‘Egregious’: Feds race to destroy key organic research fields by Marc Fawcett-Atkinson, May 28th 2026, National Observer
A screenshot shows the organic fields at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Swift Current research centre.
Field crews at the federal agricultural research station in Swift Current, Sask., have destroyed Canada’s only public organic research plots and are planning to plant the fields with non-organic wheat seed.
The move risks the land’s organic certification, which takes years to obtain and can be eliminated if synthetic pesticides or fertilizers are used on the land. This will compromise decades-old studies that help both organic and non-organic farmers increase yields, capture carbon and use fewer toxic chemicals.
“It’s 20 years of research potentially being destroyed, when the recommendation before Parliament [from the parliamentary committee on agriculture] is to not shut down this program,” said Cathy Holtslander, director of research and policy at the National Farmers Union. “This is egregious.”
Canada’s National Observer learned about the decision from an email circulated to dozens of farming and environmental groups hours after crews cultivated the fields on Thursday morning and prepped them for seeding.
Canada’s National Observer asked the ministry of agriculture why it has decided to cultivate and prep for seeding the organic research plots at the Swift Current research centre this season; why the organic program specifically was being closed; and how it would respond to the agriculture committee report but did not receive a response by deadline.
The decision flows from extensive cuts to Canada’s agricultural research program that Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) announced in January to meet Prime Minister Mark Carney’s goal to cut federal costs by 15 per cent by 2029. At the time, the ministry promised that “any wind-down of scientific operations would follow a careful decision process that could take up to 12 months.”
There’s nothing fucking careful about Carney or his Harper cons, other than the billions of dollars they give to American polluting rich fuckers.
In the months since, Canadian farmers, ranchers, farm organizations and politicians have raced to try and stop the cuts before it is too late. Last month, the federal agriculture committee unanimously recommended Ottawa pause the cuts until it fully assessed their impact and allow research planned for this season to go forward. The committee singled out the Swift Current organic research program as uniquely valuable.
An investigation by Canada’s National Observer found that senior officials in the ministry of agriculture did not know how the cuts would impact the ministry’s research work when they announced them. Since Canada’s earliest days, the federal government has played a key role supporting much of the agricultural research that underpins Canadian farmers’ success, such as that of more cold-tolerant grains.
On Wednesday, Conservative MPs John Barlow and Jacques Gourde held a Parliamentary press conference alongside representatives from several farm organizations calling on the government to heed the committee’s recommendations.
“This is something that is an existential threat to all of agriculture. All of agriculture is united on this position that the closure of the research centres — and the organics research programme in Swift Current — is the wrong decision,” said Barlow in an interview with Canada’s National Observer after the event. “I just find this to be a very surprising and wrong-headed decision by the government to really hamstring the incredible work that’s happened in Canada when it comes to research.”
The decision to close the organic research program at the Swift Current centre while leaving the facility open has left advocates particularly perplexed. Unlike the seven research sites the ministry plans to fully close, the organic program is the only one at the Swift Current facility that will be killed.
The government’s argument that closing the program is a cost-saving measure is “very perplexing,” considering its roughly $1 million annual budget is enough to support Canada’s fast-growing $11 billion organic sector, said Barlow.
At the Wednesday press conference, Phil Mount, vice-president of policy at the National Farmers Union, noted that Ottawa plans to spend $473 million on the 13 Nazi FIFA world cup games this summer — dwarfing the $23 million estimated in savings from the agricultural research cuts.
Yet faced with calls to pause the cuts, the federal agriculture ministry has doubled down. In a statement to Canada’s National Observer following the April announcement Canada’s food inspection agency was pausing closing to a critical food safety lab, an AAFC spokesperson said the ministry is “not reconsidering” the research program cuts.
Holtslander questioned the ministry’s haste to cultivate the organic program’s research plots: “Why do they think it’s necessary to eliminate [the organic research program] from being able to operate? It’s like the idea is to stop organic research, not just to save money.”That’s how I see it. I think Bayer-Monsanto and other poison makers don’t want any research or organic lands available to prove how fucking deadly and insane their products are.
Refer also to:
