' rights.
Bill , as you know, strengthens plant breeders' rights, by giving breeders the ability to set conditions for a longer time and over more uses. For example, in addition to selling and advertising for sale, the breeder can set conditions on production, reproduction, conditioning, stocking for sale, and import and export of these varieties. At the same time, the bill entrenches an exception for farmers to allow them to save and store grain from protected varieties and to condition it for use as seed on their own farms.
Amended plant breeders' rights legislation will give plant breeders and developers increased confidence to invest in Canada, and it will also give international plant breeders and developers the confidence to give Canadian farmers access to superior varieties developed beyond our borders.
The last thing for today is that our members need improved access to markets. Canada is the world's fifth largest exporter of seed. Our production environment, comprehensive food safety regulations, seed quality standards, and efficient production and processing systems give us an advantage over many of our competitors. However, Canada is not able to capture some very substantial opportunities internationally because many countries impose barriers to trade that are not founded in science but are politically driven.
We appreciate that the government has adopted a very aggressive trade agenda. We encourage negotiators to remain steadfast in all negotiations in support of timely and science-based approvals and the development of trade-facilitating measures to address low-level presence of approved genetically modified events in shipments of grain and seed.
I apologize if I've gone over time, Mr. Chairman, but I will be happy to answer any questions you might have.
:
Mr. Chair and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee to speak within the context of your study on innovation.
[English]
Canada's horticulture industry is an industry that very much aspires to be innovative, profitable, sustainable, healthy, and bring health with the products we grow for the future and for future generations.
The council represents producers from across Canada primarily involved in the production and packaging of over 100 different fruit and vegetable crops, apples to zucchini, literally. Members include provincial and national horticultural commodity organizations, as well as allied and service organizations, provincial governments, and individual producers.
We represent members on a number of key issues, such as crop protection, access to a consistent supply of farm labour, food safety and traceability, fair access to markets, research and innovation, and government programs.
The mission is to ensure a more innovative, profitable, and sustainable horticultural industry for future generations. Producers are committed to ensuring that strong Canadian farms will continue to be able to provide safe, secure, and healthy food for families in Canada and around the world.
I believe we have a demonstrable record of success in this regard. It includes the seasonal agricultural worker program, established over 40 years ago, which was very innovative at the time; and establishment of the Fruit and Vegetable Dispute Resolution Corporation under article 707 of NAFTA. CHC was integral to the establishment of the Pest Management Centre, and the CHC office was previously recognized as IR-4 North as Canadian trials were coordinated with the U.S. IR-4. CHC also developed and established the CanadaGAP food safety program for fruit and vegetables grown in Canada, which was the first food safety program in Canada benchmarked to the global food safety initiative.
We also led a collaborative initiative, which included the World Wildlife Fund, to develop an integrative fruit production program for the industry. We're a founding member of GrowCanada, and an active participant in a number of value chain round tables and other collaborative initiatives, such as Partners in Innovation.
Improving food diversity and security in a buy Canadian for Canadians manner is a priority that will only be achieved through: dialogue, understanding, and strategic collaboration through adequate funding for research and innovation; appropriate actions to develop and implement policies and programs that foster producer profitability, and that includes traditional and non-traditional risk management programs; ensuring a favourable regulatory environment that is conducive to commerce; and timely access to new crop protection technologies.
As indicated by my colleague, these must be science-based, and we need proper dispute resolution mechanisms, whether it's here domestically or within any of our trade agreements. The language might be good, but they have to be practical. They have to work.
Research and innovation are critically important to maintaining the competitiveness of Canada's horticultural sector. The initial and subsequent announcement of the Canadian agri-innovation program, specifically the clusters, with the stated purpose to encourage key agricultural organizations to mobilize and coordinate a critical mass of science and technical capacity in industry, was certainly welcome. It was received with enthusiasm and a sense of opportunity.
Our industry rationalized its needs and priorities vis-à-vis research and innovation defined with theme areas: health and wellness, food safety and quality, production and production systems, environmental performance of the horticultural system primarily but not limited to pest management, as well as energy management and efficiency. Those themes have served us well and were reaffirmed in 2013.
The CHC-led agri-science cluster for horticulture was a multi-activity project funded by Agriculture Canada in the amount of just under $5 million for science cluster one with an additional contribution from industry of $1.4 million. We were fortunate within Growing Forward 2 to also secure funding for science cluster two.
There have been a lot of successes and accomplishments from cluster one, and we look forward to more success with cluster two. Certainly I would offer that in any future opportunities, should the committee agenda allow, to bring forward witnesses who could speak to those successes and the positive results of investments that have been made. It's important to speak to the people who are the practitioners.
The market access secretariat was created in 2009 as an initial response to the implementation of industry's recommendations to strengthen how Canada approaches market access. Again, there were a number of successes there, but more are to be had. There are other success stories waiting to be had. Most recently for us in our case, we were able to access the Chinese market for cherries in 2013.
Crop protection has certainly been the subject of previous attention and studies by this committee. Investment and innovation are required there through producers and through the manufacturers. We've been very much proponents for the establishment of the Pest Management Centre. I think that's really been one of the success stories of Agriculture Canada.
There is much to be done with pollinators as well in terms of innovation. I think horticulture is very much an exemplary model of how co-existence between production and pollinators can thrive, but there is going to need to be research and innovation taking place there.
Bill , which was also mentioned by my colleague, and our president.... It must be Manitoba for presidents. Our president is from Winkler and he also sent his regrets, but he was with Minister Ritz in Winnipeg in December when, of course, the bill was tabled.
We are very much strong proponents of and support the amendments to plant breeders' rights legislation. As farms work to match production with the growing global population, it becomes increasingly important that they have the tools needed to continue to increase production. New varieties are an important segment of the growth, and strengthening plant breeders' rights in Canada to conform with UPOV 91 will encourage investment and breeding.
I must comment on the U.S. farm bill. I know it's often difficult to compare country to country and the programs in both because they never will be the same; however, certainly for us in our reliance on the U.S. market, we very much need to sometimes take stock of that and how it affects our competitive position. Certainly in the most recent farm bill, specialty crops, or horticulture as we refer to in Canada, were very much a winner, with significant increases in a number of areas that are important to us and that we compete directly with them, not only with the U.S. but abroad, regarding their market access program funding, other specialty crop programs, how they address foreign market access barriers, and of course, commitment to research and innovation. In developing our own programs, we cannot fully discount the strategies developed and applied in competing jurisdictions.
I think we also need to take some innovative approaches to succession planning. As we look to the next generation, I think we all recognize very much that there is a challenge and a need to have the next generation continue on with our farms.
The small business tax limit has not been changed since the mid-1970s. The limit uses a calculation that includes assets and debt to determine whether the business farm continues to be eligible for the exemption.
As the next generation becomes involved in the farm, there is a need to look at expanding the farm to ensure that the operation can sustain the growth or, in the case where there are brothers or what have you coming on, increasing the number of people who are dependent on the farm. We often see where this requires that the farm must purchase additional land and equipment, which very quickly results in the farm exceeding the $15 million limit, which forces the farm to pay much higher rates of tax. In some instances, we've had some of our members talk to us about succession. They've seen that bringing sons in increases their tax bracket from 25% to 47%. They don't object to paying tax, but is that an appropriate or innovative way to approach succession?
Changes to Growing Forward 2 that support programs for farms, such as agri-stability, must be rationalized, and the approaches reviewed as we look forward to an ex-strategic framework.
Opportunities are all around us, and the challenge is for all of us to ensure that they are fully realized. The Canada-U.S. regulatory cooperation council and associated work plan was, in many respects, innovative and very positively received and supported by us, and we hope it will continue. However, those initial objectives must be completed. In particular, when I look at the long-standing financial protection for produce sellers, I see that as a good example of something that has to be finished.
As always, we appreciate the opportunity to come before the committee and certainly would encourage or invite you as you travel the country to call upon us to visit any of our many members and see your investment at work.
:
I'll start on low-level presence. You only have five minutes, right?
Low-level presence is a huge issue in the seed industry. I know it's a huge issue in the grain industry as well. However, for the last number of years, our industry has been living low-level presence. With a lot of our seed companies particularly in the forage industry, for example, where Europe is their second largest market, and as you know, Europe has a zero tolerance for genetically modified products, forage seed is grown either on top of or right adjacent to huge fields of canola, soybeans, or corn, which are between 90% and 99% genetically modified. Reaching zero in a system where you're growing in an open environment, in fields that are often being planted with forage seed after a GM product, or even where bees, birds, and wind travel, is very difficult. In fact, it's impossible.
We've been working for a long time internationally to try to get agreement, particularly at the industry level, around some sort of policy that will facilitate trade while at the same time protecting the environment and creating predictability. In the seed industry, we are different from grain, because in seed, we very, very carefully try to keep our product separate. We have a huge amount of regulatory and other standards that keep us separate. We ensure that our product is separate. We have rigid seed standards that facilitate trade, and they have for a long time. We've been working to try to base a low-level presence policy on that.
In understanding low-level presence as a definition, it's a product that's already approved at 100% for food, feed, and environmental release, in a country where scientific processes are in line with international agreements. We're working very hard on it. It's very difficult. The capacity building is huge. There are a lot of countries that don't even understand what low-level presence is.
At the grain side of things, we're also very involved. However, things are kind of proceeding on two different tracks right now. In grain, as you know, the government has been working closely with industry, and there is a proposal for a policy for Canada. We've been working very hard on that as well. They don't want to talk about seed in that context, so we'll proceed on seed and then put the two together as we move forward on it. Hopefully, it will be in my lifetime that we have a process that will facilitate trade.
:
Sure. I can give you some examples from some of our member companies. For example, Syngenta has hired a wheat breeder, and Bayer has substantially increased their production.
One of the things they said to us before some of these regulatory changes happened, which I'll get into in a second, was that it was easier for them to develop a new seed treatment or a new fungicide than it was to develop a new variety they could use that would be resistant to the pests they were trying to control.
Bayer has taken a more optimistic view. CPS, which used to be Viterra, has also started to take a more optimistic view of cereals.
There were a number of things that happened, such as changes in the marketing structures and the opening up of some of the classes of wheat for delivery, for example. Another example is the broadening of the Canadian prairie spring class for milling wheat, which was a big step.
A really, really big step that was taken was the removal of kernel visual distinguishability as a requirement for wheat variety registration. You can now bring in stuff that looks like hard red spring but has better attributes and maybe stronger straw and a higher yield, so that was a very positive thing.
Bill in itself, just that promise that finally after over 20 years we were going to bring our intellectual property protection regime in line with that of the rest of the world, created a lot of optimism. It's more optimism than anything.
I know there's a lot of work going on now around things like drought resistance. They're bringing in new variety, new germ plasm, to increase yield for the fuel industry, for the ethanol industry, so it is a very positive, bright scene out there right now, if they can get around the rail problems—but that's another story—for the cereal industry in particular in western Canada.
I wish it were sunny. It was sunny all winter, although maybe not warm as you mentioned.
Good afternoon and thank you very much for this opportunity to present our opinions regarding innovation in agriculture in Canada. I'm honoured to have this opportunity to meet with you today.
My name is Rex Newkirk, and I am vice-president of research and innovation at the Canadian International Grains Institute, an independent, not-for-profit institute that provides technical support to buyers of Canadian field crops from around the world. We've done this since 1972.
During my introductory statements, I would like to briefly introduce a few key points regarding innovation. I'd like to speak to the importance of innovation in agriculture and the role it has played in the success of the industry. I would also like to discuss the potential for innovation in the future and what needs to be done to meet this potential.
Innovation has been a key part of agriculture and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Farmers have had to be very innovative to be productive and profitable, given the challenges of our environment and the distance to our key markets. Canadians have been at the forefront of things such as conservation and the implementation of direct seeding. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and university scientists have developed the principles and conducted the basic science required for this innovation. Once producers were introduced to the potential, they were often the ones who, with the assistance of Agriculture Canada and university scientists, developed the methods to adopt the technology. They started companies to produce the equipment required and have steadily made improvements and increased this productivity.
Life science companies have developed the chemistry required to use this technology, and the government, university and industry researchers have refined rotations to minimize disease and maximize profitability. Grain companies have been innovative in their approach to increase handling and transportation efficiencies resulting in one of the most efficient grain handling systems in the world.
Underpinning this market are the developments of new varieties of crops that combat disease and maximize productivity. The majority of grain varieties in the past have been developed by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the Crop Development Centre, and other university and provincial breeding programs.
Going forward, as we heard from the previous speaker, many commercial entities are investing in new variety development, and they continue to develop new and improved varieties. These are just a couple of examples of the innovations we've seen in agriculture, and there have been many. The industry should be proud of its achievements with regard to production and grain handling.
Many would argue, however, that Canada is an expert at production, but that in the future we will need more innovations in food product applications to increase future markets and to promote processing of these commodities prior to export. We feel that innovations in production and grain handling efficiencies must continue, but much of the future prosperity is also reliant on innovation in food, feed, and industrial product applications.
The question becomes what must be done to ensure that research investments made result in innovations that benefit producers, customers, and Canadians. Recently, with the support of the Government of Canada and grain producers, CIGI has been doing a great deal of research on product applications leading to new innovations. Also, prior to joining CIGI, I developed a new product from canola and co-founded a technology company to take this product to market. This technology has now been bought by a multinational company and is being implemented as we speak.
Based on these experiences, we feel we can provide some insights into what we feel must be done to see successful innovations in the area of product application and processing.
First, an important and surprising observation is that food and feed companies do not usually drive the initial innovations. They are not risk-takers, but they will certainly capitalize on an opportunity once they understand it and see the value. The investments made by government and producer associations are best directed to the initial stages of development, in our opinion.
CIGI works closely with food companies to determine what the opportunities are and to identify potential product applications that would benefit these companies. Using public and producer funds, we collaborate with food centres and other researchers to start the product development. We demonstrate the new products to food companies and attempt to introduce the opportunities to them. If the company is sufficiently interested, it is asked to invest in refining the product to meet its needs and to refine the process. We work side by side with it, but under a confidentiality agreement, to move the product to market. We are currently in this process with several very large companies, and this process seems to be working well for us.
We feel the key to the success of new food product development innovations in the future encompasses these two components: initial public and producer investment, followed by commercial investment and partnerships. The key is to ensure that this transition happens at the right time, and that the right resources are in place to ensure the innovations being developed initially are commercially relevant.
One question you may be asking is what the role of government is in this innovation pathway. Certainly the investment, initial research, and product development is very important. This should be done in partnership with those with a vested interest in the success of the research. In our example this would be agricultural producers.
The research should also be driven by real needs and market opportunities. Organizations like CIGI, that have close working relationships with customers, make excellent collaborators on this research, as they bring the customers' insight to the table.
The government investment and research capacity is also very important. Without the right type of facilities and people with experience, the quality of the research will not meet the needs of the customer.
In my own example of developing a canola protein concentrate, without access to the research facilities such as Innovation Place bioprocessing in Saskatoon, as well as the food development centres, this technology would never have been proven to the point that it could be adopted by the industry, and therefore it would not have succeeded.
The investment of the governments, both federal and provincial, and the organizational capacity to develop and introduce innovations is very important in the future. I would also suggest it is very important that public investment should be sufficient to allow the development to a stage so that they can be introduced to the companies.
In the end, company investment is very important to the transition, as I discussed earlier. It is key. However, if public investment doesn't allow the product to be developed sufficiently so that these companies could then take on the next stage, the initial investment would be lost.
It is our belief that Canadian agriculture will continue to grow and be profitable, and that this growth will be based on innovation. With this approach that we've presented, we believe that we will see significant growth not only in commodity production, but also in new food and product applications as well as industrial and feed. This will result in additional ingredient processing as well.
Thank you very much for this opportunity. I welcome any questions you have regarding our proposal for the innovation pathway that we've identified.
:
Mr. Chair, on behalf of the Canadian Poultry Research Council and its member organizations, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.
The Canadian Poultry Research Council, or CPRC, was established in November 2001 to provide funding and coordination for national research activities for its members. Those members include the Canadian Hatching Egg Producers, the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council, Chicken Farmers of Canada, Egg Farmers of Canada, and Turkey Farmers of Canada.
Poultry production and processing must continually improve productivity and efficiency in an ongoing search for cost control measures and innovative products. That's what keeps the price down. Canadian poultry research has achieved significant success in developing new, targeted approaches. One of the best examples of Canadian research success was the development of the omega-3 egg, a functional food with significant health benefits and a commercial opportunity for egg farmers, even though the university that developed it did not see any point to it and didn't take possession of the IP, intellectual property, which we've always found quite interesting.
Research and innovation are important to competitiveness; however, the concept of competitiveness is not always fully understood. Competitive markets grow but they also maintain their existing customer base. For many industries this means constantly offering new and improved products and services, with customer focus being on a product, and less frequently on the circumstances under which it is designed or produced. It isn't quite that way with agriculture lately.
The agriculture industry faces some relatively unique issues because of its nature by working with plants and animals. Consumers question how agricultural products are produced, as well as their attributes, more than in the past. Acceptable and often recommended past practices are now being questioned or changed.
The poultry industry has reacted to changes in consumer expectations in several ways, including a shift in our research emphasis toward poultry welfare and behaviour, alternatives to antibiotics, and the environment. The emphasis on these issues is designed to both expand the Canadian poultry sector and maintain the Canadian consumer's confidence in Canadian-produced poultry and egg products.
The federal government is an important partner in the research innovation value chain; however, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, AAFC, no longer has dedicated poultry researchers as they do in many other agricultural sectors. Some AAFC researchers conduct poultry-related research as part of their mandate, but those resources are few and narrow in scope.
CPRC has begun early discussions with AAFC to determine if existing government researchers working in other fields or other commodities can direct some of their research efforts to the poultry industry through the collaborative research and development program under which industry shares research costs with AAFC. This would provide the opportunity to expand our access to specialized research knowledge presently within AAFC for collaborative research projects in cooperation with universities and industry. We have followed this approach in our new poultry cluster. A strong partnership among AAFC, Canadian universities, and the poultry sector will continue to benefit the Canadian economy and society in general.
I thank you again for the opportunity to provide input to this committee in its deliberations.
:
That's a good question. GMO is certainly a powerful tool. It's been very effective in some of our crops, namely, canola, soybeans and corn. I'd have to say that in those areas, it's well established. It's used broadly and that continues.
In the case of some of our other crops, cereals and pulses namely, there is no GMO. In Canada, as far as I know, there's no research in those areas. The primary reason for that is not that they're not a powerful tool, nor is there a feeling that they're not safe; it's the issue of consumer acceptance.
You're right. Going into Europe, one of the questions we ask informally as we meet with customers, and we do this quite routinely, is when the acceptance of GMOs will occur, and when that tool could become available. It will be a long time yet. For the people we meet with, they say that personally, they don't see an issue, but from a customer perspective, they just see all kinds of minefields on those. Certainly, canola faced a number of challenges going into Europe with having to have certain traits registered, and trying to get those approved. The seeds have been mainly processed elsewhere and the oil shipped into Europe.
In the case of wheat and pulses, I don't think you're going to see GMO in the near future as a tool in our tool box. However, in Australia and other parts of the world, they're certainly doing a fair bit of testing and seeing some improvements in yields and such things.
At this point, I don't expect to see any activity on the cereals and the pulses, and no research on that. All the research they're doing now is on non-GMO.