New Saskatchewan research suggests farmers could be missing opportunities to improve profitability by sticking with older crop varieties.

I’ve been thinking about the difference between being cautious and being comfortable. They’re not the same thing, although we have a remarkable ability to convince ourselves they are. Caution keeps a farmer from betting everything on an unproven variety. Comfort keeps that farmer growing an older variety long after better options become available.

Caution makes a plant breeder carefully evaluate a new trait. Comfort makes an industry reluctant to reconsider how that research gets funded. And caution makes a country think carefully about its trading relationships. Comfort makes it assume those relationships will always be there.

Three stories crossed my desk this week that seemed unrelated. But the more I thought about them, the more they told the same story.

The first involved University of Saskatchewan research suggesting farmers could potentially have earned an additional $344 million in gross revenue in 2024 by growing higher-yielding crop varieties. That’s a big number, but the researchers caution it’s a benchmark, not money farmers necessarily left on the table. There are good reasons to stick with proven varieties. Yield isn’t everything.

What interested me more was that some of Saskatchewan’s most popular pea and lentil varieties date back to the 2000s. We have an industry built around innovation, yet some of its advances struggle to make it the final few miles to the farm.

There’s something, like, really human about that. We like progress in principle, but we just don’t always like what it asks of us. Which brings me to Ana Vargas.

In this week’s episode of On the Brink, the University of Saskatchewan lentil and faba bean breeder imagines healthier lentil crops, fewer weed problems and varieties better equipped to handle root rot and herbicide resistance. But what struck me was her insistence that growers must be part of the breeding process, not just as customers or funders. Actual participants whose experience helps determine where research goes.

We often think of innovation as something developed in laboratories and delivered to farmers. Vargas describes something more reciprocal: farmers’ problems shape breeding priorities, while breeders provide new tools to address those problems.

If researchers develop varieties farmers hesitate to adopt, perhaps the issue isn’t just resistance to change. Maybe we need to examine how information, trust and value move through the seed system. The best genetics in the world don’t accomplish much sitting in a catalogue.

And then there’s Gary Doer. At last week’s EMILI Agriculture Enlightened conference in Winnipeg, the former Manitoba premier and Canadian ambassador to the United States offered practical advice about trade, politics and agriculture’s place in Ottawa.

One remark stuck with me.

“I never went to Ottawa for farm discussions without farmers.”

There’s a connection here I want to emphasize. Doer was discussing political advocacy, Vargas was discussing plant breeding, and the Saskatchewan researchers were examining variety adoption. All three described systems where decision-makers need stronger connections to those living with the consequences.

A farmer sitting across from a politician can explain something a briefing document cannot. A producer dealing with root rot can tell a breeder something research alone might miss. And variety adoption research suggests farmers need better, localized evidence before changing what they plant.

Progress depends on closing the distance between expertise and experience. But there’s another layer. Canada’s agricultural trade relationships can no longer be taken for granted. Doer believes changing U.S. political circumstances could create opportunities for cooperation, but emphasized preserving relationships and negotiating pragmatically.

Canadian agriculture can’t control every tariff, political decision or market disruption. It can, however, control some decisions at home. We can invest in research, improve variety testing and promotion, involve farmers in breeding priorities and sustain programs developing the next generation of crops. Farmers can also periodically ask whether the seed they’re planting remains their best option. None of this eliminates uncertainty. But that’s the point.

We spend tremendous effort making agriculture predictable, measuring everything from soil moisture to grain protein while collecting enormous amounts of data. Yet some of our biggest opportunities may depend on something less technical: reconsidering decisions that have become habits.

I’m not suggesting farmers abandon dependable varieties, breeders chase every fashionable technology or Canada approach trade with reckless optimism. But there’s a difference between respecting what has worked and assuming it will keep working. A variety can be dependable and still hold us back. A research system can succeed and still need to evolve. A trading relationship can remain valuable while requiring a different approach.

Maybe that’s the lesson from these stories. The danger isn’t that Canadian agriculture lacks innovation. We have plenty of it. The danger is becoming so good at managing the risks of change that we forget to calculate the risks of standing still. And unlike a tariff or a drought, that’s one risk we actually have some control over.