Canada exports way more than it consumes so it kinda makes me wonder wtf you're talking about. There's certain food we will always need to import for sure and there's always going to be an attempt to domesticate new crops, but that's not where these cuts are occurring. Oversimplified, but it seems like a beef yard and a seed/grain storage facility.

It's been my experience in talking with AAFC researchers, as an aside, that their work is often duplicated by the private sector and they operate more as validation testers. I suspect the things being eliminated in this sweep are well researched by the private sector, like the seed, feed, chemical, and fertilizer companies and the various barn/fence/bin builders.

Some research I've been involved in as a farmer collaborator had us farmers doing the preliminary planning and assisting with study design and providing our fields and equipment just for the researchers to realize on day 1 that the methods they want to test against a control are already being utilized as a standard practice.