On January 20 at Davos, Prime Minister Carney said that a country that cannot feed itself has few options.
Just days later, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada announced that seven research facilities – at Lacombe, Indian Head, Scott, Portage la Prairie, Guelph, Quebec City, and Nappan – and the Organic and Regenerative Agriculture program will no longer receive funding.
These funding cuts amount to a self-inflicted brain drain, and a disincentive for young people interested in agricultural science fields. They throw away more than a century’s worth of public investment in people, science, and infrastructure, while increasing risks to the food system and the people who work within it. The cuts are devastating on multiple fronts; however, the immense costs to agricultural climate science must be considered in their own right, as the closing of these facilities and programs will be consequential well into the future.
As farmers and farm workers feel the worsening financial, emotional, and existential stress of climate change, the loss of crucial research facilities and programs is all the more reprehensible. Drought in southwest Saskatchewan has left some areas severely depleted of moisture for the past eight years, leading to crop failure and financial losses. BC farmers, still rebuilding from catastrophic flooding four years ago, found themselves underwater once again late last year, as more than a month’s worth of rain in two days caused evacuation orders, landslides and road closures. Record-breaking wildfire seasons across Canada have had serious impacts on crops, livestock, and agricultural communities. And guilt, panic and hopelessness are becoming familiar emotions as farmers face more extreme weather events and uncertain futures.
As farmers struggle, the facilities and programs on the chopping block have been contributing to indispensable climate mitigation and adaptation research. The National Farmers’ Union underscored the scale of the loss in their brief to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food (AGRI Committee):
“Loss of any public plant breeding capacity could not come at a worse time. Climate change is advancing relentlessly, rapidly changing growing conditions, changing the range and behaviour of pests, weeds, and diseases, affecting frost dates, moisture regimes, heat, snow cover, and relationships with non-agricultural biodiversity.[…]
“Tens of thousands of small research plots distributed across a wide range of soil types, disease and insect pressures, and climatic conditions are needed to test potential new varieties…. These real-world conditions are specific to the regional soils and climate, and cannot be reproduced in a laboratory or greenhouse, or modelled with Artificial Intelligence.”
Meanwhile, researchers at Lacombe Research and Development Centre have found ways to reduce the environmental impact of livestock production. Scientists at the Nappan Research Farm in Nova Scotia have found that feeding kelp supplements to heifers reduces their methane emissions, a potent contributor to greenhouse gases. The Organic and Regenerative Research Program at Swift Current – the only public program dedicated to the study of organic agriculture in Canada – is a front line for climate adaptation research, helping farmers manage increasing climate variability, soil degradation, and emerging pests and diseases.
Cutting research is false economy
Consider climate impact in agriculture through a financial lens. From 2018-2022, crop insurance payments in Canada quintupled from $890 million to $4.9 billion. In 2021, Saskatchewan’s crop production fell by 47% and the provincial economy contracted by 0.3% due to drought.
Given the amount that the provincial and federal governments are spending on insurance compensation and business risk management program payments after climate-related extreme weather impacts on farms, public research into climate mitigation and climate adaptation should be protected, invested in, and expanded.
A major 2022 study in Saskatchewan on the benefits and costs of wheat varietal research and development found that:
• Taxpayer investments of $370.6 million between 1995 and 2020 resulted in a cumulative benefit to the Canadian economy of $11.8 billion.
• Every $1 of wheat investment from governments returned $31 to Canadians. When producer contributions through joint funding efforts were factored in, the return rose to over $70.
The impacts from these decisions will have disastrous consequences for many years to come.
With such returns at stake, what kind of money does the government hope to save by closing down these research facilities? In their report on the closures released April 21, the AGRI Committee revealed that AAFC’s analysis shows an operating cost saving of just $23.3 million/year – roughly 50 cents per resident of Canada – and $8.7 million/year in deferred maintenance costs over 10 years. The study also reveals AAFC’s analysis failed to account for the costs of closing the centres, including relocation, divestiture and decommissioning, and potential site remediation costs.
Attempts to find clarity have revealed a lack of transparency and a seeming approach of “cut first, think later.” The week after the cuts were announced, a media outlet received an internal AAFC email in which management was asking researchers to help the ministry evaluate the impact the site closures will have on their research projects – indicating poorly-informed upper management decisions.
And during the AGRI Committee’s initial meeting of its emergency study of the impact of the cuts in February and March, when Bloc member Sebastien LeMire asked Deputy Agriculture Minister Lawrence Hanson for an economic analysis, Hanson replied that AAFC had provided the analysis to the Parliamentary Budget Office and he assumed this was provided to the AGRI Committee as a matter of course. When the NFU asked if this had happened, PBO replied the information had not been provided to the committee because “AAFC indicated that they did not consent to the public disclosure of the information.”
As Sophie Martel of the Centre d’expertise et de transfert en agriculture biologique et de proximité (QC) said in her testimony to the AGRI Committee, “Science isn’t a luxury, it’s an insurance policy.” Halting agricultural research that has been on the cutting edge of emissions reductions research will cost the government billions, and will have long-lasting impacts on the climate and the food system.
Food security is national security
These cuts to public agriculture research fit into a larger pattern of the federal government’s disregard for climate action. In mid-May, Carney signed an agreement with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith that could usher in a new oil pipeline. The majority of the proposals on the federal government’s Nation-Building initiatives list are extractive projects, like mines and liquefied natural gas plants, that will harm the environment.
The feds are also determined to increase defence spending, a move that will intensify fossil fuel emissions both in Canada and abroad. The decision to redirect spending into carbon-intensive military infrastructure and out of programs, facilities, and research networks that have been helping farmers to both mitigate and adapt to climate change should concern not just agricultural organizations, but all of us. The impacts from these decisions will have disastrous consequences for many years to come.
In their report on the impacts of the closures, the AGRI Committee recommends “that the Government of Canada recognize the agriculture and agri-food industry as a strategic sector on par with energy in terms of national security, and food security as a national security issue.”
Now is not the time to cut funding for research centres, farms, and programs that are on the frontlines of agricultural climate science. Now is the time to maintain, indeed expand, our capacity for public interest research on sustainable agriculture. Among the AGRI Committee’s final recommendations is that “the Government of Canada pause and reverse the decision to close agricultural research centres.”
The AAFC research network provides widespread public benefits that ripple outward to not only support the livelihoods of farmers, but to safeguard affordable food for Canadians, the stability of our ecosystems, and the intrinsic value of nature in Canada. Public science is a public benefit.
The Long Harper Era: Privatization doesn’t work, and yet here we are
In the 1980s, we had 1,100 AAFC research scientists across a vast network of national research centres. In 2012, the Harper government closed the Cereal Research Centre in Winnipeg, the Horticulture Research & Development Centre in Quebec, and the Plant Pathology Program in BC, and dismantled the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA). Harper’s cuts eliminated tens of thousands of small research plots used to test potential new varieties. Today we only have around 350 AAFC scientists.
It would be a mistake to accept that endless privatization is the only path forward. Public research is knowledge-based, free of bias for profit, and extremely hard to replace. To clarify, these cuts:
• Ignore important production and unbiased knowledge-based issues because there’s no way to reasonably replace or monetize that work (low return).
• Fuel the fire for profit motive mechanisms like expensive end-point royalties that funnel farmer dollars into hungry investor pockets.
• Introduce a vacuum to future gains through the loss of programs and researchers that require year-in-year-out experimental work. Private companies will not pick up that tab. The nation suffers.
The results are like cutting off a farmer’s leg, offering them a shiny prosthetic one, and then charging them a subscription to use it.
Adapted from “Canadian government got it wrong on public plant breeding” by Dean Harder (www.nfu.ca, Feb 9, 2026) and “A country that cannot feed itself has few options: cutting agriculture research is false economy” by Cathy Holtslander (NFU Farmer Newsletter, April 2026).
Sarah Marquis is a policy analyst at the National Farmers Union, where she focuses on the intersections between food systems, technology, and climate change. She holds a PhD in Environmental Sustainability from the University of Ottawa.
This article, originally published on www.nfu.ca, has been edited to include updates provided by Cathy Holtslander, NFU’s Director of Research and Policy.
For a comprehensive analysis, see the Report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food: Science in Canadian Agriculture and the Closure of Research Centres. Take action
