Agricultural innovation takes hit in federal cuts

Everyone knew cuts to federal programs and jobs were coming.

Something must give if elected officials are to make good on promises to address what many characterized as Canada’s bloated bureaucracy and ballooning deficits, while boosting its military defence systems and protecting the economy from a neighbour gone rogue.

And while the Canadian effort to shrink the cost of governing is a little less dramatic than that in the U.S. a year ago, the application of across-the-board cuts has been anything but surgical.

Farmers and unions, who rarely agree on anything, are united in opposition to news Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is closing three research facilities and four research farms, and cutting around 650 positions. The cuts include a host of programs, including those focused on organic farming, regenerative agriculture and climate adaptation.

That was soon followed by news the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is reducing its workforce by as many as 1,300 positions.

The AAFC’s research branch put Canadian agriculture on the global map by supporting farmers with superior crop genetics and farming systems.

The CFIA has helped keep it there by making sure genetic changes in plants and animals meet Canadian standards, protecting the safety of the food supply, protecting the health of the livestock sector and ensuring compliance with food safety regulations.

Of course, neither AAFC nor the CFIA are disappearing. There is the possibility budgetary pressures will open the door to new approaches to meeting their regulatory mandates.

But based on what we’ve seen so far, these reductions mark a significant shift in federal priorities at a critical juncture.

At the very time when Canada must diversify its export customer base — and just when the type of quality, consistency and safety associated with the Canadian brand is becoming paramount in the changing world order — it is scaling back its commitment to the innovation pipeline.

There are few investments of public dollars that offer as big a payback as agricultural research. The literature cites returns ranging from 10-to-one all the way up to 30-to-one ratios for every dollar invested. It’s not just farmers who benefit.

Canola, now one of Canada’s flagship crops, resulted from publicly financed plant-breeding research that created a heart-healthy vegetable oilseed from unpalatable rapeseed.

The Indian Head Research Farm in Saskatchewan was among the five original research sites formed by the federal government in 1887. From the 1980s onward, it was on the forefront of helping farmers figure out how to make conservation agriculture work on the Prairies, methods which vastly reduced the soil depletion associated with tillage.

It’s easy to see why research and extension would be targeted for quick gains in cost-cutting. Research facilities are expensive to run, and the land they occupy is an asset that can be easily liquidated for a win on the ledger.

But these assets can’t be replaced once they’re gone. The researchers, support staff and programs won’t be back — and they’ll be taking their intellectual capital with them.

Agricultural research is a long-term investment, so some of the impacts of cuts today won’t become apparent for a decade or more down the road.

Shifting the bill for innovation to the private sector influences the type of research that takes place. The focus moves from developing new ideas (which takes a long time) to extracting as much as possible from what we already know.

Farmers, through their commodity groups, already support research — but they want developments that will boost yields. Private research companies pay for their research and development through sales, so they focus on products rather than practices.

Sustainable agriculture takes a back seat in this equation.

The private sector isn’t going to pick up the tab for the research into organic and regenerative agriculture that until recently took place at the AAFC’s Swift Current, Sask., crop development centre. Yet market demand for organic commodities is routinely higher than what farmers can supply, a problem the rest of agriculture would love to have.

These cuts are trading short-term gain for long-term pain. But this isn’t the first time we’ve pushed the cost of our choices onto future generations.

Laura Rance is executive editor, production content lead for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@farmmedia.com