Insights from the 2025 Cultivating Resilience Sessions
At the Fall 2025 Cultivating Resilience Summit, one message came through clearly across disciplines, speakers, and subsectors: the future of food won’t only be shaped by what we know, but rather by what we do with what we know.
Although the summit sessions covered remarkably diverse ground—science, sovereignty, policy, and practice—they shared a common imperative: strengthening the pathways between knowledge and action.
This convergence of difference and direction is powerfully illustrated when comparing three of the summit’s sessions: Innovations in Genomics: Building Climate-Smart Livestock Systems; Land, Seeds, and Sovereignty: Confronting Neo-Colonialism in Indigenous Agriculture; and Bridging the Divide: Moving Knowledge into Action.
Together, they tell a compelling story of where Canadian agri-food systems are headed—and how they must evolve.
Genomics as a Climate Tool: From Data to Decisions
Hosted by the BC Centre for Agritech Innovation (BCCAI), Innovations in Genomics: Building Climate-Smart Livestock Systems explored how genomic science is rapidly reshaping livestock systems in the face of climate pressure. Leaders, including John Church, Professor of Natural Resource Science at Thompson Rivers University (TRU); Paul Adams, Director of the Applied Genomics Centre at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU); Theresa Burns, Chief Veterinarian of the Government of BC; and Ronaldo Cerri, Professor in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia (UBC), all agreed that genomics is evolving from being used as a research tool to a frontline climate adaptation strategy.
During this session, the speakers explored how precision breeding and gene editing could significantly reduce methane emissions, improve heat and disease tolerance, and help livestock adapt to increasingly extreme temperature swings. Real-world examples ranged from heat-resilient cattle breeds to genomic tools that track traits like fertility, longevity, and stress response.
They also confronted issues slowing progress in the field, including public perceptions of gene editing, complex regulatory pathways, and unresolved questions around data ownership and intellectual property (IP).
But the deeper message here transcended technology—it emphasized translation. The most powerful innovations only matter if they are designed in collaboration with producers, validated in real-world systems, and supported by policy that enables adoption. Data is abundant. What’s needed now is alignment between researchers, farmers, industry, and regulators.
The takeaway? Climate-smart innovation doesn’t fail for lack of science. It fails when science doesn’t move far enough beyond the lab.
Indigenous Food Systems: Relational Knowledge, Not Extractive Models
Hosted by the BC Agricultural Climate Action Research Network, Land, Seeds, and Sovereignty: Confronting Neo-Colonialism in Indigenous Agriculture went far beyond technical agriculture to connect food with culture, memory, and power.
Dr. Tabitha Robin, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC, grounded the room in a crucial truth, that Indigenous food systems are not “alternative”—they are original, sophisticated systems that sustained communities for millennia.
Rather than looking to agri-food innovation for novel ideas, Dr. Robin suggested that an examination of Indigenous food systems will reveal valuable insights into a better way forward. Participants examined how colonial policies dismantled Indigenous food sovereignty, criminalized traditional practices, and replaced relational food systems with extractive, profit-driven agricultural models, exploring questions like:
- Can seeds be owned, or are they held in trust?
- What responsibilities come with stewardship of land and food?
- Why can’t modern food insecurity be solved using the same systems that created it?
Indigenous food systems are built on reciprocity, kinship, and care, taking only what is needed so that ecosystems remain in balance. Within this idea lie an invitation and a challenge: if we are serious about resilience, we cannot continue translating Indigenous knowledge into colonial frameworks. We must learn how to build systems that respect different ways of knowing rather than trying to make them fit existing structures.
The takeaway? Reconciliation in agri-food isn’t a symbolic act—it’s a reconstruction.
From Evidence to Action: How True Resilience Can Be Built
Throughout the summit, this point surfaced again and again: we are generating more knowledge than ever before, yet struggling to move that knowledge into the places where it can do the most good.
The genomics session revealed what is now possible—precision breeding, climate-resilient livestock, and data-driven selection that could dramatically reduce emissions and disease risk.
At the same time, the Indigenous sovereignty session reminded us that not all knowledge is new, and not all solutions must be tech-driven. Long before genomics and drones, resilient food systems already existed, built through relationships, observation, responsibility, and reciprocity with land, animals, and seeds.
Hosted by the Agricultural Genomics Action Centre (AG-ACt) and facilitated by Emily Shantz, Knowledge Synthesis Specialist at Knowledge Link at Simon Fraser University (SFU), the session Bridging the Divide: Moving Knowledge into Action sat at the fault line between these realities.
Rather than focusing on content, it focused on movement. Why do powerful insights stall? Why do innovations fail to land? Why do policy windows close before evidence arrives?
Together, participants shared answers to these questions, and the discussion revealed that the gap is rarely about lack of intelligence or effort. It’s about translation, trust, and timing.
Knowledge that sits in journals doesn’t feed people, evidence that isn’t shaped for real decision-makers doesn’t change systems, and solutions designed without the people who must live with them often go unused. Knowledge that excludes Indigenous and lived experience is, at best, incomplete. Further, even unbiased, inclusive knowledge only comes full circle when it is acted upon.
The path toward resilient, climate-smart food systems may never look like a straight line, but maybe it shouldn’t. Perhaps the path is a braided system, where science, lived experience, policy, and practice are woven together, continuously, by design.
The final takeaway? The future, and resilience, of our food systems must be cultivated, together and with intent.
About the Cultivating Resilience Co-hosts
The Agricultural Genomics Action Centre (AG-ACt) works to advance genomics-based research and knowledge mobilization in support of Genome Canada’s Climate-Smart Agriculture and Food Systems research portfolio. Through national collaboration, leadership, and cross-sector connection, AG-ACt helps move research evidence into real-world impact across the agri-food system.
The BC Centre for Agritech Innovation (BCCAI) at Simon Fraser University works with partners to develop and advance technology solutions and training opportunities to solve industry challenges, build resilient supply chains and generate global solutions for food insecurity and climate change.
The BC Agricultural Climate Action Research Network (ACARN) at UBC is a network that works to be a bridge between academic research and on-farm implementation, helping to mobilize climate solutions across BC’s agri-food systems.
SFU Public Square works across all of SFU’s campuses, supporting faculty, students, staff, alumni, and diverse communities to convene accessible, innovative and inclusive programming that brings people together to find ways to meaningfully contribute to the issues that affect our lives.