By Owen Schalk
On January 22, the Liberal government announced massive cuts to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), the country’s largest agricultural research organization. In accordance with Budget 2025’s “ambitious savings plan” – in fact, its austerity agenda aimed at funneling public money into rampant militarization at the behest of Washington – AAFC has announced a 15 percent funding cut, the firing of 665 employees, and the closure of seven research facilities across Canada. Employees received no advance notice of termination.
Carney’s austerity agenda makes Canadian agriculture – and all of Canada – less secure, and less sovereign. As the National Farmers Union (NFU) stated in their response to the cuts: “By closing the doors on agricultural research centres and research farms, and ejecting people who represent upwards of 10,000 years’ worth of experience from the public service, Canada will be foreclosing on the discovery, problem-solving and knowledge-base that would have been created by these institutions, leaving us more vulnerable with fewer options.”
Ironically, this act of sabotage against Canadian agriculture occurred in the context of Carney’s supposed plan to secure Canadian sovereignty from aggressive and expansionist US imperialism, and on the heels of his speech at Davos, in which he declared: “A country that cannot feed itself…has few options.”
Due to Carney’s austerity agenda, three agriculture research and development centres across Canada will be forced to close within 12 months: in Guelph, Quebec City and Lacombe, Alberta. Also on the chopping block are satellite research farms in: Nappan, Nova Scotia; Scott, Saskatchewan; Indian Head, Saskatchewan; and Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. Some of these facilities have operated for over a century. The Lacombe Research and Development Centre, for example, is 119 years old.
Following the announcement of its closure, Lacombe Country Reeve John Ireland stated: “You cannot easily replicate 119 years of research history, specialized land, and long-term trials elsewhere. Once this site is lost, it’s gone forever.”
Seventeen AAFC research centres will remain open, but the effects of Ottawa’s funding slashes are startling. In fact, Carney’s austerity measures will mark the end of 30 percent of Canada’s publicly owned agriculture research centres.
Past research at the AAFC has contributed to improved seeding technology, fertilizer efficiency, crop protection strategies, food safety controls, pest and disease control, and sustainable production practices such as no-till farming. Such public research centres are a key component in Canada’s agricultural productivity. Doug Miller, executive director of the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association, has argued that every dollar invested in public wheat breeding returns between $20 and $33 to the Canadian economy.
The Liberal government’s attack on Canadian agricultural research follows decades of sustained underfunding at the AAFC. In a report published last October, the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute found that funding for research and development at the AAFC has fallen 21 percent since 1985, a decline that corresponds to the imposition of an earlier austerity agenda under Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
Agriculture is not the only victim. Carney, under the euphemisms of “fiscal discipline” and “workforce adjustment,” plans to slash 40,000 public sector jobs and create $60 billion in “savings” in the next five years. This while promising to ramp up military spending to $150 billion per year by 2035 – an increase of roughly $125 billion from 2024 – all at the behest of Washington and NATO. The aim is clear: divert public funds from socially useful programs into the war chests of Western imperialism.
Across Canada, farmers’ organizations have denounced Carney’s cuts. The NFU described them as “disastrous.” Saskatchewan farmer and NFU board member Will Robbins commented: “I think [the cuts are] incredibly short-sighted and counterproductive to the agricultural centre, to the agricultural industry in Saskatchewan, to the long-term prospects for Canadian sovereignty…It’s a step backwards and it’s a huge loss.”
Aaron Stein of the Alberta Federation of Agriculture reacted: “You cannot talk about food security, climate resilience or export growth while firing the scientists who make all three possible.” Agricultural paper The Western Producer called the cuts “a serious blow to the sector.”
Some have noted the continuity between Carney’s cuts and those of previous governments. As Tyler McCann of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute said, “It is inevitable, if you don’t invest, that at a certain point in time you will need to start to close facilities.” Dave Gehl, head of the Indian Head Research Farm, stated that previous cuts under Stephen Harper had caused “great harm” to the facility. He added: “What we need is a reversal, not an intensification of such austerity measures.”
Canadian agriculture has suffered from decades of pro-monopoly, anti-worker and anti-smallholder policies. These policies have raised production costs for small-scale operations, rendered land inaccessible to the majority, and hollowed out rural communities in the name of “farm consolidation.” The defunding of AAFC is the latest stage in this process.
Under capitalism, public research facilities are constantly under threat, as the profit-driven logic of capital and the state always pushes toward private accumulation and public disinvestment. A broad alliance of farmers and farm workers, unions, environmentalists, community activists and others is needed to oppose these cuts to AAFC, and to push for and win policies that preserve and advance farming in Canada, and protect the family farm and food security and sovereignty. Ultimately, only in a socialist Canada could food security and sovereignty be genuinely secured, freed from myopic profiteering and joined to the interests of the majority.
[Photo: NFU.ca]
Support working-class media!
If you found this article useful, please consider donating to People’s Voice or purchasing a subscription so that you get every issue of Canada’s leading socialist publication delivered to your door or inbox!
For over 100 years, we have been 100% reader-supported, with no corporate or government funding.
