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Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

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Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
A three-storey red brick building with a stone-trimmed central tower over an arched doorway, behind a mown lawn and shrubs
Type Federal government department of Canada
Website agriculture.canada.ca
Founded 1868
Base Ottawa, Canada
Scope Canada
Focus Agriculture, agri-food and agricultural research, including the national plant gene bank and herbarium
Other sites Plant Gene Resources of Canada · National Collection of Vascular Plants


Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) is the department of the federal government of Canada responsible for agriculture and for products derived from it. It was created in 1868, a year after Confederation, as the Department of Agriculture.[1] The Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food Act gives its minister powers over agriculture, its products and the research on them, "including the operation of experimental farm stations". An amendment of 1994 renamed the Department of Agriculture the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food and passed the powers of the Minister of Agriculture to the new minister.[2] Agriculture is a shared jurisdiction in Canada: the department works with the provincial and territorial governments.[1] Its scientists work at a network of 20 research and development centres across the country.[3]

In 1971 the department's research branch in Ottawa raised a cannabis garden in which the botanist Ernest Small compared several hundred seed stocks. Small has worked for the department since 1969.[4][5]: 22–23 Licences to grow hemp are issued by Health Canada. AAFC sits on the working group that advises Health Canada on which hemp cultivars to approve.[6]

The cannabis garden at the Central Experimental Farm

Herbarium sheet with a short section of thick stem and a long, thin flowering branch strapped to the mount, with a typed label at the lower right.
A voucher from the 1971 garden: population 166, grown from seed of ruderal plants of the Delhi area sent by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute.

The Ottawa Research and Development Centre was founded in 1886 under the Experimental Farm Station Act.[3] In 1971 the Department of Agriculture and the Department of National Health and Welfare grew several hundred strains of cannabis together at the Experimental Farm in Ottawa.[5]: 22–23 Small planted the stocks on 1 June 1971 in a garden at the Central Experimental Farm and harvested them between August and mid-September.[7][8] The seed came from botanical gardens and plant-breeding institutes abroad. The New York Botanical Garden and the herbarium of the University of South Florida keep several hundred vouchers of the plants.[9]

The THC content of the strains grown at the farm ranged from near zero to close to 3 per cent. Small and his associates found two opposite types among more than 300 strains, one with mostly CBD and one with mostly THC, with intermediates between them.[5]: 23 In 1975 he worked at the department's Biosystematics Research Institute in Ottawa, and he was a research associate of the federal Le Dain Commission.[10] The commission's report on cannabis (1972) acknowledged his work for its account of the plant's botany and cultivation.[5]: 6

Collections

A curved building of glass and pale stone beside a taller stone block, with a sign on a sloping lawn and a road in front.
The Saskatoon Research and Development Centre on the University of Saskatchewan campus, home of the seed gene bank of Plant Gene Resources of Canada, 2007.

The National Collection of Vascular Plants, a herbarium on the Central Experimental Farm, is known by the code DAO, for Department of Agriculture, Ottawa. It holds about 1.5 million specimens, and the department calls it the largest collection of its kind in Canada.[11] It began in 1886, when James Fletcher gave the department his reference collection of 3,000 dried plants. It grows by about 4,000 specimens a year.[12] Small's own herbarium collections are at DAO.[13] On 13 November 2026, 1,632 of the herbarium's specimens had been digitised on the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, none of them Cannabis.[14]

The department set up Plant Gene Resources of Canada (PGRC), the national gene bank, in 1970. PGRC was on the Central Experimental Farm until early 1998, when it moved to Saskatoon.[15] Its seed gene bank, at the Saskatoon Research and Development Centre, is responsible for seed crops such as cereals, pulses, oilseeds, tomato and forages. The Canadian Clonal Genebank at Harrow, Ontario, keeps tree fruits and small fruits such as apple and strawberry.[16] In 2019 the three national gene bank sites held 111,158 accessions. Seed is kept at +4 °C for medium-term storage and at −18 °C for long-term storage.[17] The gene bank's catalogue runs on a Canadian version of GRIN-Global.[18] None of PGRC's accessions are in Genesys.[19]

Canada's country report of 2022 for the third world report of the Food and Agriculture Organization on plant genetic resources said that hemp was "making a comeback as an oilseed crop, for human nutrition, and more recently its medicinal and recreational use".[17] Writing in 2017, Small found no conventional public gene bank in North America from which cannabis could be obtained for study or in which it could be deposited.[20]

Hemp

Growing cannabis in Canada without special authorisation was prohibited from 1938.[5]: 14 Hemp cultivation was permitted again in 1998 under licences issued by Health Canada.[21] The Industrial Hemp Regulations now in force, registered on 27 June 2018, were made under the Cannabis Act on the recommendation of the Minister of Health.[22] A licence holder may sow only certified seed of cultivars on the List of Approved Cultivars, which Health Canada publishes for each growing season.[21][23]

Representatives of AAFC, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Canadian Seed Growers' Association sit on the Interdepartmental Working Group on Industrial Hemp Cultivars. The group recommends to Health Canada which varieties should be added to the list, placed under observation or removed from it.[6]

The department's Pest Management Program published a crop profile of industrial hemp for 2020. That year Canada grew 22,243 hectares of hemp and produced 49,402 tonnes. Alberta had the largest area, followed by Saskatchewan and Manitoba. More than 90 per cent of the seed sown was produced in Canada, mostly of cultivars bred there. The five most grown cultivars were Finola, for oilseed; Katani and Carmagnola, for CBD; CanMa, for grain and fibre; and CFX-2, for food, fibre and CBD.[21]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "What we do". Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  2. ↑ "Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. A-9)". Justice Laws. Department of Justice Canada. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Ottawa Research and Development Centre". Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. 29 May 2026. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  4. ↑ "Cannabis: A Complete Guide, 1st Edition". Routledge. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs (1972). Cannabis: A Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs (PDF) (Report). Ottawa: Information Canada. Catalogue No. H21-5370/4. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Commercial Licence". Canada.ca. Health Canada. 19 June 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  7. ↑ "Occurrence 1930264955: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  8. ↑ "Occurrence 1928115379: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  9. ↑ "Occurrence search: Cannabis, Canada, preserved specimens". Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  10. ↑ Small, E. (1975). "American law and the species problem in Cannabis: science and semantics". Bulletin on Narcotics (3). United Nations: 1–20.
  11. ↑ "National Collection of Vascular Plants (DAO)". Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. 4 March 2026. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  12. ↑ "History of the AAFC National Collection of Vascular Plants". Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  13. ↑ "Small, Ernie". Index of Botanists. Harvard University Herbaria. Botanist ID 30259. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  14. ↑ "National Collection of Vascular Plants (DAO)". GBIF. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  15. ↑ "PGRC: About PGRC". Plant Gene Resources of Canada. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. 28 June 2005. Archived from the original on 10 December 2006. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  16. ↑ "Contact information: Plant Gene Resources of Canada". Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. 22 May 2025. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Diederichsen, A.; Davidson, C., eds. (2022). Canada's Country Report for the Third Report on the State of the World's Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (PDF) (Report). Ottawa: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. ISBN 978-0-660-42274-9. Catalogue No. A59-88/2022E-PDF. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  18. ↑ "Plant Gene Resources of Canada". Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. 5 July 2022. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  19. ↑ "Plant Gene Resources of Canada, Saskatoon Research and Development Centre (CAN004)". Genesys. Crop Trust. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  20. ↑ Small, E. (2018). "Dwarf germplasm: the key to giant Cannabis hempseed and cannabinoid crops". Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution. 65 (4): 1071–1107. doi:10.1007/s10722-017-0597-y.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 Crop Profile for Industrial Hemp in Canada, 2020 (PDF) (Report). Ottawa: Pest Management Program, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. 2021. ISBN 978-0-660-40381-6. Catalogue No. A118-10/38-2020E-PDF. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  22. ↑ "Industrial Hemp Regulations (SOR/2018-145)". Justice Laws. Department of Justice Canada. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  23. ↑ "List of Approved Cultivars for the 2026 growing season". Canada.ca. Health Canada. 14 September 2026. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
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