[Scene opens with a shot of young soybean rows with the Soy Masters badge and "Field Notes" overlaid on it. Drum and guitar music plays in the background. The text "Research and Innovation Key for Soybean Growth in Western Canada" shows. Scene switches to Ron Davidson (Executive Director, Soy Canada) in a hotel lobby, speaking to camera.]
RON: Soybeans are a relatively new crop in the West. The first production reported by Statistics Canada was in the early 2000s out of Manitoba.
[Scene switches to show the Soy Canada website's page on Canadian Soybean Production. It has a chart for each crop year and region.]
RON: We've had six years of production recorded now out of out of Saskatchewan. There was also production recorded by StatsCan in Alberta this year for the first time. So it is a new crop.
[Scene switches back to Ron in the hotel lobby, speaking to the camera.]
RON: It's a crop in which there is heavy investment now in research and innovation. And that really is the key.
[Scene switches to show a photo of about 20 people standing in a soybean field. It then switches to show a close-up photo of two hands holding a soy plant. It then quickly switches to show the leaves of soybeans blowing in the wind.]
RON: Because we are moving into areas where we need earlier maturing, shorter season varieties, areas where perhaps there is a bit more requirement for drought tolerance.
[Scene switches back to Ron in the hotel lobby, speaking to the camera.]
RON: As soybean production increases and keeps spreading northwest, we are depending very heavily on research and innovation. Research and innovation is clearly the key for the future of this industry in Western Canada. Particularly in 2017/2018, we've had two back-to-back years of very dry drought years.
[Scene switches to show dry, cracked soil. It then quickly switches back to Ron in the hotel lobby before switching to a graph of rainfall over many years.]
RON: And the presentations that we've seen today at this conference have indicated that you have to go back 100 years to find two years in a row that have been as dry as 2017 and 2018 were.
[Scene switches back to Ron in the hotel lobby, speaking to the camera.]
RON: So we think the better climate, better weather, is probably around the door. Hopefully it's beginning this year.
[Scene switches to a close-up shot of soybean leaves blowing in the wind. It then switches to a shot of beans blowing in the wind.]
RON: And we'll return to the kinds of yields we were having before. I would also note that, with Saskatchewan in particular producing (as far as Stats Canada data goes) for six years, it's normal to have ups and downs in those early years.
[Scene switches back to Ron in the hotel lobby, speaking to the camera.]
RON: Every province that soybeans have moved into in Canada over the years, if you go back and you do a trend, yield goes up over time.
[Scene switches to show a group of people in parkas and with umbrellas in a field. There is a large sign marking Syngenta SOO-T9. The scene then switches to pan across the leafy top of soybeans. The scene then changes to a closer shot of the beans on the plant.]
RON: And if you look at the three worst years and the three best years, the three worst years are always in the early years, and the three best years are always recent ones.
[Scene switches back to Ron in the hotel lobby, speaking to the camera.]
RON: So we're quite confident that, as we have better whether, we experience new varieties coming on, and as growers obtain more experience in growing the crop, that there is a real strong future. In fact, the future for growth in soybeans in Canada is Western Canada. And because Manitoba is already established, it's Saskatchewan and Alberta.
[Scene changes to a shot of young soybean rows with the Soy Masters badge overlaid on it with the text "Field Notes". Guitar music plays in the background.]