WESTERN PRODUCER — Agriculture Canada spent $223 million more on science and innovation in the 2023-24 fiscal year than it did in 2020-21.
However, the money wasn’t used to hire new scientists, expand research centres or study innovative technologies such as gene edited crops.
The $223 million in extra funding for science and innovation was directed at greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture.
In an email, an Agriculture Canada spokesperson said the Science and Innovation branch spent $829.6 million in 2023-24 on its various activities.
This means 27 percent of last year’s budget for Science and Innovation was dedicated to cutting greenhouse gas emissions and making agriculture more resilient. The amount spent on reducing emissions was lower in 2022-23, at around $193 million.
“That represents 24.5 per cent of the spending within Science and Innovation on average over the past two years,” the spokesperson said.
To put $223 million in context, Agriculture Canada operates 20 research centres in Canada from St. John’s, N.L. to Agassiz, B.C.
The annual cost of operating and maintaining those centres is $50 to $55 million, the department says, not including salaries for employees.
Science and Innovation is one of three “core responsibilities” for Agriculture Canada. The other two are Domestic and International Markets and Sector Risk.
The role of Science and Innovation is to increase the Canadian agriculture/agri-food knowledge base through research.
As well, it helps the agriculture and agri-food sector transform “ideas into new products, processes, or practices,” says .
The document further explains that Science and Innovation contributes to three domains for quality of life in Canada — prosperity, productivity and the environment.
In the last few years, farmers and farm groups have criticized the government for .
Some Agriculture Canada scientists have also criticized the shift in priorities, saying the federal government got bored with traditional agricultural research, such as plant breeding.
“If money is taken out of field-ready cultivar development, what happens is we start lagging behind the rest of the world and our farmers become less competitive,” said Robert Graf, a former winter wheat breeder with Agriculture Canada in Lethbridge.
“Part of sustainability is also the ability of farmers to … make some money. (That) used to be talked about a lot more.”
The extra $223 million for climate change research and initiatives within Agriculture Canada’s Science and Innovation branch comes from several federal programs.
In the early 2020s, the government announced $1.57 billion in spending to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture and make farming more sustainable.
Those programs include:
- the On Farm Climate Action Fund, which encourages adoption of rotational grazing, use of cover crops and improved nutrient management
- Living Labs
- Resilient Ag Landscape Program
- Agricultural Clean Technology (ACT) Program
“The ACT program aims to create an enabling environment for the development and adoption of clean technology that will help drive the changes required to achieve a low-carbon economy and promote sustainable growth in Canada’s agriculture and agri-food sector,” Agriculture Canada says.
Last May, the Office of the Auditor General of Canada published a report on Agriculture Canada spending on climate change activities.
The report criticized the department, saying it had “no strategy to meet its expected contributions to reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.”
John Barlow, the Conservative party’s agriculture critic, said the auditor general’s report shows that the government is getting a poor return on its climate change investments.
“What are you showing for that extra $200 million?” he said.
“You’re just throwing money at something with no clear vision of what that’s going to achieve … without any tangible metrics of what is successful and what’s not.”
Barlow pointed to part of the 2023-24 Agriculture Canada budget, indicating the feds are spending less on market development.
The budget for Domestic and International Markets went from $884 million in 2021-22 to a forecasted budget of $811 million in 2023-24.
“They (farmers) really need better access to domestic and international markets, but that part of the budget has gone down,” Barlow said.
“This is a very ideological government, in every single department. It’s showing with agriculture groups throwing up their hands and saying, ‘we can’t take this, we’ve had it, this is not where our priorities are.'”
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