It should reflect regional differences, recognize early adopters and improve data and measurement.

The “what we heard” report was posted to Agriculture Canada’s website during the holiday season. It outlines the feedback from consultations, workshops and written submissions gathered between December 2022 and March 2023.

A final strategy was supposed to be released in late 2023, but the department now says it will be sometime this year.

Stakeholders said direct incentives to increase the adoption of best management practices and technology were critical. Farmers have to see the financial sense of changing practices.

“They emphasized that incentives needed to be long-term and should consider the cost of adoption, return on investment and the ecological goods and services provided. Furthermore, incentives and support must be made available to a variety of farm sizes, particularly to those who do not have the capacity to measure GHG emissions or carbon sequestration, or are unable to afford costly clean technologies,” the report said.

Both smaller and larger farmers had concerns.

Small and medium-sized farmers said they didn’t have large enough financial buffers if they attempted to implement a new practice and failed.

“Large-scale producers were concerned around their ability to remain competitive and profitable in global markets, competing against producers from other countries with different policy and programming support from their respective governments,” said the report.

“Small-scale producers who participated in the consultation noted their financial struggles and inability to access government funding and programming for a variety of reasons, including high cost-share ratios and disappearing local and regional infrastructure (grain terminals and abattoirs) vital for their survival.”

The need to recognize early adopters was often mentioned in the best management practices discussion. These producers have already tackled change but can’t access current government programs. The report said these producers should be viewed as mentors and leaders and their success publicized to encourage others to follow suit.

The loss of agricultural land was also mentioned, particularly by respondents from Ontario and British Columbia. Participants were concerned about who was buying land and why, and the discussion included increased calls to better regulate foreign ownership of farmland, the purchase of farmland for non-agricultural purposes and the overall consolidation of agricultural land in fewer hands.

Respondents noted data gaps and the lack of a cohesive, consistent measuring policy around agri-environmental data collection and analysis at all levels.

Nationally, there were concerns about how agriculture is modelled in the National Inventory Report. Regionally, the data is fragmented and drawn from many sources, which makes it difficult to develop comprehensive, valid data sets.

“And at the local level, producers need tools to measure and collect data on their farms, helping them make production decisions and more informed investments. Overall, there was a strong call for a data strategy to collect, manage and communicate data on GHG emissions, biodiversity, water, soil health and resilience, with solutions to address the data and measurement challenges developed with the sector and various stakeholders at different levels to effectively measure change,” said the report.

The report is based on 420 responses; 41 percent of those were producers while six percent represented producer or industry associations.

—Karen Briere writes for the Western Producer from Saskatchewan.

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Such reductions of nitrous oxide from 2020 levels would fall well short of the Canadian government’s voluntary target of a 30 per cent cut, however.

Some farmers say using less fertilizer would jeopardize crop production in Canada, the world’s third-biggest wheat exporter. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government maintains that deep emission reductions are possible without mandatory fertilizer cuts.

A similar debate between farmers and government has led to large protests in the Netherlands, where that country is taking much stricter measures than Canada.

“We support the federal government’s strong push to reduce Canada’s emissions, but we cannot sacrifice food productivity,” said Karen Proud, CEO of Fertilizer Canada, whose members include manufacturers Nutrien and CF Industries.

The 14 per cent emissions cut would result from a “moderate” increase in nitrogen use and farmers’ adoption of better management practices, called 4R, which emphasize applying fertilizer of the right source, at the right rate and time and in the right place, the report from Fertilizer Canada and Canola Council of Canada said. Some farmers have already used the 4R approach for more than a decade.

Under that scenario, crop yields would increase even as emissions fall.

Farmers will adopt more sustainable practices if their costs are offset elsewhere, such as by higher crop revenue or government incentives, the report said.

Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said she welcomed the finding that better nutrient management can cut emissions by nearly half of the government’s goal. Fertilizer companies should also keep developing new products that produce lower emissions, Bibeau said.

Agriculture emissions account for 10 per cent of Canada’s overall emissions, and Trudeau’s government is aiming to cut national emissions by 40-45 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030.

— Rod Nickel is a Reuters correspondent in Winnipeg.

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Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, speaking Thursday in Calgary, announced $54 million from the $185 million, 10-year ACS program launched last spring has been allocated to nine new Living Lab sites in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Included in this round of allocations is the first Indigenous-led Living Lab: the Bridge to Land Water Sky project, to be operated west of Prince Albert, Sask. by the Mistawasis Nêhiyawak and Muskeg Lake Cree Nation.

Each of the nine labs, the feds said, will focus on “identifying innovative technologies and on-farm management practices that can be adopted by farmers nationwide to tackle climate change.”

More specifically, the new projects explored at each Living Lab are to focus on carbon sequestration and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions via development and testing of beneficial management practices (BMPs), which “could then be widely adopted across the region and country.”

The announced projects — and their exact final non-repayable funding — are still subject to negotiation of contribution agreements with the lead recipients, the government said, also noting more living labs are still to be announced “in the coming year.”

The Living Labs initiative has been around since 2018 and, at that time, had a broader field of interest across a “wide range” of environmental issues. That initiative saw labs set up at sites in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island.

The ACS-backed Living Labs, however, are meant to focus specifically on reducing GHGs and sequestering carbon — although solutions they develop are also expected to “help protect biodiversity on farms, improve water and soil quality, and, through the efficient management of resources, strengthen farmers’ bottom lines.”

‘Whole farm’

The biggest chunk of funding announced Thursday goes to an $8.5 million project spearheaded by Alberta Beef Producers, to “explore the use of beef, forage and cropping systems to improve soil carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

That project is meant to lead to the development of BMPs in crop rotations and cropping systems, land use changes, grazing management, livestock feeding, nutrient management, and “increasing carbon on the whole farm.”

Another $7.7 million goes to the Alberta Conservation Association (ACA) and Food Water Wellness Foundation, collaborating on a Living Lab to “improve soil health, reduce costs of production and sequester carbon in the soil using regenerative agriculture.”

BMPs to be examined in the ACA/Food Water Wellness project include cover cropping, intercropping, relay cropping, adaptive multi-paddock grazing, use of perennials and animals in cropping systems, and feeding strategies to cut methane emissions. The projects are also expected to “amplify and support traditional ecological knowledge and efforts of First Nations.”

Bibeau and the Alberta groups’ representatives, speaking in Calgary Thursday, noted these projects will be helpful in gathering hard data on how much carbon can be sequestered through these BMPs — with an aim of having those practices recognized to thus allow cattle producers to become eligible producers of carbon credits.

The other funding allocations announced Thursday include:

• $8 million for the South of the Divide Conservation Action Program in southern Saskatchewan, focused on four key areas — avoiding land use conversion, adaptive grazing management, restoring and enhancing perennial plant communities, and livestock grazing of “diverse annual cover crops;”
• $6 million for the Peace Region Forage Seed Association, looking at “farms as a whole, including land management, economics and the social aspects of applying new BMPs” in the Peace region of northern Alberta and B.C.;
• $6 million for the B.C. Investment Agriculture Foundation (IAF) and B.C. Agriculture Council, whose lab will also explore BMPs relating to crop rotations and cropping systems, land use changes, grazing management, livestock feeding, nutrient management and increasing carbon on the whole farm;
• $4.8 million for the Indigenous-led Bridge to Land Water Sky project in Saskatchewan, focusing on BMPs including crop diversification and cover, 4R nitrogen stewardship, pesticide management, and landscape diversification, “while committing to the protection of Indigenous values, treaties, communities, lands and resources;”
• $4.5 million for the Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick, exploring BMPs including systems for advanced cropping, enhanced forage management, “high-performance” pasture management and efficient nitrogen management, along with landscape use;
• $4.5 million for the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, focused on “four BMPs important to this region” including cover cropping in annual and perennial systems, establishing riparian zones and shelterbelts, and land swapping; and
• $3.8 million for the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Agriculture, exploring BMPs including diversifying forage and vegetable rotations using cover cropping, optimizing fertilizer rates, and adding composts and biochar to sandy soils.

Applicants seeking ACS funding for their Living Labs were required form a network of partnerships within a province, such as with producer organizations and other agricultural not-for-profits, along with Indigenous organizations and environmental groups.

The goal, the government said, is to set up at least one such collaboration hub in each province. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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