Ottawa-Soybean production began in Canada 40 years ago and it now is the third largest crop in the country, says Brian Innes. Executive Director of Soy Canada, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

Soy Canada has flourished because “people came together, they worked hard and they believed in a vision that we can be more than the sum of our individual efforts,” he told the annual general meeting. They worked together to “to achieve things that would be difficult or more costly for any one segment to do themselves.

“Over the last year, we’ve stepped up on what matters for the industry. From container advocacy to federal advocacy, to enabling peer to peer engagement – we’ve seen some impressive results.” Members benefit from having better information to inform their business decisions and have “seen how coming together can produce results.”

Members also have “a clearer view of what’s important to our customer, a clearer view of what’s important to each segment of our diverse industry, and ultimately solutions that take us further by adding more value. And no where are these aspects clearer than our work on Sustainable Canadian Soy.”

That program was launched a year ago “and we’re seeing the momentum build with more interest from our customers and more interest from our members. It’s a program that leverages the power of joint action to make it easier for producers and exporters to meet market needs.”

Soy Canada’s second priority is building demand and it has more growers and exporters participating then ever before, Innes said. “We enabled our members to grow their individual business under a unified offering of Canadian quality. We’ve taken the best of the past and best of the recent past to have Canadian soy be clear and present in the minds of our customers, in person, and throughout the year by other means.”

There was also progress on gaining market access. “The impending EU deforestation regulation brought us together to have a clearer view of how our diverse industry sees the EU market demands. And we brought about a significant improvement in market access by removing non-tariff barriers related to weed seeds for Vietnam.” The solution is benefitting all Canadian grains.

Soy Canada held its ever national soy research conference last year “with our grower, private, and public sectors coming together to share the latest knowledge on soy innovation and the questions we need to tackle for Canadian soy in the coming years.” With those accomplishments, the sector now must think “about what our future is going to be like.”

While Canada will likely be a laggard in adopting gene edited soy varieties, “it is better able to serve customers who want the benefits of technology, with our world class identity preserved system providing confidence to customers that we can commercialize new technology and still deliver purity and confidence to the most discerning customers.”
The sector needs to think how it can build on its strengths and focus on uniting “in our strengths and grow beyond our 25 per cent slice of the global market.”

This news item prepared for National Newswatch