Putting modern technology to work in the sector is crucial.Ottawa—There are four key measures Canada needs to take to make the most out of its agrifood sector, says Evan Fraser, Director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph.The most obvious is investing in national infrastructure such as railway capacity through the Rocky Mountains, he told the Commons agriculture committee. The Prairies “are almost a unique resource globally in terms of their ability to produce grains and oilseeds as well as plants and animal-based proteins.”However getting that product to export markets depends on “a very small number of train lines, and every few years that service is disrupted. The fragility of our trading system harms our ability to be that breadbasket for the world that Canada aspires to be, and we need to make our transportation infrastructure more of a focus,” he said.Another key need is financial incentives to reward farmers who adopt greenhouse gas mitigating management practices so Canada can market its product as coming from sustainable agriculture.Using smart tractors that are very efficient with fertilizer would be a climate solution as opposed to a source of greenhouse gas emissions, Fraser said. “Doing that will allow us to build a global sustainability brand that will be a trade advantage in an increasingly climate-concerned world.”What's needed is “a federal carbon pricing mechanism that captures agriculture, sends the signals to farmers to do the right thing and gives us a basis on which to build a sustainable trade brand.”Dealing with the labour shortage in the agrifood sector is another key need. “If we want to produce the food, we have to train the right people, and this requires us to address the labour shortage.“This means we have to train people, encourage young people to come into agriculture and rebrand agriculture away from the idea that it involves a straw hat and a red barn and towards the understanding that the farmer of the future is as likely to wear a lab coat as she or he is to drive a tractor,” Fraser said.“Agriculture is part of the innovation economy, and we need investment in our curriculum of skills that we train people with. If Canada wants to expand our exports in the long term, we need a technologically savvy workforce who are ready to drive innovation.”Canada also needs to embrace the digital agriculture revolution by ensuring the modern technology finds its way “into barns and food processing facilities as controlled environment agriculture, vertical farming, and robotic harvesters and milkers.”That would boost production while reducing inputs along with creating more efficient processing facilities and smart packaging, he said. “That's just a tip of the iceberg of what technology can unlock for us.”Canada needs to be at the head of this wave of innovation and can do that by creating ag-tech innovation zones by “giving particular areas preferential tax and immigration status, land-use planning permissions and competitive utility rates, thus germinating a Canadian Silicone Valley for food.“There's a lot of good stuff already going on in the world and in our country. A quick example of a public-private partnership that is run by the Weston Family Foundation is a homegrown innovation challenge designed to spark innovative thinking on these technologies in our country.”