Ag groups call for pause to AAFC cuts

Mar 18, 2026
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content, Farms.com

Universities and the private sector can’t make up the gaps

Close to two dozen Canadian ag groups wrote to Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald to ask for an immediate pause to the scheduled cuts at AAFC research facilities.

The federal government is closing seven ag research sites and eliminating 665 positions to support the prime minister’s goal of reducing overall spending by 15 per cent over three years.

But organizations like the Canadian Seed Growers Association, Farmers for Climate Solutions, and the Canada Organic Trade Association, want a 24-month suspension of the decision “so the government can take time to re-evaluate closures and cuts in areas that are crucial, protect irreplaceable components of the research system, or offer enhancements to Canada’s agriculture landscape that may have been overlooked,” the March 9 letter says.

In response to industry criticism about the research cuts, Minister MacDonald reassured the Canadian ag sector the federal government will still be the largest ag research organization in the country with 17 sites, including at least one in each province.

Universities and the private sector could fill in the gaps.

But those may not be viable options.

University research may not work with farmers’ needs, and the private sector is likely more concerned with profits than the actual research, the groups say.

What the ag industry needs is sustainable public research.

Research shows investing $370 million in wheat breeding brings in $11.8 billion worth of benefits.

Without level of support, Canadian ag suffers.

“These cuts threaten the science, research and innovation needs of our sector as it currently prepares for one of the biggest challenges it has ever faced,” says the letter which also includes the National Farmers Union and the Alberta Federation of Agriculture.

Figures also show Canada is investing less in ag research than other countries.

Agri-food spending has dropped from $0.86 billion in 2013 to $0.68 billion in 2022, a University of Calgary paper says.

“This reduction has left Canada ranking lowest among the top seven OECD countries in agricultural R&D expenditures, jeopardizing its global competitiveness and resilience,” the authors wrote.

Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids