I hold the Agri-Food Innovation & Sustainability Enhancement Chair at USask. Interested in sustainability, agriculture, innovation, food & benefits of biotech.
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Articles by Stuart Smyth
Continuous cropping, GM crops boost soil health
Innovations often completely transform systems of production. The invention of production lines transformed automobile manufacturing. The innovation of cellphones transformed people’s ability to communicate. Similarly, the innovation of genetically modified canola in the Canadian Prairies transformed crop production systems. The ability to efficiently control weeds through herbicide applications rather than through tillage transformed crop production.
Healthier food possible through gene editing
Innovations in agriculture focus on every facet of producing a crop, from developing hardier varieties to higher yields and better disease resistance to increased nutrition. The latter is known as biofortification, and research has been underway for decades on how to improve the nutritional composition of the crops, fruits and vegetables consumed as part of our diets. The nutrition of the food we eat is mainly based on the soil in which it was grown.
Joining EU would be disastrous for Canadian ag
According to a Nanos Research poll released this spring, 57 per cent of Canadians support joining the European Union. This would be an unmitigated disaster for Canadian agriculture, food production and food prices. The EU bans most of the technologies that have enabled Canadian farmers to become the most sustainable producers of crops anywhere on the planet. In 2003, the EU opted to take approval of GM crops away from the member states and consolidate this mandate within the European Commission.
Healthier food possible through gene editing
Innovations in agriculture focus on every facet of producing a crop, from developing hardier varieties to higher yields and better disease resistance to increased nutrition. The latter is known as biofortification, and research has been underway for decades on how to improve the nutritional composition of the crops, fruits and vegetables consumed as part of our diets. The nutrition of the food we eat is mainly based on the soil in which it was grown.
More nutritious food at lower prices: why not?
What if I told you there was a way to reduce food waste, help our farmers minimize their losses and improve the nutritional value of the food we eat every day? Thanks to technological advances in recent years — more specifically, research on gene editing — all these goals are now within our reach. Gene editing only alters what already exists in a species, making subtle changes to specific genes to enhance or moderate certain traits. Let’s start with nutrition.
Swine research produces economic benefits
The author writes that continued support for the Canadian hog sector should be a cornerstone of future funding frameworks. Photo: File In 2008, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada announced a new five-year strategic agricultural research funding program, known as Growing Forward. In 2010, Swine Innovation Porc (SIP) was established to facilitate and co-ordinate swine research across Canada.
Articles by Stuart Smyth
A study of the results of investments in swine research shows a more than four-to-one return Swine production accounts for more than $5 billion in export value annually. Continued support for the sector should be a cornerstone of future funding frameworks.
Swine research produces economic benefits
In 2008, Agriculture Canada announced a new five-year strategic agricultural research funding program, known as Growing Forward. In 2010, Swine Innovation Porc (SIP) was established to facilitate and co-ordinate swine research across Canada. Agriculture Canada has since renewed three more five-year agricultural research funding frameworks (2013-17, 2018-22 and 2023-28). SIP commissioned an economic impact study based on swine research investments undertaken between 2010 and 2023.
MEI – Gene editing: cheaper, can also reduce food waste for Canadian households – Stuart J. Smyth
May 20, 2026 | 7 min. 03 sec. | The Courtney Theriault Show (CHED 880) Interview with Stuart J. Smyth, Senior Fellow at the MEI, on how technological advances in the agri-food sector, such as gene editing, could help households save on grocery bills and farmers reduce costs for inputs such as pesticides.
Gene Editing for Improved Nutrition and More Affordable Food
Viewpoint showing how technological advances in the agri-food sector, such as gene editing, could help households save on grocery bills and farmers reduce costs for inputs such as pesticides Annex * * * This Viewpoint was prepared by Stuart J. Smyth, Senior Fellow at the MEI, in collaboration with Gabriel Giguère, Senior Policy Analyst at the MEI.
Editorial: The future of agricultural biosafety regulations
Introduction Progressive and adaptive criteria for biosafety assessments require a collaborative effort across disciplines, experts and institutions around the globe to enable fit-for-purpose, risk appropriate regulations that promote the safe implementation of bio-innovations and their accessibility to society. A number of recent reports provide insights, recommendations, and actions in this direction (OECD, 2024; OECD, 2025; NESTA Report, 2019; Regulatory Horizons Council report, 2022).
Viewpoint: The Green Revolution saved 1-2 billion lives globally. Activists say it was a failure. They’re lying
In the past few years, many environmental and academic activists have been undermining the work of Norman Borlaug and the successes of the Green Revolution by publishing false information. The environmental activists behind these headlines claim that the Green Revolution failed. Here is a random sample of examples of these activists lying to the public.
Stepping out of the shadows: UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization voices stronger support for crop biotechnology
GLP Policy & Performance Review, 2024 The GLP is committed to full transparency. Download the report. Global Gene Editing Regulation Tracker Our interactive GLP global map explains the status of each country’s regulations for human and agricultural gene editing and gene drives. GLP 2021 Annual Report The GLP is committed to full transparency. Download our 2021 Annual Report.
FAO’s support of ag biotech begins to return
While many private firms, research institutions and public agencies have been very active in communicating the benefits of agricultural biotechnology over the past 25 years, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has been marginally engaged at best. In 2004, the FAO released its State of Agriculture Report, which focused on agricultural biotechnology and what technology could provide to the food insecure.
Quebec’s dairy farmers are blocking free trade in Canada Original
Canada An outdated supply management system—designed to protect Quebec’s small dairy farms—is undermining Canada's global trade ambitions and hurting its own consumers. | Canada's oft-derided supply management system—a persistent irritant in many of the country's trade relationships—is less focused on price stability, as Ottawa claims, but rather on protecting the dairy sector in one Canadian province.
Activists lie about Green Revolution’s success
In the past few years, many environmental and academic activists have been undermining the work of Norman Borlaug and the successes of the Green Revolution by publishing false information. They ignore the fact that new wheat varieties developed by Borlaug saved millions of people from starving to death, especially in India.
Rate of herbicide resistant weed development: A Canadian Prairie case study
ABSTRACT Genetically modified crop adoption in Canada has been the key driver in removing tillage as the lead form of weed control, due to increased weed control efficiency. Land use has transitioned from the use of summerfallow to continuous cropping, predominantly involving zero or minimum tillage practices. Prairie crop rotations have diversified away from mainly cereals to include three-year rotations of cereals, pulses, and oilseeds.
Risk-appropriate, science-based innovation regulations are important
Opinion | Focus Issue: 50 years after AsilomarVolume 43, Issue 3p502-510 1Faculty of Law, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia 2Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, DC, USA 3Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2024.11.004Also available on ScienceDirect Copyright: © 2024 Elsevier Ltd.
Regulation of animal and plant agricultural biotechnology
Opinion | Focus Issue: 50 years after AsilomarVolume 43, Issue 3p511-521 1Department of Animal Science, University of California, Davis, CA, USA 2Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2024.11.003Also available on ScienceDirect Copyright: © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
Viewpoint: Canada’s new greenwashing bill that bans deliberately misleading information will require anti-GM activists to take down or radically revise their websites
On June 20th, 2024, The Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023 (Bill C-59) came into effect. The Bill covers a wide range of issues, including tax measures and policy, GHT/HST returns, excise goods measures, and a host of other provisions that got lumped together as amendments, such as labour, infrastructure, bereavement leave, Canada Water Agency Act, public post-secondary educational institutions, and a number of other measures related to competition.
Viewpoint: Lower-yield agroecology promises ignore evidence that advanced plant breeding, modern fertilizers and other inputs needed to grow more food on less land
Calls for transforming food systems have grown over the past several years. International governance organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), have issued many of these calls. Other calls have come from activist organizations, too numerous to list. A common theme from both the FAO and activists is that the current system is ‘broken’ and requires a complete rethink and overhaul.
Innovation adoption lags in farming
Every innovative product of technology that is commercialized eventually reaches what is known as “full adoption.” This is the point at which the peak percentage of society has adopted an innovation. Read Also Ranching has vital role in Prairie conservation Born and raised in Calgary, we took many family camping trips into the Prairies. I was always awed by the… Some innovations reach the point of full adoption more rapidly than others or have higher full adoption rates.
As the EU's regulatory stance on gene-edited crops slips back toward 'precautionary inertia', Europe's over-precaution threatens global food security
Despite the much-hyped expectation that Europe was on course to follow other parts of the world in removing GMO-style regulatory requirements from gene edited (GE) crops, with EU elections looming and no agreement in sight the bloc now risks slipping back towards precautionary inertia.
What are the real grocery store profits?
Two years ago, food price inflation was rampant, with monthly year-over-year increases in excess of 10 per cent. Read Also Look back at July 11, 2013, issue For the next year, this column will mark The Western Producer’s 100th anniversary by taking a deep dive every week… Statistics Canada’s Consumer Price Index for March indicated the price for a basket of food dropped by $8.42 from the same basket in February. The total basket cost in February was $630.88 and $622.46 in March.
Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie | CAES Journal | Wiley Online Library
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Supporting Information Filename Description cjag12366-sup-0001-SuppMat.docx213.4 KB Supplementary Information REFERENCES , , & (2020). Sustainability-related food labels. Annual Review of Resource Economics, 12, 171–185. (2014). ‘Wild west’ of eco-labels: sustainability claims are confusing consumers. The Guardian.
Viewpoint: ‘Environmentalists are wrong on opposing technological tweaks to agriculture’: How activists undermine society’s need for more climate-adaptive sustainable farming
Public concern about the environment has not always been part of the social conscience in North America. After all, European colonialists viewed the ‘new world’ as a vast and inexhaustible wilderness. However, as the landscape gradually shifted from forest to farmland, efforts to preserve the continent’s natural resources grew.
Impacts of changes to Canada's Plant Breeders' Rights Act
1 INTRODUCTION Incentivizing innovation is a key economic priority for all governments. Increasing demands for greater fiscal resources from many sectors of the economy and all government ministries has encouraged governments to leverage private sector innovation investments through innovative solutions.
Opinion: Farm economic aspect often ignored
The term “environmental sustainability” frequently lacks definition, though it is widely used by governments, media, retailers and environmental non-governmental organizations. We use the term in our research, where we demonstrate with evidence how environmental sustainability has changed, for better or worse. However, the term has been over-used and often lacks meaning or value. The term is frequently applied to methods, processes and technologies that are used to produce food.
Farm economic aspect often ignored
The term “environmental sustainability” frequently lacks definition, though it is widely used by governments, media, retailers and environmental non-governmental organizations. We use the term in our research, where we demonstrate with evidence how environmental sustainability has changed, for better or worse. However, the term has been over-used and often lacks meaning or value. The term is frequently applied to methods, processes and technologies that are used to produce food.
Climate change agriculture: GM crops, no-till farming and judicious use of glyphosate and other herbicides help address disruptions, Canadian study finds
David Castle, Peter Phillips, Stuart Smyth | GM Crops & Food | April 22, 2024 Credit: GeoPard Agriculture Ever since the first commercialization of genetically modified (GM) crops in the mid-1990s, researchers have considered the impact of these new technologies on the economic and ecological footprint of farming. Nearly 25 years of peer-reviewed research of commercialized GM crops in adopting countries establishes that they contribute to yield increases and overall reduce chemical inputs.
An assessment of the linkages between GM crop biotechnology and climate change mitigation
ABSTRACT This article provides an analysis and evaluation of peer-reviewed evidence on the contribution of crop biotechnology to climate change mitigation and adaption. While there is a range of agricultural technologies and products that contribute to climate change mitigation, this literature landscape analysis focuses on the development of genetically modified traits, their use and adoption in major commodity crops and responsive changes in production techniques.
Quantifying changes in the environmental impact of in-crop herbicide use in Saskatchewan, Canada
Materials and Methods This research aims to calculate the field use environmental impact quotient (EIQ-FU) for herbicides used postemergence in the crop rotation periods of 1991 to 1994 and 2016 to 2019. The EIQ, a comprehensive tool developed by Kovach et al. (Reference Kovach, Petzoldt, Degni and Tette1992), evaluates the environmental impacts of pesticides. It encompasses three key components: farmworker impact, consumer impact, and ecological impact.
Agricultural chemical use and the rural-urban divide in Canada
ABSTRACT Innovation is of fundamental importance for improving food production, as well as sustainability food production. Since 1960, food production has benefited from innovations in plant breeding technologies, fertilizer, chemicals and equipment. These innovations have dramatically increased food production, while the amount of land used has minimally increased.
Risk-appropriate regulations for gene-editing technologies
ABSTRACT This paper explores the scope for the newly emerging technologies, based on gene editing (GE) contributing to addressing the global challenges that we face. These challenges relate to food security, climate change and biodiversity depletion.
Sustainability in Canada and Europe: An Assessment after 25 Years of GM Crop Production
Publications Download Hi-Res ImageDownload to MS-PowerPointCite This:ACS Agric. Sci. Technol. 2023, XXXX, XXX This article has not yet been cited by other publications. Pair your accounts. Export articles to Mendeley Get article recommendations from ACS based on references in your Mendeley library. Pair your accounts. Export articles to Mendeley Get article recommendations from ACS based on references in your Mendeley library.
Canadian innovation beats EU precaution in agriculture sustainability
By Stuart Smyth Canada should learn from, not follow, the EU’s agriculture policy errors The world needs a lot of food to feed eight billion hungry mouths. Even though global production for the most important crops – rice, wheat and maize – reached all-time highs last year, inflation, geopolitical interruptions and misguided policy have disrupted our ability to make food abundant and affordable for everyone.
Seizing the policy moment in crop biotech regulation: an interdisciplinary response to the Executive Order on biotechnology
1 Introduction The release of the Biden Administration’s Executive Order on Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing signals that a policy window is open for significantly revising and evolving the existing regulatory framework for agricultural biotechnology products. In the fall of 2022, the Executive Order called for the identification of areas of ambiguity, gaps, or uncertainties in the regulation of biotechnology (Executive Order 14801, 2022).
Canada Confirms Gene Editing Technologies Are Conventional Plant Breeding
After months of anticipation, on May 3rd, 2023, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) publicly confirmed that plant varieties developed by advanced mutagenic gene editing technologies would be regulated as conventional plant varieties. This decision by AAFC aligns with the identical announcement by Health Canada in May 2022.
From genes to policy: mission-oriented governance of plant-breeding research and technologies
1 Introduction With Horizon Europe there is a €95.5 billion program fostering mission-oriented research and innovation in Europe (Mazzucato, 2019), entailing a new approach to research and its governance aiming to achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs; Mazzucato, 2018). Mission orientation calls for a changed role of state and public organizations.
The Difference Between Academics And Activists
Academics Accept Evidence, Activists Reject It Development of the empirical knowledge process In the 1660s, Robert Boyle advocated that the use of repeated experiments and written summary of the process, method and results, is the structure required to generate knowledge. Boyle advocated that the essay (what became peer-reviewed journal articles), should be written such that it defined the scientific process, both successes and failures.
Getting Serious About Hawaii Invasive Species Problem > Hawaii Free Press
Sunday, April 16, 2023 Gene Editing: Getting Serious About Hawaii Invasive Species Problem By Selected News Articles @ 2:04 AM :: 22 Views :: Environment, GMOs Social justice environmental activists move to block gene editing to control invasive species and promote biodiversity. Here’s why they’re misguided by Stuart Smyth, Genetic Literacy Project, February 7, 2023 Hawaii has emerged as ground zero for efforts to raise the awareness of the dangers of invasive species.
Canadian Consumers’ Perceptions of Sustainability of Food Innovations
This is an early access version, the complete PDF, HTML, and XML versions will be available soon. Open AccessArticle by Rim Lassoued 1,*, Janet Music 2, Sylvain Charlebois 3 and Stuart J.
The Bioeconomy and Food Systems Transformation
This is an early access version, the complete PDF, HTML, and XML versions will be available soon. Open AccessReview by Eduardo Trigo 1, Hugo Chavarria 1, Carl Pray 2, Stuart J.
Genetically Promoted Biodiversity: Control For Invasive Species
The following article was originally posted by the Genetic Literacy Project (GLP), on February 7, 2023: Social justice environmental activists move to block gene editing to control invasive species and promote biodiversity. Here’s why they’re misguided. Click here to see Dr. Smyth’s original post. Thank you to GLP for allowing us to share this post with our audience! Social justice environmental activists move to block gene editing to control invasive species and promote biodiversity.
DSI tax threatens public ag research
Digital sequence information, which was discussed at last year’s COP 15 convention on biological diversity, has significant implications for agriculture. DSI is the available information that exists online about a plant specie’s genetics once it has been sequenced. Discussions have been ongoing about access to DSI and the benefits that may occur, such as a new pharmaceutical drug or vaccine, or a new cosmetic product.
Seed Innovation For Food Security
Seed as a Starting Point Using the best ingredients or inputs is common with virtually all things we do. When we prepare to cook or bake a meal, we ensure that the ingredients we use are as fresh and new as possible. The concept is similar for farmers when planting their crops each spring, they seek to use newly developed crop varieties, which contributes to ensuring that their yields will be as high as possible, as seed quality is an important part of ensuring a maximum yield.
Rural round-up
Labour’s emissions pricing plan has turned into a self-inflicted wound – Craig Hickman : No matter whether you are for He Waka Eke Noa, the proposed method for calculating how agriculture will pay for their greenhouse gas emissions, or vehemently against it, I think everyone can agree on one thing: the plan was a stroke of political genius from the Labour Government.
Rejecting ag technology can be costly
Over the past 25 years, many governments have faced the decision of whether to approve agricultural biotechnologies and their resulting products, genetically modified crops. Governments that decided to approve GM crops have benefited from higher yields and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
Mushrooms reflect farming’s diversity
Mushrooms are part of many of our favourite dishes. Whether they’re served as an appetizing stuffed mushroom cap or sliced into sauces, mushrooms are versatile ingredients. They are often used as an alternative to meat and are capable of being barbecued and served identical to hamburgers. Low in fat and carbohydrates, mushrooms offer a healthy way to boost meal nutrition. They are also rich in B vitamins such as niacin, riboflavin, and vitamin D.
Regulatory frameworks can facilitate or hinder the potential for genome editing to contribute to sustainable agricultural development
Hellen Mbaya1,2*, Simon Lillico2, Steve Kemp3, Geoff Simm1 and Alan Raybould1,4 1Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Systems, The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies and The Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, Midlothian, United Kingdom 2Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health (CTLGH), Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom 3Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health (CTLGH), ILRI Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya 4Innogen Institute, Science...
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