sustainable research for agriculture?

As a co-op student who worked for Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, I was out in the field in the research center located in Saskatoon surrounded by fields and upon fields of canola planted and harvested for the purpose of research and furthering science. I saw tons and tons of water being used for irrigation as well as the clearing of other fauna unrelated to the species of plants being researched. I found it also very surprising how much waste was produced in terms of how after data and sample collection, the fields of canola were no longer useful and would all be discarded to then repeat the following year. Today’s class really allowed me to reflect back on this system where monocultures of canola are planted and then later discarded repeatedly for research. This showed how deeply rooted this problem of unsustainable farming is where even research performed at a federal government level follows the same "problematic" systematic appr