This is from a larger publication, Alternative federal budget 2026-27: Bridge to independence
Introduction
The effects of global economic, environmental and social destabilization have made their way to Canada. The United States’ war against Iran has caused drastic increases in the price of oil, with knock-on effects on the cost of inputs needed for food production and transportation. Warfare also adds massively to greenhouse gas emissions, worsening climate change.
In Canada, the federal government has broken with longstanding values, targeting needed public service functions with austerity measures while funding militarization and the adoption of AI, and exempting large extractive projects from regulatory controls. These dynamics will have serious impacts on agriculture and food systems in Canada. For farmers, the cost of production will go up, environmental and market risks will intensify, and low commodity prices will be unlikely to improve. For consumers, high energy and housing costs will put even more pressure on household food budgets.
We need budget and policy measures that counter these harmful trends. In this way we can provide greater security and stability, rebuilding a strong, equitable economic and social foundation that can withstand ongoing pressure from international events.
Overview
In its 2025 budget, the federal government announced plans to cut 15 per cent of the public service over three years. Departments were ordered to start cutting—except for big-budget National Defence, the RCMP and Border Services. Some smaller departments were also mostly spared, including the already inadequately funded Women and Gender Equality, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, Indigenous Services, and the federal research granting councils, which were told to cut two per cent.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) chose to target agricultural research capacity in its cuts, announcing plans to shut down seven facilities and end the Organic and Regenerative Agriculture program. The impacts of this are severe, affecting Canada’s ability to continue public plant breeding, maintain independent regulatory capacity over meat, protect soil health, improve responsible pesticide use and advance climate-resilient farming methods. AAFC’s cuts weaken Canada’s agriculture sector by making it more vulnerable to climate and market risks, and by reducing farm profitability while creating more opportunities for financialization and wealth extraction by large agri-business corporations.
To counter trends towards excess corporate control of our farms, farmland and food supply, this AFB focuses on structural changes that promote resilience, stability, and farmer/farmworker economic dignity. To develop and sustain an affordable food supply for Canadians, the AFB will establish a public grocery system integrated with improved local and regional food processing, storage and distribution infrastructure. This will make food more affordable while enabling dignified livelihoods for farmers and workers.
The current suite of Business Risk Management (BRM) programs primarily benefits the largest farms. Less than one-third of farms enroll in AgriStability due to program design and cost barriers, yet it accounts for roughly nine per cent of the AAFC budget. Crop Insurance is more widely used, and so it is more equitable than AgriStability, but it’s also large and it accounts for an increasing portion of the AAFC budget due to higher payouts because of climate change-related losses. Meanwhile, BRM support for diverse fruit and vegetable production, particularly at smaller scales, is virtually non-existent. The AFB will redesign the BRM programs to promote farm resilience and adaptation, capping payments to prevent the largest, wealthiest farms from taking the lion’s share of program dollars. Funding BRM programs will pay off in the long term. Accelerating the transition to more resilient and stable production practices will reduce the overall risk in Canada’s agriculture and thus the magnitude of future budget allocations needed for these programs.
Canada’s farm numbers continue to trend downward while the average age of farmers trends upward. We are in a generational crisis. Canada’s agriculture policies are pushing farmers out, creating an underclass of migrant farmworkers without rights. Without dedicated measures to ensure dignity for resident and migrant farmworkers, and to support young and new farmers to enter and become successful, the future will be farmerless—mega-farms owned by investment companies and operated by itinerant workers and robots. The AFB addresses this crisis with a new Cultivating Food Sovereignty suite of support programs, labour rights for farmworkers, measures to prevent farmland financialization, limits on the digitization of agriculture, and cost-of-production measures.
Actions
1. Reverse AAFC cuts and increase funding for public-interest research
The AFB will rebuild Canada’s agricultural research capacity by reversing the cuts announced in January 2026 with the following actions:
- Reinstate all scientific and technical positions and support staff slated for termination.
- Suspend the closure of the research facilities at Lacombe, Scott, Indian Head, Portage la Prairie, Guelph, Quebec City, and Nappan.
- Suspend the closure of the Organic and Regenerative Research Program at Swift Current.
- Restore the public database of scientists and professionals.
The AFB will expand AAFC research capacity funding by an additional 50 per cent, allocating funds to all federal agriculture research centres and farms to compensate for disruption caused by the botched 2026 cuts and the previous cuts under the Harper and Martin governments. Doing so will enhance Canada’s public capacity to carry out the following:
- Public plant breeding and farmer/participatory plant breeding.
- Climate resilience research, including low-input and organic production methods, sustainable grazing, integrated weed and pest management, and soil health.
- Independent agronomy research not tied to input sellers’ financial interests.
- Research production methods for vegetable and fruit for all regions of Canada.
- Social science research related to agriculture.
- Public engagement, including field days, talks, publications and webinars.
Past governments have inadequately maintained the basic research facilities used by AAFC.1The maintenance deficit reached $690 million. See: Kelvin Heppner, “New Data Sheds Light on Financial Picture Behind AAFC Closures,” RealAgriculture, April 17, 2026, https://www.realagriculture.com/2026/04/new-data-sheds-light-on-financial-picture-behind-aafc-closures/ . The AFB will assess past governments’ failure to properly maintain the buildings, equipment, outdoor facilities and other assets on all AAFC research centres and farms, then allocate maintenance and improvement funds annually for five years to clear the backlog of deferred maintenance. This will ensure these assets are functional, energy-efficient and equipped for research needed to support Canada’s long-term food sovereignty.
2. Next Ag Policy Framework
The AFB will fund the Next Ag Policy Framework, a federal-provincial-territorial policy framework focused on reducing financial and environmental risks, increasing intergenerational and social equity, disengaging from American markets, and democratizing the food system. The framework will incentivize reduced input production, collective marketing, agro-biodiversity, climate resilience, local/regional market development, new farmer/farmworker training, and farmer-led research.
The AFB will replace the current suite of Business Risk Management (BRM) programs with ones that support the multifunctionality of agriculture. BRM program payouts and eligibility will be on a sliding scale and capped to ensure small- and medium-sized farms have adequate coverage. They will exclude the largest farms who have the financial capacity to self-insure.
The AFB’s new Cultivating Food Sovereignty suite of programs will increase Canada’s capacity to produce, process, store and distribute food for domestic consumption. These programs will aim to achieve the following:
- Ensure a reliable supply of nutritious, high-quality food.
- Safeguard farmers’ incomes.
- Mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and support climate-change resiliency.
- Safeguard biodiversity and water quality conservation.
- Promote social inclusion and diversity of farmers and food-sector workers.
- Promote successful establishment of young and new farmers.
- Rebuild rural community vibrancy and rural quality of life.
3. Creating a public grocery system
The AFB will establish a national, public and democratically operated grocery network. The public grocery distribution system will prioritize purchasing local and domestically produced food from farmers using sustainable farming practices, ensuring that farmers are receiving a fair share for their products while mitigating climate change and safeguarding biodiversity for the future.
4. Cost-of-production measures
The AFB will implement a windfall tax on fuel and fertilizer companies that are making excess profits because of world oil price increases while their own costs have not changed. The windfall tax will provide a disincentive to overcharge for fuel, and tax dollars collected will in part be used to fund on-farm energy conservation, transition to reduced-input production, and infrastructure needed for local and regional food processing, storage and distribution.
The AFB will amend the Income Tax Act to eliminate flow-through treatment of all private equity firm investments in farmland, eliminate capital gains exemptions for private equity farmland investments, and require non-resident Canadian owners to pay a 100 per cent surtax on all dividends from private equity funds with farmland holdings. By implementing disincentives for passive investment in farmland, the AFB will begin to restore the relationship between farmland prices and productive value.
5. Labour reforms
The AFB will implement a national agricultural workforce strategy to address labour challenges to domestic food production and support the economic dignity of both resident and migrant workers. This will increase federal funding for public education for farm workforce development and training. The strategy will include open work permits and a pathway to citizenship for migrant workers, including work permit extensions for migrant workers waiting for permanent residency applications to be processed.
The AFB will extend eligibility for regular and sickness Employment Insurance (EI) benefits to migrant workers regardless of any “tied employment” to a single employer and shall accommodate access to EI benefit payments even after the migrant worker has returned to their home country. The AFB will also make available short-term EI disability benefits for any farmworker, whether resident or migrant, who experiences mental or physical stress due to extreme heat events.
The AFB will create a fund to provide reliable year-round income opportunities for resident seasonal farmworkers through a combination of extended Employment Insurance options and counter-seasonal employment opportunities as needed.
The AFB will regulate AI and the digitization of agriculture to prevent it from being used to replace farmworkers, surveil workers, restrict their break times, or otherwise be used to reduce their pay or expose them to wage theft.
6. Climate action
The AFB will establish the Canadian Farm Resilience Agency (CFRA), an independent federal research and agricultural extension institution where farmers, scientists and agronomists will work together to solve problems and share knowledge. The CFRA will be independent from the influence of multinational agribusinesses. CFRA-supported production changes (like fertilizer reduction, crop rotation and no-till practices) will counter losses from climate impacts significantly, reducing the annual cost of Business Risk Management (BRM) programs.
The AFB will offer up to 30 per cent of the average transition expenses over three years to producers to offset transitions to organic and minimum-input /no-till agriculture. Organic and low-input agriculture practices provide benefits in terms of soil health, carbon sequestration, reduced greenhouse gas emissions from inputs, and erosion protection. However, the transition costs can be high. During this transition time, farmers will be adjusting their management practices and dealing with a learning curve.
The AFB will develop a transition plan towards setting up single-desk marketing for pork and beef and a concomitant domestic local/regional abattoir sector for meat processing. The transition to single-desk marketing will dismantle the corporate cattle–industrial complex, reduce the sector’s export-dependency and integration with the U.S. economy, and allow Canada to implement a growth hormone–free, pasture-based, low-emission, production system with financial, social and environmental benefits.
The AFB will reverse the Biofuels Production Incentive that was announced in 2025.
7. Regulating AI and digitization
The AFB will regulate AI and the digitization of agriculture (e.g., drones for spraying, driverless tractors, etc.), taking a precautionary approach and ensuring that there are knowledgeable experts involved to assess whether digital “black box” processes result in valid outputs. The AFB recognizes that AI is not compatible with Indigenous traditional knowledge and cannot replace the complex, nuanced and meaningful understanding Indigenous and non-Indigenous farmers develop, and that much of the practice of farming is tacit knowledge that is not available to train AI models. Technology cannot replace human observation of ecological patterns or human creativity and ingenuity in solving new and complex problems in living agro-ecosystems.
The AFB will develop a legal framework for the governance of agricultural data. This will allow farmers to benefit from the data generated by technologies on their farms while setting limits on how agricultural big data for AI technologies (and other digital technologies) may be collected and/or used by large agribusinesses, agricultural employers and ag-tech companies.
The AFB will ensure that financial support offered through the Agriculture Clean Technology Fund will exclude artificial intelligence technologies from multinational ag-tech corporations. Artificial intelligence technologies tend to have significant impact on the environment, and thus they will not be classified as “clean” technologies.
