Barry Senft’s coming departure as Seeds Canada CEO leaves one big question: who’s ready to fill his boots?
Seeds Canada CEO Barry Senft took the stage in Quebec City today with the kind of quiet gravity that can only be earned — not manufactured. As he surveyed the room at the organization’s annual meeting, he wasn’t just delivering a speech. He was marking the end of an era.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” he began. “Five years already.”
What followed wasn’t a polished farewell or a tidy retrospective. It was something more meaningful — a reflection on a half-decade of leading an organization born from merger, forged in crisis, and now entering a new chapter. One without him at the helm.
Senft will step down as CEO on Jan. 30, 2026.
There was no applause line, no dramatic pause. Just the matter-of-fact delivery of a farmer who knows when it’s time to finish one row and start another. “We’ve got a lot to do before then,” he said. “But this gives the board enough time to find the right person to take the wheel.”
Since its inception in 2020, Seeds Canada has been something of an experiment — one meant to unify the nation’s seed value chain under a single roof. And Senft, with his Prairie drawl and farmer’s instinct for timing, was its first CEO. He accepted the job, literally, while seeding a field. Not from an office. Not over Zoom. But mid-row, mid-thought, mid-season.
The world has shifted seismically in the years since. A global pandemic. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A return to U.S. tariffs under a re-elected Donald Trump. And the surreal dawn of artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT. Through it all, Seeds Canada tried to do what other institutions often can’t: remain useful, relevant and responsive.
Under Senft, the organization tackled big files with quiet persistence — intellectual property reform, trade advocacy, regulatory modernization. He spoke of tip lines to report IP infringement, of revived committee structures, of strategic visits to Washington and collaborations with the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association. He thanked his staff by name.
Tariffs, he noted, weren’t even on the agenda when the leadership team met last fall to chart a three-year strategy. “And yet,” he added, “here we are.”
But perhaps the most significant moment — for those paying attention — wasn’t in the recitation of milestones or metrics. It came in the quiet acknowledgment that his time as CEO is drawing to a close. And that, like any good farmer, he knows when it’s time to rotate the crop.
“It’s been a real experience,” Senft said. “This sector is complex, it’s necessary, and it’s full of people with a deep, abiding passion for what they do.”
