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Agriculture This Week: Finding acres for niche crops not easy

The cropping landscape of the Canadian Prairies is an interesting one in the sense two crop whales – canola and wheat – dominate acres in a huge way, and all the other crops and farmland uses acting like a school of small fish going after whatever acres they can muscle away from the big two.

It's not easy grabbing acres from canola, which while having high input costs, and greater risk as a result should a crop disaster strike, it is still the option with the big gross return potential too, and that always looks good on a ledger plan.

Wheat by contrast doesn’t offer the big dollars per bushel, but the agronomics of producing a good crop are well-understood, and it makes a good rotation companion for canola so it gets acres.

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$400m loss to save $3.8m? The real cost of closing Canada's research farms | Agri cmte, 10 Feb 2026

Video: $400m loss to save $3.8m? The real cost of closing Canada's research farms | Agri cmte, 10 Feb 2026

Officials are forced to defend cutting a historic $3.8 million research farm while the government simultaneously funded an $8.5 million cricket factory that went bankrupt. Is this evidence of an incoherent spending strategy? Watch the full committee clash to see the government's official rationale.

A heated discussion erupts over the logic behind the government's cuts to AAFC research farms in Lacombe, Indian Head, and Quebec City. MPs question why core, decades-old scientific infrastructure is being deemed 'not core' while other, controversial programs were funded. The Deputy Minister is repeatedly pressed for the actual net savings of the decision versus the expense of relocating research programs.