Global agriculture is navigating a period of profound geopolitical, economic, and environmental upheaval, raising urgent questions about how our food systems can remain sustainable, resilient, profitable, and for many, affordable.
While politics and conflicts may divide nations and thicken borders, food — and the policies around how it is produced and where it goes — can provide a reality check on how interconnected and interdependent the world still is.
This latest webinar hosted by RealAgriculture and the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute (CAPI) brings together a panel of ag policy experts in Australia, the European Union, the United States, and Canada to discuss the pressures they're seeing on farming in their countries, ideas each jurisdiction might learn from each other, and where common ground exists.
Moderated by RealAgriculture field editor and Manitoba farmer Kelvin Heppner, the discussion features the authors of a new report from the Global Forum on Farm Policy and Innovation (GFFPI) (read the report here):
- Emmanuelle Mikosz, director general of the Forum for the Future of Agriculture, based in Brussels. A trained lawyer, she has advised the European Landowners’ Organization since 2005 on property rights and agri-environmental policy, and served for 15 years as Editor-in-Chief of its bilingual publication, Countryside Magazine.
- Shari Rogge-Fidler, president & CEO of Farm Foundation in the United States since 2019, brings a unique perspective as a fifth-generation farm owner, founder of an agribusiness consulting firm, and former CEO of a company group serving over 1,000 farmers.
- Katie McRobert, executive director of the Australian Farm Institute, where she has worked since 2017. She previously worked as global content and community manager for Rabobank and national editor for FarmOnline.
- Tyler McCann, managing director of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute (and frequent RealAg/RealAg Radio contributor).
(Originally recorded on March 4, 2026.)
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Get instant answers to your grain marketing questions. 24.7sonoa is your AI grain market analyst available anytime to help you understand prices, basis and market trends so you can act with confidence. Start a free trial and unlock RealAg Listener savings at grainfox CA realag. Good afternoon. My name is Elise Bigley and I am the Director of Strategic Projects at the Canadian Agri Food Policy Institute and I'm pleased to open this webinar. As you will have noticed, CAPI's managing director, Tyler McCann is in the hot seat today as a panellist. So let's get going. So the Ag Policy Exchange webinar series offers a platform to dive into and explore diverse critical policy issues facing Canadian agriculture and food. These webinars and all of capi's work is made possible thanks to the support of partners who understand that agriculture and agri food can do more and policy plays a critical role in unlocking the sector's potential. Today's webinar was funded by Agriculture and Agri Food Canada under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnerships Agro Competitiveness Programme. We are also pleased that this webinar is part of our ongoing partnership with Real Agriculture. Working together, we're excited to bring deeper dialogue and tough conversations to people working in and around the sector across multiple platforms. For more information and upcoming content, you can visit RealAgriculture.com or CAPI's website and subscribe to our mailing list. So, as we all know, global agriculture is navigating a period of profound geopolitical, economic and environmental change, raising urgent questions about how food systems can remain sustainable, resilient and profitable. Today's discussion will examine the shifting of gravity in agri food policy, the pressures facing innovation and food security, and the growing gap between policy ambition and on the ground implementation. The conversation will feature panellists from the Global Forum on Farm policy and innovation, GIFPI, and if you were at CAPI's exchange conference last fall, these fine people were on a panel there as well. Today we'll be discussing where common ground exists and what it will take to translate global ambition into practical, durable outcomes for farmers and the broader agri food system. But before we begin, as always, we want to hear from you. So there should. There'll be a poll coming up on the screen and we want to know your thoughts. The question we're asking today is which area of global agri food policy needs the most immediate international cooperation to bridge the gap between ambition and practical outcomes? Is it trade and reliability? Food security and resilience? Innovation systems, Trust and Evidence based policy. So it looks like in terms of answers that trade and reliability is the top answer there, closely followed by food security and resilience and trust in evidence based policy. So I'll let the panellists kind of dive into that a bit more during the discussion. So today's panel will be moderated by Kelvin Hepner, journalist and broadcaster at Real Agriculture. And as always, we encourage audience participation by using the Q and A function. So I'm now going to pass things over to Kelvin to introduce our panellists and kick off the dialogue and the
rest of the webinar.
Thank you for the introduction and setting the stage here, Elise. Our panellists for today are joining us from around the world. We have Emmanuel McCoach, Sherry Roge Fiddler, Katie McRobert and Tyler McCann. And as I introduce them, we're going to ask each one of them an opening question to kind of set the stage along the lines of that poll. We over the last number of years have been hearing how the world of the era of globalisation is coming to an end, or we're moving away from globalisation, when at the same time we be conflicting contrary information when it comes to actual commercial trade on a lot of fronts, but politically there's a lot more talk about food security and sovereignty. And so we want to talk, kind of open things up here by talking about whether we're seeing a realignment in each of the countries that we have represented today, away from agriculture being focused on efficiency, trade optimization, globalisation, toward food security, sovereignty, maybe a bit more protectionist type policy. And so, to get things started, our first panellist is Emmanuelle Nicoche. She's bringing European perspective to our panel this afternoon. Emmanuel was appointed the Director General of the Forum for the Future of Agriculture last September. A trained lawyer, she has advised the European landowners organisation since 2005 on property rights and agri environmental policy and served for 15 years as editor in chief for its bilingual publication, the Countryside Magazine. Emmanuel, welcome to this webinar host by CAPI and Real Agriculture. What are your thoughts on that question from a more of bringing the European perspective to our panel this afternoon. Whether we're seeing a realignment towards food security. I'm curious whether you're seeing the same thing across the Atlantic.
Hello, Kevin. Hello to everyone. Thank you for having me. Also, and bonsoirs, Tosse de Bruiselle. So it's a very good question and I think that that's GIFTP Partners. We have done also the report we will be discussing later on, because food security is becoming a very crucial topic all around the world, in the EU even more because of course, we all have been hit by Covid and some setbacks in food security. But also we discovered after 70 years of peace that having a war next to the European Union is affecting food security, is involving trade, agri policies, changes. So yes, that was very important. And we do believe that also as the forum for the future of agriculture, food security is a human right, which means it's a physical and economic sufficient access to nutritious, safe food. So this is really our target and this is why we're also very happy to discuss that later on with our partners from Canada, Australia and the U.S. all right.
We'll get back to you, Emma, in just a moment. Here, our second panellist introducing Sherry Rogge Fiddler. Sherry Rogen has been president and CEO of the Farm foundation in the United States since 2019, bringing a unique perspective as a fifth generation farm owner as well. Founder of an agribusiness consulting firm and former CEO of a company group serving over a thousand farmers, Sherry has international experience in finance and consulting and holds a degree in business administration from the University of Kansas and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Sherry, welcome here. What's your perspective bringing that American lens to this? I think a lot of this realignment as we sit in other countries around the world, we see as being driven by the administration in your country. Would you agree that we're seeing a realignment toward food security and sovereignty away from efficiency, trade optimization, that type of thing?
Thank you for hosting today, Calvin, and thank you for the invitation to be here and to all of our partners. I'm delighted to look ahead to the conversation and yet I feel the weight on my shoulders of being asked about an American position or what all farmers think in America. For those of you who don't know Farm Foundation, I just need to say my opening statement that we're 90 years old, we're nonpartisan, non lobbying, and we don't take positions. So throughout our conversation, there may be times when I put my farmer hat on and take off my Farm foundation hat. We'll see how that goes. In terms of the opening question, I mean, certainly the current administration, through what has been called the America first approach to things, is trying to put forth that sovereignty vibe, for lack of a better word at the moment. But I think it's very early days and we're seeing kind of a few steps forward and then a few steps back in terms of testing the boundaries of the current administration's policies. And I think in the opening question of efficiency or food security. I don't necessarily see these as ORs. We need both. And certainly as a farmer myself, I grew up with that globalisation mindset and I think the generation of farmers in America, the primary generation, still grew up in that globalisation mindset. So I think there is likely to be an unevenness as we're already experiencing. But I think farmers in America are starting to question this policy environment, even though we know 80% of farmers voted for this administration because they're feeling some of the implications of it. So I'm sure we'll unpack some of that as we move forward in the conversation today.
Yeah, certainly lots to unpack there. Thank you, Sherry. Our third panellist is joining us, hopefully with a fresh cup of coffee in her hand. It's Katie McRobert. Katie is the Executive Director of the Australian Farm Institute where she has worked since 2017. She holds an MBA in Sustainable Business from Griffith University, serves on advisory groups for Australia's Agricultural Traceability and the government agency that's responsible for scientific research in agriculture and food down under. And Katie previously worked as Global content and Community Manager for Rabobank and National Editor for Farm Online. Katie, thank you for, I guess, getting up real early to join us today. Your thoughts on this topic and whether we're seeing a realignment towards focusing on domestic food security versus trade and openness in terms of globalisation.
Thanks, Kelvin, and echoing my colleagues thoughts, thank you for hosting. But also, really, it's not quite a pleasure to get up this early, but it's certainly a privilege to be part of this really interesting group of people. So the GIFFPI Coalition that the Farm Institute has been part of since the start with the Farm foundation, with the Forum for Future of Agriculture with CAPI, has been an incredibly enriching experience for, I hope, all involved, certainly for us here in Australia. So, yeah, of course we can see that alignment towards different priorities from a political perspective and even from a policy perspective. And I do want to draw the delineation between those two things because politics and policy don't always go hand in hand. Of course, Australia is absolutely a trading nation. So Australia, we export 70% of what we grow here in agriculture and we deregulated our markets a few decades ago and we are incredibly efficient at what we do. We don't have subsidies for farming in Australia, so you have to be an efficient farmer or you just don't farm. That's the way things go. So for us, a change in an open trade environment is potentially Catastrophic. Now, we haven't seen any impacts on the Australian agricultural value as such, because we trade with a lot of other people around the world. And even though our near neighbours as well as our far neighbours, are shifting some of those policies, we can be diverse enough to be able to reflow things into different markets. So we are alert but not alarmed at this stage. However, the big risk to trade shifting from that open set of rules based expectations to something more insular and more protectionist, is that what trade has brought for Australian agriculture is this real push on efficiency and sustainability. That's why we farm the way we do in Australia, because we have to make it profitable. That means we have to be efficient. And that has driven a lot of really good outcomes for Australian agriculture. It's pushed Australian farmers into sustainability actions that they might not have been forced to take if things were a little more comfortable for them. So being uncomfortable in that way has been very helpful for our system. We do, though, think that there's a pretty big gap between what some people are saying is the new world order and what is actually happening behind the scenes. And an example of that would be Indonesia. One of our closest neighbours does have a stated food sovereignty policy. And the ambition of Indonesia is to become completely food secure within a relatively short period of time. But we're also quite aware, as many people in Indonesia are aware, that's not a realistic goal. And so while politicians might be saying one thing, people working in agriculture and working in trade know that that's not the real state of the world, and they continue to find ways to trade with each other and to keep those lines of supply open. And that's also important not just because it underpins our agricultural economy, which is helpful for Australia, but because in turn, we're helping to support regional food security as well, because there are things that people need from Australia that they can't grow in Southeast Asia and vice versa. So we see it as incredibly important to keep trade flowing, to keep those lines of collaboration clear, and to work together on innovative ways to underpin a sustainable ag sector around the world.
All right, thank you, Katie. Rounding out our panel this afternoon, his introduction is much shorter here. Our fourth panellist is Tyler McCann, managing director of the Canadian Agri Food Policy Institute, and probably requires no further introduction than that at this point. Tyler. But what are your thoughts on this realignment that we're seeing and what we've heard from your colleagues from around the world here? Tyler?
Yeah. So first let me say, Kevin, it's really great for me to have my colleagues from the Global Forum for Foreign Policy and Innovation with us today on this webinar. Cappy gets a lot out of the gift be work that we do together. And but to answer the question, I think one of the things that's worth acknowledging is that this is a report that we worked on kind of at the end of summer and into the fall last year. And it does feel like the world has already changed so much. It does feel like we are living through that real alignment and in real time. I think we see this in the Canadian context. You know, the prime minister announced a couple of weeks ago that he's going to move forward with the food security strategy. I think even the content that we'll see that's got more of an economic focus behind it is very different than it would have been a year ago. And that would have been probably more of a kind of a social focused food security strategy. And so now we're looking at what does this mean in a different context and what, when we think about food security, what does it mean from a supply security perspective? But I really think what the GIFPIE report kind of highlights and highlighted last year, I think what we'll hear today probably is just this reality that these are all experiences that around the world we're living together, we're experiencing them different. I think many of the people who watch will have a sense of what this means in the Canadian context, but the impacts are felt broadly and I think we'll have long term lasting consequences. And hopefully part of what the spirit of the report showed is that there is this role for agriculture, for food, for food security and sustainability and trade to be part of that common ground that brings people together going forward.
All right, thank you, Tyler. And with that, we will bring the entire panel in to continue our discussion for the rest of the webinar in a group context here. And everyone feel free to throw questions into the chat as well. On Zoom, I think as well, to maybe set the stage, we should also talk about the report that Tyler referred to as well as this webinar. The theme is Finding Common Ground. And maybe we should first deal with the premise here. What do you see as common ground between the countries that we have represented in this discussion? Why should agriculture policy think tanks work together or what are some examples where this creates value or you see potential to create value for the world as a whole, for farmers, for the agriculture sector in your respective countries? Katie, do you, do you have thoughts on that as to why work together? Why try to find common Ground here.
Thanks, Kelvin. Well, as I was saying before, you know, trade is absolutely vital, not just to underpinning our economies in our various countries, but also to actually contribute to world food security. Because without trade, food security takes a big nosedive very quickly. It's unrealistic in this day and age to expect that countries can be food sovereign in a way that it would be also efficient. So having food security domestically, pardon me, is very important. But trade can help enable sustainability actions as well as those food security goals. And we need to be focused on those things, knowing that there's so much heat in the political sphere. The way that we can work together as independent think tanks, taking nonpartisan views of these policy issues and being able to ask hard questions, but also offer some practical solutions wherever possible. That makes a coalition like this very powerful and certainly has been very well received around the world, not just with the four partners represented here, but in various conversations that each of us have had with other people in the international market. So more important than ever to find ways to continue working and to keep those trusted relationships open.
Emmanuel, do you have thoughts on the value that and the importance of working together? We, of course, have seen, I would say, a weakening or disintegration in some cases of global institutions and forums for working together over the last number of years. And some of it's driven by Canada's neighbour to the south here, of course, but not only that. I think countries around the world have looked more inward in a lot of cases. What are your thoughts, Emma, on why work together on this?
I think that I can just amplify Katie's message and the message which was also going, I would say, through the report, and especially that speaker, on behalf, I would say, of the European Union and the European continent, where we have 27 member states within the EU and still we have, you know, candidate countries willing to join the eu. It's proving that we cannot, like, act in isolation. And agriculture is one of, you know, also those examples where we need trade because we are not exporters or importers of commodities and of goods. It's also showing that this interconnection is very important because at the end of the day, this is the democracy which is important. And when you have democracy, then you can ensure, you know, trade flows free choices for the agriculture, for the farmers, what they would like to produce, to whom they are selling. So this is also very important. This is also to be able to listen to the citizens and to the consumers. So what they want to eat, what kind of food they want to have on the table. So this is really very important in all that discussion. So, yeah, this is really to find common points, I would say, not depending on which continent you represent, but this is really to speak about farmers as such. And just as last point, as we are all facing climate change, we need to collaborate because we can share best practises, because we can share innovation, because we can share additional financing, and we are all confronted to that. So this is, you know, very important and even more important now than in the past.
Sherry, what's your perspective? Of course, it's the American administration that has withdrawn from multilateral institutions or attempted to, or signalled that it wants to. That kind of thing in a lot of cases. Why? Why does your organisation continue putting you on the spot? Why do you continue working with colleagues like Tyler Emmanuel and Katie here?
Because we're farmers first here at Farm foundation, and farmers depend on that interconnectedness. It's a necessity. And I was just having a conversation with someone yesterday about that, how we depend on each other and that interconnectedness. And it's about the things that we depend on. As farmers flow naturally across boundaries, they don't know the artificial boundaries, whether it's the natural systems that we depend on of water and even when fire can move across borders, especially with our close neighbours to the north of us, as you were saying, to the south of you. But then we depend on each other in so many other ways. So that interconnectedness of our global systems and our natural systems, I think, are both critical. And I wanted to go back a little bit where you had previously asked about. So where do we see common ground? And that's one thing I've noticed as a farmer myself, when I've travelled to other countries, that there is so much common ground between farmers around the globe. And it's really our governments that are less aligned. But at a farm level and at the farmer level, we are so aligned around the world for the things that are important to us, the things that we need to survive and thrive, whether it's soil health, whether it's markets, and we can build the list from there. But at the core, I think that's part of why we need to keep persisting with this, because of that interconnectedness and what we need to thrive as farmers.
Yeah, it's an interesting or it's a good observation there, Sherry. I wonder if farmers even have. And people that work in agriculture have a unique understanding of that interconnectedness. Mark, in the comments, notes the freshwater issues that could potentially force collaboration that's an example where I wonder whether people that work in agriculture have a better understanding of that than maybe people working in politics, that side of things. Your thoughts, Tyler?
Well, and I think one of the things that often, if you look at the reports that gift piece put out, they tend to look at kind of global solutions that global connect in this. But a lot of what we talk about are the domestic policies that our sectors face. And there's clearly a different kind of character between foreign policy in the European Union, Australia, the United States or Canada. But one of the things that became very clear when we came together as a group is that the issues are very similar. There are challenges with innovation, there are challenges with trade, there are challenges with sustainability. Sustainability. And so we get to kind of different solutions that are put in place. It creates an interesting opportunity to learn from what works and what doesn't. It gives us an interesting opportunity to compare notes on the work that we're doing and to look at kind of what are those pieces that we can learn from domestic policy. If anybody's heard me talk about innovation, they've probably heard me talk a lot about the Australian approach and why I think that that's a good thing. But I think we see that on a number of different things. We're working together. Yes, we need to look at what are these global solutions, and they really are. If you talk about innovation, access to products, if you talk about markets, if you talk about sustainability, the best outcome for a Canadian farmer will likely come from a global solution that. That recognises and supports that reality that we face, but that binds those common areas around the world that there's really a lot of potential there.
Thanks. Thanks for the segue there, Tyler, because I think maybe one of the more interesting things we can talk about here is how each of the countries we have representative represented potentially bring an understanding of something that the rest of us could learn about. And we've talked about innovation has been mentioned here already, food security, food inflation. On the cost side of things. Trade, of course, is underlying a lot of this and what policies will be when it comes to allowing trade? We're trying to restrict trade, that type of thing, maybe. Why don't we go around the horn and talk about a policy or an experiment in your country or your jurisdiction that you think others should be watching closely and learning from, or where you might be ahead of the curve in your country on developing something. And Tyler maybe took the example from Katie here in terms of how innovation is funded, especially at the farm level in Australia. I know, it's something that here in Canada we often talk about or look at Australia and whether we should move more towards the Australian model. Maybe. Katie, I'll let you lead off answering this question in terms of something that you think is exciting happening in Australia that the rest of us on the panel and in this webinar should be paying attention to.
So the innovation system that Tyler's referring to there as well is the RDC ecosystem. RDC is a research and development corporations. And so they are institutions co funded by industry and government and it's a true public private partnership. So Australian farmers pay a levy which goes towards their research and development fund and the Australian government matches that levy. So if an industry does particularly well, for example, we've had a pretty good result in our cropping sector this year round. Those levies are matched by the Australian government and then that research and development corporation for grains will have a pool of funds, in this case a very large pool of funds to draw on innovative research, development and extension. And in some cases not for each of the corporations, but in some cases also some marketing extension work as well. So we have those four. We have 15 RDCs representing the major commodities in Australia. I won't list them all, but you can imagine grains, red meat, horticulture, dairy, this kind of thing. And it does provide a really good system of democratically deciding where the research should go because each of those research development corporations is in turn then responsive to a peak body for the industry. So the Meat and Livestock Australia RDC takes its cues for what to research from Cattle Council and a series of other peak bodies representing red meat producers, not just in cattle, in sheep meat, other things as well. And those priorities then are fed through to the rdc. The RDC has matched funding from government, so we have a true public private partnership and it's been really successful. So Australian farming has been extremely innovative. Certainly not perfect, but it's been very forward thinking. And also another thing though that we would consider innovative in this world is we have to be forward thinking, have to be efficient because we have deregulated markets and we don't have the support in terms of production. So I was a little alarmed to be at a conference in Asia last year where one of the speakers was saying, what we really, really need to do is find a system to get rid of the stockpile that we have subsidised and if we can just put some more money into marketing to get rid of this stockpile, then that way we could redistribute all of this stockpile of food we have over here. And my first thought was, could you just not pay people to produce too much of that in the first place, rather than trying to find more money to deal with the problem that you've created by paying them to overproduce? I understand why subsidies work. We used to have them as well. So I'm not being entirely critical of the system, but it can often be trade distorting and it can also have environmental damage, even though in many cases it's intended to do environmental repair and benefit. So we'd also encourage people to rethink the way maybe they approach that kind of support for farmers to make sure that people do respond more appropriately to a market and that maybe can open up things a little bit more openly. But certainly the research and development system, which is backed as well by cooperative research centres, CRCs, which are again, public private funded vehicles, which usually last around 10 years, and I would call them mission focused. So, for example, we've just recently started one for zero net emissions in agriculture. And that CRC has 72 partners, which include academic institutions, businesses in Australia, some government funders as well, and together they pool those funds to look at shared challenges. So that's something that we do.
Well.
Where do you see, just to put you on the spot here, Katie, where do you see pressure on that system? Is there political appetite to continue supporting it, or where is the most lobbying having to happen to maintain that, that innovative approach or that maintain the resources flowing into innovation that Australian agriculture has benefited from?
It certainly still has government support and has political appetite to continue that support. There would be pressure more coming from the levy payers themselves, who some cases don't always see the value directly returned to them from the levies that they're paying. And some of them are happy and some of them are resentful. So it depends on the industry, the size of the levy, the year that you're talking about in terms of their production and how fair or unfair they feel that levy is. It's more coming from the farmers themselves. However, over overall there would be a strong recognition that this is a good system. Sometimes the organisations themselves, because anything that has been going for a long time can sort of build up its own momentum and maybe not necessarily on the track that the growers would like to see it on, but there's always opportunities for correction there.
All right, Emma, what are your thoughts on this in terms of eu. When we think of EU agriculture, of course, prioritisation of sustainability and often that comes with regulation, is Something that comes to mind from our perspective here in Canada. What do you see as policies that the rest of us could learn from when it comes to what's happening in the European Union right now?
I would say that still it's also sometimes very difficult to speak, I would say on behalf of the 27 countries, we are trying to put that together. So maybe this is a little bit different. But of course we just need to keep in mind that the cep, so the common Agriculture policy was still the first common policy and it's still at the end of the day the only common policy we have like through the member states. So we are very proud of it. And of course knowing the challenges ahead, you know, and all the discussions about subsidies and to whom the subsidies should go and you know that every seven years time we are reforming the common agriculture policy. So again we are in this process of reforming it for the next seven years and it's shifting much more towards environmental expectations. So the so called eco schemes. So that's sometimes complicated, but at the end of the day, the point of this new commission now is to find common grounds between economic profitability and environmental indicators. So for us also, I think as a gift, as the form for the future of agriculture, it's really coming together. So when you're doing improvements for the environment, then you're improving your economic reality because you can be more profitable and vice versa. So this is when you're improving your economic situation, then it's also improving the environment because through, I don't know, precision farming, innovation, battery, appliance of the ingredients, then it's also very, I would say interconnected because I was seeing one of the questions in the chat also asking about those requirements, I would say in the latest vision for the future of agriculture, which was promoted by Gursula van der Leyens or the president of the European Commission, but also the Commissioner for Agriculture and food. So this is also showing how important now the competitiveness, but also things like decarbonizations are also key for the next seven years to come. So I would say yes, that's all in all the challenges we're facing when speaking about different, I would say then agri realities within the states, but still having this common policy. As last point, we need to keep in mind that access to land is also very complicated in the European Union because it's based on historical, you know, like realities. So that's why we have very different scale of farms. We can go from like, you know, 5 hectares to 1,000 hectares to 10,000 hectares so it's really complicated also to have like a common scheme when you are speaking about farming policies. So that's one of the challenges we're facing within the eu.
When you talk about the mix of sustainability and profitability and competitiveness, is the pendulum in the European Union swinging back towards acknowledging the importance of farmers being profitable and of competitiveness being a factor in that?
I think yes. And I think this is also coming back to the discussion about the green deal which was here seven years ago and how it impacted the entire farming, I would say family, and the fact that we forgot sometimes some impact assessments giving us the economic reality because we have believed that it's enough just to put targets which are very important, of course, you know, for the environment. But if you don't show the way, if you don't make the analysis, if you're changing the too often policies, then as a farmer you don't have time to adapt because as a farmer you need the stability, you need to be sure that you are going to the bank, then you can have a long term business plan because you are depending also on the finances you can have access to. So now a very big discussion within the European Union is how to finance the transition and how to maintain farmers being able to have this transition. Because one is, you know, you have to make the transition but then you still need to be profitable while you are ending this transition. And this is a little bit, you know, the next, I would say shape for the common agriculture policy, but also for other policies because Katie was already mentioning the importance of innovation. As last point, we are also very proud of the programmes we have within the EU like Horizon 2020, which is also open for countries and researchers outside the eu. And this is really important because we have very good innovation. We are struggling more after to implement it in the eu. I think we are taking too much time in this very fast changing world. So that's challenges ahead of us.
Thank you. Thank you. Amosh Sherry, you're in the unique position of representing the us which the rest of us pay close attention to what happens in your country and what the foreign policies are in your country. What do you see in terms of things that stand out that you think other countries could try, coming from the US agriculture sector, that type of thing. I know north of the border here, we're often envious in our agriculture community of the political influence that agriculture that farmers have when it comes to political decisions in the US and in other countries, including here in Canada, it's something that we often, I think look at with with envy. What do you see as unique that the American agriculture policy think tank you work with brings to the table?
Well, I'll answer it in two parts. First, if we just talk about a policy experiment to watch. I think we've already talked about that. And that's the big grand trade policy experiment that's going on right now. And I do just need to mention, as I said before, 80% of American farmers voted for this administration. While that support is whittling away, I think there are many farmers in America who still believe that long term it will play to the farmer's benefit, but with short term pain. So, as I said, still an experiment. But where I'd like to pivot with this question is Farm foundation and what we're doing in this sphere. And last year, with all the changes going on, we launched what we're calling a policy innovation sandbox. And we brought in former U.S. secretaries of Agriculture and innovative thinkers across the whole food value chain. And it's been very encouraging to bring people together to think ahead maybe five to 10 years from now, leapfrogging the here and now and saying, where do we think policy needs to be in 10 years? And in the first summit, the gathering identified eight areas for policy innovation and we're starting to move those forward. A couple that I'd highlight right now are in risk management and trying to almost take like a, you know, clean slate and say if we were going to just scrub out everything and start anew, what might risk management look like? And looking to some of the other countries. So Australia again has been brought up in terms of some of the risk management tools there. A second thing that came up was extension. And that's one very different thing across our countries in terms of how we approach extension. And it's a time of disruption for extension here in America. And so we're looking at what are some innovative policy suggestions that we might come up with for extension. And I think, as Emma just noted, driving sustainability and innovation forward historically has been through extension. So I think that is a critical kind of cross cutting thing that I'm excited to see what pans out. We plan to convene at the end of this year in Washington D.C. to highlight some of these takeaways through a webinar like this. So stay tuned and we'll share more later.
All right, so we'll look forward to that. Tyler, your thoughts? I'll maybe let you react to your colleagues, but also maybe put the spotlight on you in terms of what you say about Canadian Agriculture policy. When you're speaking to international colleagues where other countries could potentially learn from Canada,
you know, that's I think publicly covered. I'm often more in the learning mode. I think one of the challenges that we've had in Canadian agriculture policy is that it hasn't seen the same innovation, same I think dynamism that we see in other parts of the world. And it's interesting, I think one of the, the architectures that is a good architecture that has the potential to work better is our policy framework where the federal and provincial governments set a five year agreement. They in theory connect business risk management programming with other strategic initiatives. They are intended to set a common direction and policy between the federal government and provincial governments. But I think the practise versus the theory of that is different. And clearly the work that we're doing right now is outlining opportunities for that to work better. But again, I think what I continue to react to in this space is that there are these common kind of themes that are there and I think we know that there's a difference and I think Canadians have been very sensitive to the difference on innovation in particular, under the last government there was more of a push to what we would perceive as a European perspective. I think that there's a desire in the industry to see more of an American type approach when it comes to access to innovation. But I think it's important to understand that context that even inside Europe these things are changing, these pressures are there. There's a desire for what I would call maybe more of a common sense approach to these kind of a more science based approach when it comes to access to innovation, but kind of think broadly. We're also trying to figure out what does this mean in this new world that we're living in and how do we I think better react and adjust to the tensions that exist in this new trading environment and what impacts does that have on our domestic policies. And I think we can all speak to kind of how these global events are happening. Emma's already mentioned kind of war in Europe having an impact on European policy. Katie's talked about the trade dynamics in the Indo Pacific and the role that some of those large players are there. Sherry's talked about the role that the United States is playing from that new trade agenda and what it means for U.S. foreign policies. And I think in Canada we're trying to look at today, how do we really respond? How far do you go to respond to the moment that we're in and how much do you think about as Sherry just mentioned five or ten years from now. And, and I think that probably if you asked all of us, you'd get some different perspectives. But it is hard to know today how different the world will be in five and 10 years. And will we be out of this current moment or will this be something that has kind of saturated more of our thinking around the world on these issues?
Yeah, the good old days of 2026. Maybe it's what we're looking, looking back on. Hopefully not. There's a question here from Mark that I think we can springboard into a discussion about innovation and how innovation is funded in agriculture in our different countries. Of course, attracting capital is ultimately one of the big challenges here in Canada. We often see startup companies get, get going in Canada with an idea, but then the size and scale of the US Market is just so attractive that the investment shifts south and we don't necessarily see the benefits to the Canadian economy. It's certainly something that the Carney government is working on trying to retain that investment. And of course, many of President Trump's policies are about attracting investment into the American economy at the same time. Tyler, your thoughts, I guess, on the challenges when it comes to innovation that we might have in common here when it comes to getting that being a priority, whether it's publicly or privately funded, advancing and unlocking productivity when it comes to agriculture?
Well, certainly if you look at the big market shaking investments in innovation, there are global fights for those investments. And as much as, again, the production systems are different around the world, the reality is when the large investors are looking at, do they invest in Canadian tech, do they invest in Canadian production facilities? They're comparing Canada to the United States to Australia to Europe. And so I think it's kind of just that good reminder that if we want to be competitive, if we want to attract that investment, we need to better understand what's happening around the world and we need to better understand how Canada compares to what's going on around the rest of the world. We like to talk about climate change is a global problem in need of kind of global solutions and local solutions. I think that that's true when it comes to innovation as well. Right. If you look at the resources, whether or not the human resources or the financial resources that are needed to drive an innovative future for agriculture, that is a global problem. And we do need to find ways to make that work better together, keeping in mind that we want to make sure Canada gets its piece of the pie at the same time.
Emma, do you have thoughts on how innovation is funded in the eu. You mentioned the war happening in Ukraine and certainly there's massive amounts of capital being invested around that. Do you see changes or trends there in terms of how innovation is funded, how research and development happens in agriculture?
So I would say we have two sources of financing the innovation. So the first one is really linked to the common agriculture policy and now to the changes we are seeing in it. Because the idea on the table is to have a separate fund for innovation now. So we are still discussing that because the numbers will be presented at the end of the, of this year. So there is still a lot, you know, to discover. This is one point. Then of course we have the Horizon 2020 and, and other various projects funded by the EU. We have also public private partnerships which are very important because this is a kind of limit of where we are going with the public policies. So then the private can, you know, work all together. So this is one of the possibilities also. But I would say the question remains is what kind of agri models do we want to achieve with those innovations? And this is the biggest discussions we have, at least for now in the European Union. We are facing, I think that globally also the problem of renewal of the generations. So if you are thinking about, you know, people being 30 years old now, they need innovation, they are used to a different kind of farming and also, you know, the approach to the environment. So we need to give them something. And this is, I would say some changes are really becoming much faster now also in the farming sector, which is normally perceived as the quite, I would say, slow to react to innovation. So this, this is this kind of dichotomy. We have, for example now a very important discussion and the vote was supposed to take place at the end of April in the European Parliament on new genomic techniques. So this is also one of the topics on the table because like everyone is agreeing on the fact that they should be accessible, but still we are like having a problem to adopt that law. So we have those kinds of, yes, again, dichotomies within the eu, how we want to approach it. And I would say we are based on the precautionary principle towards the innovation. So looking at that side, it would mean that there would be no cars allowed now in the EU if that would be, because that's, that's the reality of the things. So if you apply this concept to the farming. So this is also slowing us down in a lot of things. So yeah, there are still a lot of things I would say we need to solve Internally as a discussion where we want to go with the EU agri policies in the future.
And if I can jump into, just
to jump in, thank you.
Just to reiterate the point that we've been making throughout the webinar, of course, but that collaboration is incredibly important now more than ever. So I've spoken about the, the positive side of the Australian agricultural innovation system. The negative side of that is that we are lagging both the US and Canada in productivity growth. So, you know, if you take a positive spin on that, you can say that because we had such a strong spike in productivity growth 30 years ago under deregulation, that's why we've now kind of reached a plateau, because we made all the early gains. Pick the low hanging fruit. However, none of us can afford to take our eyes off productivity. Productivity being just that, you know, very sometimes crude but really important measure of Are you making best use of your resources? Are you being able to produce what you need to in a way that is not just efficient but also sustainable long term? And so there's a lot we can still learn from each other if other countries have better productivity growth rates. In Australia, we need to ask why? What are you doing differently and how can our farmers learn from that as well? And what policies can we put in place? So to Emma's point around, you know, genomics, sometimes it's access to inputs, sometimes for us it's access to labour. There are a whole lot of rules and regulations that can sometimes get in the way of farming and trip us up. And we can look to each other to ask, how did you solve this problem? Or if you haven't solved it yet, where are our shared challenges that we can work on together? One of the things amongst many, a raft of things really, that brought us all together a few years ago, was looking at how we can focus on the genuine sustainability of agriculture. When I say sustainability, I'm not just talking about environmental impact, but also the profitability and the social impact of farming across the world and looking for those shared values that bring us together and where we can identify different paths to get to that shared outcome that we can all recognise as important. So we know that we farm very differently in Australia, really differently to farmers in Europe, sometimes similar to farmers in Canada. Except for this snow problem that you seem to have every year, we can see similarities with some US farmers and some farm very differently. Where we have those similarities and can learn from each other, that's important. Where we have differences, we need to recognise that neither approach is right.
Or wrong.
But we want to come to those shared common good outcomes. It's really important that we continue to do that.
Sherry, your thoughts on this topic? Of course, from our Canadian perspective we often look at the size of the US market and think, man, those productivity gains must just be due to the sheer scale of what's happening in the us, the sheer dollars that are being invested in that type of thing. But I'm not sure it is that simple. What are your thoughts in terms of what drives innovation in US Agriculture?
I mean on my own farm we've driven productivity gains on farms. So it's not just the scale, it's on each individual farm as well. But when I think about innovation in the U.S. i don't think of it as a capital problem, although what we've seen is the reduction in the federal funding to public universities. But I feel like there's enough capital around and it just might be a moment of pivoting which source of capital will keep driving innovation. To me it's more about adoption of innovation in the US and I think there's multiple barriers because I think people have been surprised there's been so much capital coming into ag innovation without the kind of adoption that people had hoped at the speed that people had hoped. And I think right now we're adding yet another layer of barriers onto adoption. And I don't know how much you follow it, but the Maha moms and the Maha moms wading into the waters to make America healthy again, moms having positions on innovation. What has believed to have been an innovation and the one I'll call out right now that has been in the news is Glyphosate with the executive order coming from the current administration. So we've been having calls at Farm foundation about that, perspectives on that and I think that's just one of many that think tanks and independent organisations have a role to help demystify these different innovations because there's probably a list of them and to again re anchor on the evidence based aspects of many of these core innovations. I think that's an ongoing thing that we're all going to have to keep tackling is the consumer perspectives on innovation and the safety and the rationale and the benefits of it for food cost and health and more.
Yeah, it certainly seems like the tide is also turning towards where we, and maybe this is maybe Canadian bias here, but where we need to also make sure our policies are taking that consumer perspective into account and that this is about food, food prices, food security at the grocery store Whether people can still afford the food based on the policies under which it's produced and that type of thing. And I did want to. We are quickly running out of time here. I wanted to flag the question from Grace in the chat here about designing effective and legitimate environmental sustainability policies. And of course, food costs are a factor in that too, or need to be a consideration in that. And Emma, when it comes to your perspective in the EU in terms of establishing environmental sustainability policies that have buy in from stakeholders, has that been a success or. As the pendulum shifts back, we of course have seen the footage of the protests in some of the major cities. Are there lessons to be learned that you can share with the rest of us on the webinar today?
I would say that we are seeing a growing polarisation between green NGOs and the farming network and family. And I think between what we do believe it's feasible as citizens and our expectations and what we do as consumers when we're buying food in the supermarkets. And this is something very, I would say, complicated to understand because the expectations are very high. As citizens, we demand, you know, full decarbonizations. We don't want to have any use of pesticides, glyphosate, you know, this is a neonicotinoids. That's a long storey going on. The European Union, who can use it, how you can use it, all the exemptions. But then as consumers, we are voting through our power of purchase. And this is also, we are seeing, for example, now the organic sector going down because we don't have any more capacity in the EU to buy as much organic as it was asked by the European Commission to be produced. So which puts our own organic sector in jeopardy because they have produced too much and no one is buying them. So those, I would say decisions, they really need an impact assessment and economic analysis to be able to guide our farmers through advisory systems in which direction we want to go. We are having a huge debate now on protein sources in the eu. Should we have less livestock, should we have other plant based products developed in the eu? But it means also a different land use. So you know how to grow less or more like, sorry, grow more on less land. So this is a kind of discussions we're facing, so that's not obvious. And as every year we have, you know, elections somewhere in the European Union countries, so it's not always helping the case of farming and environment altogether.
Well, and speaking of that, I think in many ways what you just said, when it comes to growing more with less, that brings us Full circle back to our original question. If there's more of a focus on food security, are there trade offs when it comes to growing more with less and being more efficient with the resources that we use in agriculture? And I think before we wrap it up here, final question. And speaking of elections, every year in the EU and of course around the world, we've seen populist politics gain popularity and gain weight. And I think by definition populist politics are very focused on the short term. There's a quote in the report, policymakers are focused too far in the future. Populism is having a party in the meantime. So your thoughts on, I guess in conclusion here, how do we bridge that gap between the inherent long term outlook that all of you have when it comes to crafting ag policy and trying to nudge ag policy in certain directions versus the populism of today's political world where everything is short term based on polls and those types of decisions? Katie, your thoughts on, on what's happening in Australia on that front?
Yeah, I've got so many thoughts we're going to try and cram into a couple of minutes. But I would say one thing is that the appearance of division is often greater than the actual division. So when we're talking about that gap between populism and long term positioning and policy, sometimes it appears to be two opposite ends of a spectrum, but there's really two very similar end goals in sight. And so again, if we can come back to that shared values, the shared outcomes approach, if you can ask somebody, for example, who might have a different opinion to you to say, well, what is your fear about this? Why are you reacting this way? And if you say, well, I share that fear, your fear is X, my fear is also X. We're just coming at it from a different angle. Let's work on this together. Sometimes those divisions are not nearly as big as they appear. So we shouldn't be completely dismissive of this rise in populism. And sometimes it can be very reactive and very disruptive that it's coming from a place of anxiety. And Emma pointed out people are now voting with their wallets. Cost of living is a problem around the developed world and more than ever in the developing world. So being respectful of people's problems and understanding that they're coming from somewhere, it's not just manufactured. Sometimes manufactured, but mostly not manufactured out of nothing. So I think there's still room for hope there. I've kind of lost my point. Oh, I wanted to talk about trade offs as well. Because there, of course, there are trade offs. When we're talking about long term food security and the sustainability of the agricultural systems, we need to have open and honest conversations about what those trade offs look like. It can be very difficult for the people on this call because all of us are trying to work in open markets and support communities and try and balance public good with private interest. None of us are in a socialist society where we just get to say public good comes first, let's figure out everything else later. None of us operate in a truly capitalist system where we say it's only the private interests and none of the public good matters. Trying to find the balance between those things is difficult and it's again a reason why collaborations like this are important. So I think I just raised more questions and provided answers, but I'll pass on to someone else.
Sherry, your thoughts on kind of the inherent short termism of our political world right now and how that conflicts or whether there's potential for overlap and still room to accomplish things. Maybe I should reframe it. Ultimately. Does economics and consumer wallets dictate what happens in agriculture policy relative to, not necessarily what happens on truth, social or coming from political leaders?
Well, there's a short phrase of the market always wins, but it might take longer to get there. So I think that will yet to be proven in the coming time. But in terms of bridging the gap, I go back to our mission. It begins as, as Katie said, with listening and understanding. Our mission is to build trust and understanding. So that's one bridge we're trying to build. And then our policy innovation sandbox is another one for bridging that short term to long term bridge to the future.
All right, Emma, your thoughts in conclusion here on this very briefly, because I
think that Katie and Shari said quite a lot already. I think we build trust both in the connections between people and also in science. Because if we speak about innovation, we have to trust science and we have to believe that our researchers are doing, you know, their best and they're not looking for bad solutions for us. That's, that's all.
Kelvin, if I can just say quickly, I think one of the things that's interesting to look around the world is that especially when you look at kind of the reaction from agriculture communities, there is, I think, a need for governments to respond. We saw that in the European Union with strategic dialogue, where the commission reacted to the pressures that they're facing. We see that in Canada today where the government has pulled back on some of their policies that were alienating agriculture stakeholders. And so I think, again, there's a pendulum that swings. My hope is that it continues to find its place back to the centre eventually.
All right, we are running out of time here quickly, so thank you all for the questions, the ones that we haven't got to. Maybe we can take them offline and respond that way or continue the discussion that way. And I would like to personally thank Emma or Emmanuel, Sherry, Katie and Tyler for joining us here on this webinar. Thank you all for sharing your perspectives and knowledge on this topic. Of course, we're just scratching the surface. As has been alluded to here, there are many different directions and details that we could get into further detail and look forward to doing that in in the coming months. Please note that this webinar will be available on CAPI's YouTube channel and on RealAgriculture.com in the coming days. With that, thank you all for joining us. Stay tuned for our next policy webinar in in April and enjoy the rest of your afternoon. Your day, everybody, wherever you are in the world. Thank you. You.