Agriculture Ministers Chart Course for Canada’s Next Farm Policy Framework

Jul 21, 2026

Canada’s agriculture ministers have outlined the priorities that will shape the country’s next five-year agricultural policy framework, with improved business risk management programs and greater flexibility for producers emerging as key themes.

Meeting in Halifax for their annual Federal, Provincial and Territorial (FPT) conference, ministers released the Halifax Statement, a blueprint that will guide negotiations on the Next Policy Framework (2028-2033), which will replace the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership when it expires in 2028.

For Alberta growers, the discussions provide an early look at where future programming and funding could be headed as the province prepares to host next year’s ministers’ meeting in Calgary.

“We have to adapt,” said federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald said at this morning’s prress conference. “There’s climatic situations. There’s geopolitical situations, and we’re seeing it firsthand.”

He said governments are working toward a framework that better reflects today’s production realities while helping farmers respond to increasingly frequent weather extremes and market disruptions.

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Video: How American Farmers Harvest 1.15 Billion Pounds of Sunflowers

Across the open plains of North Dakota and South Dakota, sunflower fields turn the American landscape into a sea of gold. In this farming documentary, we go inside modern sunflower farming to see how farmers plant, grow, harvest, clean, dry, process, and transform sunflower seeds into valuable products used every day.

In 2024, American farmers harvested about 1.15 billion pounds of sunflowers. This video follows the full journey from warm spring planting to combine harvesting, seed cleaning, storage, oil extraction, refining, roasting, packaging, and animal feed production.

You will see how sunflower seeds are processed into cooking oil, roasted snacks, bakery ingredients, birdseed, livestock feed, and useful byproducts. From golden fields to modern processing plants, this is the story of how a beautiful flower becomes one of America’s important oilseed crops.

Watch until the end to discover how sunflower farming connects farmers, machines, factories, food production, and sustainable agriculture.