Alliance Seed & Oat Advantage announce funding partnership

With an objective to provide Strong. Vigorous. Dependable. Genetics to Western Canadian farmers, Alliance Seeds and Oat Advantage are thrilled to announce their new research funding partnership agreement.

This agreement will provide financial support to Oat Advantage to continue their work in developing high yielding, high quality oat genetics for Western Canada.

“We see a tremendous long-term future for oat production in Western Canada,” notes Jodee Karlowsky, General Manager with Alliance Seeds. “This agreement supports our goal of testing, commercializing, and providing top quality oat varieties to farmers in western Canada and supports the business goals of our stakeholders. Alliance Seed is thrilled to support Jim and the Oat Advantage team. Oat Advantage varieties already have a great reputation among oat growers. Our support will allow Oat Advantage to continue providing growers quality oat varieties, while also investigating specific end use traits, and developing varieties that contribute to sustainable production. Ultimately, this partnership will bring a strong advantage to our Alliance Seed stakeholders and retail network and will greatly benefit the western Canadian oat grower.”

“This investment in breeding and testing by Alliance Seed will allow me to deliver oat varieties that meet the needs of both farmers and end use customers across the Prairies”, said Jim Dyck, owner of Oat Advantage. “I look forward to working with Alliance Seed and its stakeholders to develop oat varieties that provide farmers with unique genetics and superior agronomic advantages to help drive increased profitability on their farm. This partnership is also exciting to me as we have the chance to develop oat varieties with specific characteristics that end users are ask for as well as continuing to work on the most sustainable oat production practices.

Oat Advantage is a privately-owned oat breeding company with headquarters in Saskatoon, SK, Canada. Since 2008, we have combined family and work in our private oat breeding adventure. As owners of Oat Advantage, we remain committed to bringing forward relevant and valuable oat varieties. We are focused on the small details that make an oat variety worth the time and effort that you put into this important crop. The results are already showing: high quality high yielding oats, increased kernel density and uniformity, improved nutrition and safety and continued adaptation/integration with the land and ever changing climate.

We have incorporated our business as Vesper Sparrow Prairie Research Inc. Named after the tiny Vesper Sparrow, frequently seen on the prairies each summer raising their young diligently on the land and in the vegetation. There is a lesson here for us in the Vesper Sparrow, busy all day on our research farm, singing in the evening, taking care of its family. Prayers and hope, relationships and work. Life is a good adventure.

Alliance Seed was established in 2009 as a joint venture seed company, with ownership comprised of two of Canada’s largest family-owned grain handlers, Parrish & Heimbecker and Paterson Grain, along with western Canadian farmer owned Northwest Terminal. Today, Alliance Seed is a vibrant and growing seed company. Our core values are from the STRONG quality standard of the seed we produce, the VIGOROUS pursuit of high yields and leading disease tolerance in our innovative seed varieties and the DEPENDABLE expertise of our retail partners and seed growers.