MFGA BLOG: We will take "Happy to Be There" for the win, Alex! 

by Duncan Morrison, MFGA executive director



Next week, MFGA chair Mike Duguid and I will be hunkered down at our banquet table surrounded by some of the best of the best leaders, planners, movers, and shakers around water in Canada as part of the Water Canada Awards ceremony in downtown Toronto, Ontario. 

MFGA is one of three national finalists in the Early Adopter category, a seamless fit I would say given the fact our whole organization centers on the early adopters of the farming demographic.  

We congratulate and wish our fellow nominees in our category: Kelp Restoration Partnership and the 2025 Watershed Report good luck and best success on their joint commitment to advancing Canada’s water industry. We are honoured to share this nomination with you. 

As the night rolls along, we will be naturally nervous as our category announcement time comes.  We will also add extra emphatic hometown applause for other Manitoba nominees with the Lizard Lake Rebuild and the Lake Winnipeg Foundation. 

But in the big picture, whether we win the award or not is not the definitive story here. 

Here we will sit, a small, non-profit, non-checkoff, non-nationally affiliated, regen ag/early adopter farmer-led forage and grassland organization that proposes, pursues and mobilizes the licence and project delivery resume of the MFGA Aquanty Model for the Assiniboine River Basin and other smaller watersheds across Southern Manitoba, the most powerful water movement model and water forecasting tool on Canada’s Prairies. 

 The Aquanty tool, in fact, is so highly considered and respected by the global hydrologic modelling community that it underpins the characterization work for some of our planet’s most critical water resources. On our project, the forecasting technology that runs the MFGA model also runs the engines of Canada1Water, a project designed to look at Canada’s incredible water resources under a changing climate and all that goes with it, including national defence and sovereignty. 

We are humbled. 

And for sure, the conversations that Mike and I are going to have with fellow nominees and attendees will make that link. Water is today, tomorrow and every day after. But to get the best handle on water resources on Canada’s prairies, we need to understand historic flood and drought events over time as reference points to plan forward and make land use decisions. We will be joined by Dr. Steve Frey, our project’s lead scientist who doubles as a co-lead on the Canada1Water project, so if we stumble on tech details, we have our back-up. 

But what we most certainly wont stumble on is how proud we are to be part of this night, this event.  

And especially, where we come from, who we are and what we represent. 

 We will state how proud we are of our MFGA farmers and that those farmers leading our organization are totally committed to ensuring that water is among our very top priorities in every discussion. These farmers are using soil-boosting regenerative agriculture principles and practices alongside natural areas, enhancing water management, carbon sequestration, biodiversity and buffering natural climatic events. 



And we will stress: These are all profitable farms. Many of them are doing these important things on their own dime and time. Can you imagine if we meaningfully embraced the minimal risk, high return investment of these farms, benchmarking the good things they are doing for Canada and investing in the continuation and proliferation of these powerful on-farm gems?  

That is a much bigger chat and challenge; however, this lofty national recognition gives us a chance to celebrate the impact and potential of our MFGA farms and the MFGA Aquanty model, highlighting the positives of planning for water at the farm gate, helped in key areas by our individual watershed district partnerships. 

We will report that our province recently announced their Net Zero Plan for 2050 -including direct prioritization and planning around regenerative agriculture - and has most recently invested in our model as part of a 2025 Climate Action Fund grant to look at the role of forages and grasslands around water in changing climates.  

We will bring forward our model’s origins via two Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Province of Manitoba funded projects in Growing Forward 2 and the Canadian Agriculture Partnership; the first looking at forages and grasslands in times of flood or drought, the second creating a portal access to real time water forecasts on MFGA.net. 

We will highlight our work with two Manitoba Watershed Districts—Assiniboine West and Pembina Valley—and explain how as part of those partnerships that Rolling River First Nations and Swan Lake First Nations can now access the MFGA Aquanty model to help better understand water resources and management. These community scenarios were made possible by RBC Tech for Nature (PVWD) and Manitoba's Conservation Trust (AWWD) respectively. We will also mention that two other Watershed Districts: Redboine and Souris River Watershed District have also engaged the model analysis into their important land planning work.

 But the biggest win of all, will be the ability to tell our important farmer-first story and their good work on Prairie ag lands to Canada’s most water conscious and water committed community in downtown Toronto. 

The entire Water Canada Awards night represents a massive win for MFGA. 

And, as you might fully imagine, we will indeed be very happy to be there.