Ottawa—Canada needs a two-pronged approach to bringing its agriculture policies in step with a fast-changing world, says veteran ag economist Douglas Hedley.Governments and the agrifood sector must develop the capacity to quickly respond to the needs of the sector to offset the negative impacts of domestic and international events, Hedley said in a paper for the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute.At the same time, there has to be a long-term effort to bring greater stability to both domestic and international trade, he said. Progress is being made on this front with the Ottawa Group of countries seeking to build more stable trading relationships in the World Trade Organization and Canada's work with allies to create an acceptable dispute resolution process within the WTO.Currently there are too many uncertainties for a multi-year agrifood policy to survive for very long, Hedley said. “We cannot define where the Canadian agriculture and food industry needs to be in five or ten years; nor can we define the path to reach such a goal. Clearly, a long-term business risk management set can provide an initial foundation for adjusting farm incomes, but likely cannot deal with the range of measures needed to respond to the unforeseeable domestic and trade-related events.”A new approach is urgently needed “to bring together processes, ideas and analysis to guide directions over the next several years.” They will be dominated by uncertainty in domestic and international matters for the agrifood sector and Canada needs policies able to deal with future uncertainties as they happen “rather than reacting to events after the fact.”The fundamental question is how Canada can move forward in defining and implementing agrifood policy “in the very different world in which we find ourselves today, involving the trading environment we face, the role of governments in domestic and international trade policies in agriculture and emerging economic nationalism, changes in institutional arrangements within Canada and abroad, and the instability in all of these relationships in the days and years ahead,” he said. Many future issues will be quite different than what we have contended with during the last several years.Dealing with climate change is a pressing issue that needs a strategic program design and implementation developed specifically for agriculture and food. While provinces can design and implement their own programs, some national commonality is needed in agriculture and food policies.“Some process is needed to assemble both the analysis and various groups across the sector to bring as much coherence as possible across the industry, and to dovetail Canada's approach with the U.S. and other trading partners,” Hedley said. “The federal government, for a number of reasons, is unlikely to attempt leadership, although its research and policy resources could measurably contribute to the effort.”Canada would benefit from paying more attention to “the exploding biological research results around the world. Science does not respect international borders, and Canada cannot generate all of the research and science needed for its industry to prosper.”Canadian agriculture researchers need to be to become far more connected to major research hubs around the world, which “means funding in research centres abroad to support Canadian researchers in major research centres, as well as funding visiting researchers from abroad to work in Canada, as a means of ensuring Canadian access and research capacity in science discoveries.”Alex Binkley is a freelance journalist and writes for domestic and international publications about agriculture, food and transportation issues. He's also the author of two science fiction novels with more in the works.