THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, September 22, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 9 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada.
Senator Robert Black (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, good morning. It’s good to be back face-to-face and to see your smiling faces. I would like to begin by welcoming you and our witnesses to this, I would say, historic meeting. My name is Robert Black, a senator from Ontario and chair of this committee.
This morning, the committee is holding its first meeting on the study to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada. I think this is an exciting day for the Agriculture and Forestry Committee. Before we hear from our witnesses, I would ask that we introduce ourselves. We’ll start with our deputy chair and move forward and around.
Senator Simons: I’m Senator Paula Simons, I represent Alberta, and I come from Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Klyne: Good morning. I’m Marty Klyne. Welcome to everyone. I’m from Saskatchewan, Treaty 4 territory.
Senator Mockler: Percy Mockler, senator from New Brunswick.
Senator C. Deacon: Colin Deacon from Nova Scotia.
Senator Cotter: Brent Cotter, senator from Saskatchewan and Treaty 4 territory.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Chantal Petitclerc, senator from Quebec.
[English]
The Chair: Our witnesses are joining us today via video conference, and it is my distinct pleasure and honour to welcome Mr. Don Lobb, farmer, as an individual; and Mr. Cedric MacLeod, Executive Director, Canadian Forage and Grassland Association. This committee has heard from both of these individuals in the past; I believe it was May 2, 2019. It is great to have you back with us, and we look forward to hearing from you.
We will invite you to make your presentations. After that, we will move into the question-and-answer portion of our meeting. You’ll each have 15 minutes; if you don’t use it, when you’re finished, you’re finished. We look forward to your remarks.
First, I want to welcome Senator Duncan. I’m putting you on the spot, Senator Duncan, if you’d like to introduce yourself.
Senator Duncan: Good morning, I’m Pat Duncan from the Yukon.
The Chair: Thank you.
Don Lobb, Farmer, as an individual: Honourable members of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, I thank you for the privilege to testify at this hearing. I particularly thank you because soil matters. Life begins with the soil. Soil feeds plants, animals and people. Food availability determines cost, and that determines how much of everything else we can afford. Thus, soil productivity determines our standard of living and it carries the economy. Historically, governments fail when the food system falters.
My testimony is driven by the concern about the state of our soil and its capacity to produce healthy, affordable food in a sustainable way. This has consequences for my children and for your children, and it will have consequences long into the future. I address this matter as a career farmer who has done the hard work as I searched out, fine-tuned and then adopted a wide range of soil and water management practices. Those practices improved soil health and productivity and did so in a sustainable and more profitable way.
Since the Senate of Canada’s Soil at Risk report was conceived by Senator Sparrow four decades ago, much as changed and too much has not. Generally, soil management has improved. Crop yield has increased with improved plant genetics and cultural practices. However, this has masked the effect of continued soil degradation in every region of Canada. Often this is the result of new production pressure and misread outcomes of soil management practices.
The historical impediments to sustainable food and fibre production continue, and they include the settlement of people and their infrastructure on our most productive soil; the disruption of the nutrient management loop as urban communities and farm sizes expand; and the misuse of tillage in crop production. To ensure sustainable food production and a healthy environment in Canada, we must confront and act on these impediments and more. I will expand on this.
Canadian census records show that foodland loss to non‑agriculture use has grown to 6.37 million hectares of our best land since 1971. This is the equivalent of a strip of land 12.25 kilometres wide by 5,000 kilometres long. According to the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, the rate of loss has more than tripled during the last three census intervals and reached almost 500 hectares per day by 2001. This foodland is lost forever, and that pushes crop production onto more fragile and environmentally sensitive land — land where food production is lower and less reliable.
The trend in land tenure to non-owner operators has added cause for concern. According to Farm Credit Canada, in 2016, 43% of our best land was rented or leased, up 9% in the five years since 2011. Thus, our best foodland has become a commodity to be used and used up.
Very little of the crop-borne nutrients that leave the land get back to their point of origin. This creates a gap in the nutrient loop that has been filled with mineral fertilizers from finite resources. That gap must be filled in other ways to ensure sustainable food production.
The 2021 census indicates there has been a resurgence of tillage during the past two census intervals, and excessive soil disturbance has continued on too many farms. As tillage erodes and destabilizes soil, it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and disrupts the soil and water relationship, which is the first limiting factor in crop production. Historically, tillage brings us to the tipping point in food production.
We have new risks to soil health. They include pressure to produce crops for markets where soil and environmental impacts are not fully accounted for. There are several examples. Let’s consider Beyond Meat. It demands more high-protein crops, yet production of these crops results in a net loss of soil organic matter. Ontario soil test records confirm this. When organic matter is reduced, so is water-holding capacity of the soil and soil productivity.
As we move forward, it is clear that the management of soil, water and air can never be separated, as each always impacts the others. And the only way we can sustainably produce food is to mimic nature. That can be achieved with the continuous use of no-till or strip-till production in combination with cover crops and careful management of crop residues. On fragile land, where tillage is even more destructive, sustainable food production can only be achieved by growing perennial forages that are processed by ruminant livestock to produce food. Increasingly, world food demand will require the use of fragile land.
Beyond the challenges within Canada, global population growth and food demand are beyond capacity to produce food in a sustainable way. Thus, soil and its productivity are simply being used up.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the annual world population growth of about 70 million contributed to a 20% loss in cultivated land in the 40 years from 1960 to 2000, and that is accelerating. From 2010 to 2014, there was a 23% increase in worldwide urbanization and it was:
Disproportionately on land best suited for crop production. This was equivalent to a 2.5 per cent loss in world food grain production in five years.
Other soil degradation processes add dramatically to lost productivity.
Further to that, just 2% of the world’s land area produces 40% of the world’s food. This land is mostly irrigated, and irrigation water supply is increasingly fickle and finite. Add to this the outcome of drought, floods and war, and it is clear that Canadian foodland soil is about to come under severe external pressure. With just 6.7% of our land suitable for crop production, how will we meet this challenge in a sustainable way? Strategic action is needed now.
The findings and guidance of this Senate committee will be critical as we chart our path forward. We must define “sustainable” and do that accurately and objectively as it relates to soil and food production. “Sustainable” must not be just another term that is loosely or dishonestly used as a marketing ploy.
We must engage the public, planners, policy makers and politicians to end the exploitation of our best foodland for non‑agricultural development.
We must establish the true cost of food with the cost of soil degradation accounted for. This would establish the value from which Canadians can invest in soil care and protection. We know that erosion alone costs in excess of $3 billion per year. Now, add to that compaction, waterway sedimentation, cropland contribution to flooding and more.
We must measure food production efficiency in terms of calories produced per litre of water used because water is the first limiting factor in soil productivity.
We must ensure that all agriculture research considers and connects to soil carbon management, topsoil stability and precise water management. The Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Living Labs Program is an important step in making soil research relevant to real-world conditions and to the farm user.
We must establish baselines so we can monitor trends in soil productivity, soil use and soil care. Water-stable soil aggregates should be identified as the base indicator of soil health.
We must advance the soil care ethic as the dominant status symbol amongst all land owners and soil users, including the 10% that use the soil to generate two thirds of all agricultural revenue. Meaningful progress is not possible without serious action from this group.
Particularly, we must make soil protection and care the responsibility of all of government, well beyond the scope of agriculture, because abundant food is essential to social well‑being and political stability. Soil is a strategic resource.
In summary, no civilization has ever survived the consequences of soil misuse or exploitive agriculture. With food production decline, people always moved on to new soil frontiers. That was the story of Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome and a host of others. Today, almost all of the world’s most productive soil is already in use. We are on the last frontier. This frontier must be intensive, health-focused soil management. Survival on this frontier is dependent on high levels of science and soil care to ensure that intensive agriculture is sustainable.
Since the Soil at Risk report in 1984, we now have new knowledge about soil degradation costs, processes and remediation. Progressive farmers and big-picture soil scientists have demonstrated that not only can we stop soil degradation, but we can actually regenerate and rebuild soil while increasing crop yield, farm profitability and improving the environment. For the first time in history, we have the tools and the technology to produce food sustainably. Sustainability is now a matter of choice. We must carefully assess the status of Canadian soil and identify actions that protect it and ensure its productivity long into the future.
Do we have the vision, the commitment and the courage to choose difficult, sometimes unpopular recommendations for the societal good? Our choices matter. If we do not choose wisely, how would we explain that to our grandchildren’s great‑grandchildren seven generations out? This soil is their soil — the source of their food supply. We all have important work to do now. I thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Lobb.
Cedric MacLeod, Executive Director, Canadian Forage and Grassland Association: Thank you, Senator Black. Thanks to the committee for the invite today.
I want to say congratulations, Senator Black, on moving this initiative forward and also to Mr. Lobb. I know that he’s been a major champion for this. Congratulations to the two of you. Thanks so much for the honour to address you today.
First, I will talk a little bit about my journey and how I became part of the Lobb family. In my first year of university, I was enrolled in a pre-veterinary program for the love of animal agriculture, and a professor named Dr. Ralph Martin led an intro course. He spoke to soil sustainability. He spoke to how soil erosion was such an impediment to long-term sustainability, and that really struck me deeply in my heart because I come from potato country here in New Brunswick, from the home of McCain Foods, where intensive tillage is part of the package. Seeing those rivers run brown, I saw them as I grew up, and I saw them on the videos at university, and I went that afternoon to Dr. Martin, and I changed my major from pre-veterinary to soil science, and I never looked back.
Throughout that journey, Dr. David Lobb, Don Lobb’s son, gave some guest lectures. I attended in earnest, and then Dr. Lobb invited me to join him at the University of Manitoba where I completed my master’s degree, again in soils, looking at reduced tillage and sustainability in the Canadian Prairies.
Upon returning home, out of school, I was employed in Ottawa, working in the greenhouse gas field. I bought a farm, and my first purchase was a no-till grain drill, and I never looked back. I bought it just up the road from where Mr. Lobb is now.
I give you this background because it goes to some of what Mr. Lobb talked about and the change we haven’t seen and the things we know. When I bought that no-till drill and brought it back to Carleton County — potato country — there were a lot of raised eyebrows. There was a lot of “that won’t work here; not in these soils.” But I never looked back, and now we are seeing change. Change is slow. I believe it is too slow, because go back to February 26, 1937. President Roosevelt was the one that said, “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” Mr. Lobb gave examples of all those civilizations throughout history who have seen this downfall from soil degradation.
So the time is certainly now to adopt the soils matter strategy and get a national soil health strategy put in place for Canada. Congratulations, Senator Black, for moving this forward.
I want to speak about the important role of perennial forages on the landscape as the executive director of the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association. This is a major part of what we do. I’ve got a few comments here on the value of that forage sector and what that means to that long-term sustainability. Following that, I look forward to the conversation with Mr. Lobb on how we package this up and move it forward.
The Canadian forage sector is the largest land-use type in Canadian agriculture with over 70 million acres covered coast to coast in this green gold. But the challenge we’re seeing is that between the census years 2011 and 2016, just over a million acres of native rangeland — so this would be historical, millennial-aged grasslands — disappeared. When we lose those grasslands, and they move to annual crop production, there is a significant loss of carbon, biodiversity and other factors, which I’ll speak to later.
Further to that, on the tame forage — those would be largely what we see in eastern Canada throughout Ontario, like alfalfa timothy crops — we saw a similar decrease of just under 800,000. So, combined, we’re looking at 1.8 million acres lost within a five-year period. I haven’t had the time to take a look at the new census, but I suspect those trends are continuing. As we lose that permanent cover, there is a lot that goes along with that, and that’s where the soil health strategy really becomes important to consider.
My speaking notes, which I shared with the clerk, include some economic contributions from the forage sector. I won’t address those now. I want to move more to the environmental contribution of what these grasslands and permanent cover mean.
Obviously, in a time of climate change, which is going to impact soil health as we get more erratic weather, soil health becomes even more important from a cropping-system resiliency perspective. When we lose grasslands and we pull perennial forages out of rotation indefinitely, we’re losing thousands of years of carbon storage, especially in those native grasslands. So it is really imperative that those marginal cropland areas that would typically be covered in grass stay in permanent cover and keep that carbon very securely sequestered.
And it’s not only those native rangelands that predominate Western Canada. Perennial forages are, again, the largest land‑use type in every provincial agricultural sector.
Second, there’s habitat and biodiversity. I know we’re talking about soil health, but this comes back to landscape functionality. Grassland ecosystems are well documented as one of the most endangered on the planet, and these grassland ecosystems are home to hundreds and hundreds of plant and animal species that are at risk. So it is important to be considering the larger package on what perennial covers mean to and for Canadians and the values that we share.
Water quality would be the next one. The majority of water that touches the ag landscape that is not absorbed directly by the soil moves off the ag landscape and into perennial cover, typically. I speak to that sea of grass across the country from coast to coast. The forage sector occupies 40% of the Canadian ag landscape, but all the other green ribbons that connect us — highway medians, residential lawns, green spaces and riparian zones — are very important permanent perennial covers, and all contribute to water quality. Again, as we speak to no-till practice, minimizing overland flow of water and minimizing soil erosion, water quality becomes a very important consideration to that.
We’ll speak to soil health over the next hour, but obviously having perennials in the system generating soil carbon, soil organic matter and supporting microbial function is absolutely critical. As we explore some options today, and as we look at new programs that are evolving across the country, the recognition of perennial covers and forage crops in general become a major pillar to advancing soil health.
Where all these factors meet is landscape level functionality and resiliency. So the first step — and again, this is coming from my education, from the Lobb family and my dedication to no-till cropping — is to keep the soil on the landscape. It’s got to stay in the fields from where it came. I remember those early classes where we talked about a six-inch rill carrying hundreds of tons of topsoil per acre off the ag landscape and depositing it in our waterways and places where it should not be for so many reasons. The natural regeneration capacity of our soils is far less than what we’re losing. It is absolutely critical for us to keep those soils intact where they belong.
We can do that with permanent covers, which we’ve spoken to prior, but also annual covers. The cover cropping revolution that we’re seeing in some areas of the country and the promotion of that through various programs is absolutely critical. We’ve got to keep those soils covered and keep them in place. Then we can move to advancing the health of that precious, precious resource.
I want to conclude with some challenges and opportunities that we see.
What are the challenges before us? Right now, what we are experiencing in the non-profit sector is people. We need people to support the practices that Mr. Lobb had mentioned — those no-till practices, those cover cropping practices — and really build sustainability into the education system so the agronomists of the future are ready to go to work and advance this resilient ag production model.
Further to that, we need non-profits that are actively engaged in this. Obviously, the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association is here witnessing today. Soil Conservation Council of Canada, Ducks Unlimited Canada, Fertilizer Canada and so many more non-profits are actively working to build resiliency into our cropping systems. That resiliency starts with soil conservation and soil health.
What are the opportunities? The opportunities are significant investments from the public sector. We’re seeing major funding announcements from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada that are going to help advance that resiliency. So my hat is off to the ministers for putting these programs in place. Again, the challenge is to have the people to roll these programs out and get them effectively distributed on the landscape. We’re going to tackle that challenge as we go.
My hat is also off to Minister Bibeau and her provincial colleagues as they rolled out the Guelph Statement and are building the next policy framework with a very clear focus on sustainability. Those programs too — those initiatives — will support advancing soil health and putting it front and centre on the agenda. So again, congratulations to Minister Bibeau and her colleagues.
What are the next steps? Evolving the producer mindset and advancing these sustainability practices really becomes the challenge of the day. I think that there are a number of reasons why growers have not adopted conservation. In some cases, we do what we know and history dictates the future: Grampy did it, Dad did it, I do it.
As Don mentioned earlier, we are in a critical situation here. We cannot continue to see soil degradation and continue to feed the globe.
It is true that, as an exporting nation, in Canada we’re likely going to be okay. But we are responsible for food production for many millions of people across the world. Having resilient, healthy soils and sustaining that soil health into the future is the task for us in the Canadian ag sector, not just to feed Canadians but to feed the world. It’s absolutely critical.
As we look to these new programs and we look toward landscape functionality, how perennials meet annuals and how we advance no-till and soil health, it’s all in the same package. Mr. Lobb mentioned the Living Labs model, which, I concur, is a very exciting and innovative way to look at research and supporting producer mindset evolution. Notice that I’m not saying “change;” I’m using the word “evolution.” Change is tough. Evolution is easier.
Having this strategy in place, putting it front and centre as a priority for the Canadian ag sector and the work of Senator Black and your colleagues on this committee are all absolutely critical. I look forward to supporting it in any way possible into the future.
Thank you for the invitation and the time.
The Chair: Thank you very much to both of you for sharing your passion and your commitment to soil health. It resonated with all of us. I really do appreciate that.
We will now proceed to questions from the senators. While I normally ask our deputy chair to ask the first question, I will claim the privilege to ask the first question.
Can both of you briefly tell us — and I realize that we could talk for hours, weeks, months and days — what types of government policies or actions would help to reduce or correct the soil degradation problem?
Mr. MacLeod: Thank you, Senator Black.
Quickly, we incentivize good practices on the landscape. We are seeing that. I mentioned the investment packages that are moving through Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada.
It is also important for us to recognize that without a stick, you have only got a carrot, so there needs to be a penalty, in my mind. I know that is not a really popular perspective. However, we have both seen and known about these practices for many generations. Again, President Roosevelt, in 1937, spoke to this. While we need to continue to offer carrots, we need to be prepared to use the stick as well.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. MacLeod.
Mr. Lobb: Unfortunately, I did not hear Mr. MacLeod’s response. Government policies or actions to reduce the soil degradation problem is a real challenge. Since the Soil at Risk report nearly 40 years ago, we have had a whole series of programs and action.
When crop prices increased through the last two decades, much of what would have been put in place disappeared and people simply spent new-found money on more iron to do more tillage and we’ve gone backwards.
We need policies and action that have a long-term effect. We are really to the point where we need some type of cross‑compliance that might be attached to property taxes or crop insurance. This may sound heavy-handed to those who do not like that kind of activity, but our experience has not been good with less aggressive types of activity.
The Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association has delivered $200 million worth of government funds to Ontario farmers for various programs in the last 30 years, much of it related to this kind of activity.
When we had higher crop prices, people went back to the field to do tillage. We really have to be innovative about how we move forward to spend government dollars effectively and responsibly.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Simons: I come from Alberta, from the kind of prairie grasslands areas that Mr. MacLeod was discussing. I have a separate question for each of our witnesses.
Mr. MacLeod, your talk reminded me of an experience I had about four or five years ago driving through southern Alberta at harvest time. It was almost dangerous for us to keep driving because there was so much dirt in the air that it was difficult to see where we were going. I thought, wow, this must have been what it was like during the prairie dust bowl era.
As the Prairies face more drought, as climate change and lack of water have an impact on that ecosystem, could you explain to me, as a city girl, what are the agricultural practices that cause so much disruption in the topsoil that it blows into the air in blinding clouds? How do we change our practices so that we do not lose valuable soil in that way?
Mr. MacLeod: I am reminded of reading — I cannot remember what the book is; I am going to have to find it — that New York City went dark for two days during the dust bowl. What happens within those dust storms is they become their own weather systems. There is so much energy and inertia in that dust cloud that, obviously, that kinetic energy breeds more kinetic energy, and so it rolls.
It’s a major challenge. You are absolutely correct. As we look toward a changing climate, and we look to extended periods of drought and/or wet weather, those challenges are likely to become greater and more frequent.
To Mr. Lobb’s point, we made significant advancements in Western Canada with the adoption of zero tillage and direct seeding, and I think we were a model to the world. Australia followed us. Kazakhstan also comes to mind. A lot of air drills went from Western Canada around the world.
Unfortunately — and Mr. Lobb mentioned this — as crop prices have [Technical difficulties] more tillage becoming part of the production model. We need to get back there. The Soil Conservation Council of Canada plays a huge role in advancing a no-till cropping system and agriculture. We need to turn the tide on this tillage, incorporate perennial forages from time to time and keep those soils covered. That is fundamental. We saw that during the dust bowl. Roosevelt brought us the message. We know how to do this with zero till and permanent cover, either through annuals or perennials — it doesn’t matter, as long as you keep those soils covered. That’s the ticket.
Senator Simons: Mr. Lobb, when you are talking about the encroachment of urbanization onto really prime farmland, that is a problem in Edmonton, where I live, where some of the very best farmland has been taken over by suburban sprawl.
We have another major issue in Alberta and in the Prairies, which is the conflict between the people who own the surface rights, often the farmers, and the people who own the subsurface rights, often the oil and gas companies.
In Alberta, the people who own the subsurface rights often have privilege over those people who own the surface rights. We have an increasing problem in Alberta of pollution of the soil, including pollution of some of our best, most fertile soil.
I know this is not an Ontario issue, but do you have anything to say about what might need to happen to improve the balance of power between the subsurface and the surface rights owners?
Mr. Lobb: Actually, an oil and gas company did at one point do a lease agreement for mineral rights on my farm. How that is handled in different areas varies.
I don’t have a good answer for you. This has to be the role of government. This is a case where government needs to make tough decisions and have the courage to make a commitment to the long-term good of society. This is a big issue. It is an important issue.
If I could add a little bit to the comments of Mr. MacLeod on the issue of natural vegetation on the landscape, those are soil aggregates that you would find in a native prairie or a woodlot. When we do tillage, those break down and we destroy the mycorrhizal fungi and some other soil biota that contribute to the construction of those. One tillage activity can do a huge amount of damage; you get two or three and you totally destroy that, and then the soil blows in the wind. It washes away in our more humid regions.
I had a long-term comparison between tillage and no-till on my farm that was used a lot by the research community. After 11 years, I took soil samples for a group who were visiting the farm, just showing them the difference in colour that had occurred as more carbon was accumulating in the long-term no‑till. I left those samples on a piece of hardboard for a couple of months until I went to tidy things up. At that point, almost all of the sample from the tilled side had washed away, but the sample from the 11 years of no-till was still totally intact. In just that 11 years, I had re-established that soil aggregate characteristic that would have saved those prairies from those dust storms.
The greatest amount of erosion we have, either with wind or water, happens in the big storms. We can go 5 or 10 years with very little soil erosion occurring, and then we get that one big storm and we have a huge amount.
There was a hydrologic research station in Coshocton, Ohio, just south of Lake Erie, where the conditions are very similar to here. They monitored a particular 28-year period storm effect, and over that 28-year period, they had, I believe, 411 storms that they monitored. Out of those 411, 85% of the soil erosion occurred in just 10 major storms.
So if we do not re-establish soil aggregates and root systems that are undisturbed, we will never control the big events. And if we do not control those, we are not going to have much effect.
Senator Simons: That’s very enlightening.
Senator Klyne: Welcome to our guests, and thank you very much for the enlightening opening remarks.
Beyond the media coverage and the notional, I have been largely removed from keeping my finger on the pulse of the agriculture industry since my corporate banking days, and that goes back a ways. But I can say that after listening to your remarks, we are indeed embarking upon what I would say is a study of national importance, so thank you for that call to action.
There are a couple of questions I do have in this regard. When you think back to the first soil study undertaken by Parliament, which was back in 1984, we obviously had a lot of ground to cover, no pun intended. In that regard, I do have a couple of questions. I will just throw them out and you can answer them as you wish.
Are there any lines of inquiry that we should pursue? My concern here really is that — albeit, as I say, I have not been taking a frequent temperature nor the pulse of the ag industry as much as I used to, but I am getting a sense that there needs to be a call to action here in terms of urgency that should come through this study, and I hope one that rallies a whole-of-nation approach.
Are there any topics or lines of inquiry that we should pursue? We do have a good list of witnesses, but after listening to you, I want to make sure that we also endeavour to speak with individual farmers and the small-scale farming operations.
Keeping that in mind, is there anyone else that we should be speaking with regarding this particular line of inquiry that we should pursue?
I also get the sense that the status quo — it is not a sense; clearly, the status quo is not an option. What kind of timeline are we looking at where we would pass that point of no return and we run out of runway in this evolution, as you refer to it? In that regard, are there any urgent challenges that our study should be focusing on in terms of considerations? It is pretty broad to just talk about a soil study, but time is of the essence and I get a sense there is some runway running out here.
If you can just focus me, I think that other committee members would also benefit from that.
The other question I have is that there are a number of practices that have been laid out over time. The Paris Agreement came up with a framework that listed some actions. I get the idea that the progressive farmers are adhering to these practices, but as a nation, have we lost the prize here? Give me your overviews on that, please.
Mr. Lobb: I appreciate your sensitivity to the issue that we’re dealing with here. Certainly, there is some really good work that has been going on at the research level, both in Eastern Canada and on the Prairies. We need to pay attention to what those folks have to offer.
Second to that, I would say that we need to really bear down on the information that some of our more innovative and progressive farmers have to offer, because typically, throughout my lifetime, most of the progress has come from farmer innovators, and then that is backed up with interest from the research community. We can learn a lot from some of our top‑notch people. I know some of them right across Canada.
Mr. MacLeod: Thank you for that question.
To your point, Senator Klyne, I think that there are a couple of major factors that we need to look at. We need to look at wetland loss in the Prairie provinces — that’s absolutely critical — and also grassland loss to those native prairies. Those are two critically important landscape features within Canadian ag that we need to take a hard look at preserving. There are current regulations in place, especially around wetlands. I am not sure if they are being adequately enforced. Again, there’s a lack of people to do that work, but we need to take a hard look at it.
I think back to my comments earlier — and Mr. Lobb spoke to it as well — about the heavy-handed policy angle and some of that cross-compliance. We have done a lot of work in trying to incentivize with carrots but, again, carrots are not very sweet unless there is enforcement of the other side of the equation, which is the stick. We really need to take a hard look at this to really preserve these landscapes for the future. As Mr. Lobb spoke to so eloquently, I have an eight-year-old son and 13 nieces and nephews who love hanging out with me on the farm. My goal is to make sure that I leave that to them in better shape than I found it. That is not the current trajectory for too many millions of acres in Canada. It is the next generation that will suffer from this. We need to take a very hard look at that.
The other group I would suggest, Senator Klyne, is to speak to your conservation agencies, your land trusts — those who are working to preserve those grasslands in perpetuity on the landscape. They are an excellent source of information and support.
The last comment that I will make on this is how we lost the plot. You have your early-adopter community, which is the progressive farmers that Mr. Lobb spoke to. Our target right now is really the middle adopters. This is well established in the theory of adoption of innovation. The middle adopters will watch those progressive farmers. They will watch the early adopters and move forward. The late adopters — there are several terms used to describe those late adopters. They literally are not likely to do anything that we ask. They will not engage in incentive programs. They will not engage in innovation. That becomes the group where we really need to have the enforcement side of this equation to advance, because the late-adopter community is somewhere around 50%. So if we have 50% being controlled by the late-adopter community, our runway is, indeed, quite short.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Lobb: If I could add to that, my experience has certainly been that our very large farm operations have ranked among the late adopters. That is really critical because they control a huge part of the landscape. We are not going to solve this problem by just dealing with some of our mid-sized farms and smaller farms.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you to our witnesses. You have actually made me quite sad today, because this is my last formal day as a member of this committee because of scheduling changes, and this is a topic that is dear to my heart. I grew up on a farm and spent a lot of time doing a lot of tilling, multiple times across the same field before it was planted because it made things better, or so we thought.
Senator Cotter and I had a conversation with the minister’s office asking about the strategy that the Government of Canada has put in place here. We came away feeling that the strategy at this point is superficial and fragmented versus focused and substantial. We’re disappointed that there was no cooperation or real interaction between Environment and Climate Change Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
I was inspired last week when the USDA announced a major regenerative agriculture program that is targeting 10 million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent sequestration in 25 million acres. That would be enough to make our agricultural sector carbon neutral if we hit their target with a similar plan. It is a very substantial plan. I am wondering if either of you know much about it at this point and what your thoughts are on it. I would certainly love us to be catalyzing similar action in Canada.
Mr. Lobb: I haven’t been following that because, for the last week, I have been preparing for today.
Senator C. Deacon: Mr. Lobb, I would be very interested in hearing your response perhaps as just a senator who cares about the issue and is no longer a member of the committee. But I would love for this committee to hear your response as well when you have a chance to look at this announcement. I can make sure that the clerk has it so she can forward it to you if you would like.
Mr. Lobb: That would be helpful. I would be pleased to do that.
Mr. MacLeod: Senator Deacon, thank you for the question. I do have some thoughts. I too have not looked at that USDA program, although we have heard rumblings of this moving forward.
One thing that I will point out is that Canada has invested $250 million through Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in the On-Farm Climate Action Fund and the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association is taking part in that. We have roughly 10 million acres to move out to advance grazing practices across the landscape. We are hoping to see some movement there.
Similar to the goals of that USDA program, as you have described, the goal of the On-Farm Climate Action Fund plan is to advance cover cropping, advance nitrogen management practices and good grazing practices, and all of those fall into that bucket of regen ag, certainly.
I would again commend Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada for moving that forward, and I believe that there was some interaction with ECCC. But I concur, some better interdepartmental collaboration would probably help to solidify some more consistent rollout of programs across the country. Perhaps this report that you and your colleagues will generate will support that with some recommendations.
I think this is the kind of programming that will help us to move toward that carbon neutrality in the ag sector and advance soil health goals. Again, this is a case where your early and middle adopters are likely to use the lion’s share of that funding. That leaves us, again, with a 50% gap in advancing regen ag on those practices on the landscape. So that, in and of itself, is probably the largest challenge that we need to tackle.
Senator C. Deacon: Two years ago — it may be that long ago now — I had a conversation with officials from Environment and Climate Change Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada asking them about the opportunity here. I was told outright by the officials at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada that no-till practices were maximized at this point in Canada and that was really as good as it gets. They saw no more upside. I was astonished, based upon my conversations with researchers at Summerland, Guelph and Dalhousie. It just didn’t align at all. They seemed to be real outliers. Do you have any experience of conversations within the department that could hopefully contradict my very strong opinion that I came away with, based on what they told me?
Mr. Lobb: I haven’t had conversations within the department, but I’ve certainly been aware of that position for quite a few years. They’re missing some important points. They’re assuming that if they have crop residue over the surface of the soil on the Prairies that they have solved the soil problem. In fact, the equipment they’re using to do their direct seeding is moving a whole lot of soil. They need to move to less aggressive equipment.
There’s been a lot of what they call vertical tillage equipment sold in the last couple of decades, where they’re leaving crop residue on the surface of the soil, but they’re actually doing full‑surface tillage at two to four inches deep. That’s causing a huge amount of soil movement off upper slope positions. The area of low-producing soil on the upper slope positions and knolls is gradually getting bigger all the time. They’re missing that.
Certainly in Eastern Canada, we can do a whole lot more, and there is no reason not to. I know soil scientists in both the Maritimes and the Prairies who would vehemently dispute what you heard.
Senator C. Deacon: That was my experience. I would love it if you could identify those specific points where you think they’re getting it wrong. It would help the committee a lot in this work because I don’t want us to run up against the same superficial response that is not based in the evidence and the experience to which you have access.
Mr. Lobb: If you talk to Dr. David Burton from Dalhousie or Dr. David Lobb at the University of Manitoba, you will get a very different perspective, I’m sure.
Mr. MacLeod: Senator Deacon, I too am concerned about that perspective coming out of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada because I concur 100% with Mr. Lobb. The advancements that we’ve made in zero tilling and direct seeding in the Prairies are, as I mentioned before, moving backwards. More of those acres are going back to tillage. That is certainly counter to that position.
Also to Mr. Lobb’s point, tillage is rampant in Eastern Canada. There are a lot of advancements to be made in direct seeding and no-till on this side of the country, and it is absolutely critical that we get there. Yes, anything I can do to help advance that position and support that in this report, you can count on me for that.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Cotter: Thanks to both of the witnesses. You’re providing us, and certainly me, with insights well beyond my level of knowledge. I’m from Saskatchewan. I grew up in a small Prairie town, though I never lived on a farm like some of my colleagues. I didn’t have a high degree of perspective on the question of soil health. I did have the opportunity with Senator Black to attend the World Congress of Soil Science 2022 earlier this summer. I guess I would put it this way: I came to doubt and stayed to pray. It is like listening to prayers, hearing from the two of you, so thanks.
I want to follow up with what I think is a very significant question, which each of you in some respects has raised. Mr. MacLeod, you used language regarding sticks and carrots.
Nearly all of Canadian productive farmland is owned privately. We have been highly respectful of private property interests in this country, not telling people how they should use their property. That’s true in some other jurisdictions. This invites, I guess, a worry, but I do want to just observe some things I learned both at this world congress and also more recently.
If you take New Zealand, for example, they have insisted, as I understand it from briefings that we have received lately, on their agriculture producers, particularly in the context of addressing greenhouse gas emissions, to simply produce farm management plans and to move aggressively with respect to emissions. Beginning in 2025, they will be required to pay a price for greenhouse gas emissions, full stop.
In Scotland, where peat use has been significant, private landowners of peat are being required to reverse those activities.
In Northern Ireland — and I guess I would observe this as two parts of a country governed by a Conservative government, which was likely highly respectful of private property — every farmer is requested to participate in a plan related to soil health, but if they don’t participate, they become ineligible for any government subsidies with respect to farming.
My sense is that unless we do some things that require producers to meet some standards to improve this kind of soil and land as a global heritage, even though it is in private hands, and when we think about what you have charitably described as late adopters — I might have used the word “non-adopters” — we won’t be able to achieve the goals that you have described. But I’m also concerned that we may not have the guts to dictate some of these requirements. Could you comment on that, each of you?
Mr. Lobb: I really like what I’m hearing from you, Senator Cotter. We live in a society that is very preoccupied with rights, but we really don’t have rights until we demonstrate responsibility. That is what we really need to start addressing on a whole lot of fronts and certainly with land management.
You’ve touched on cross-compliance, and I really don’t see any other way to deal with these large operations. We talked about 50% of the farmers being land managers, adopters or not, but the reality is that the 10% who are producing two thirds of all of the agricultural production in Canada — they’re the ones who must make changes, or we will not have a big impact on the landscape.
Mr. MacLeod: Thanks for the question, Senator Cotter.
To follow up on Mr. Lobb’s point, we need to recognize that the outcomes of management decisions by an individual private landowner do not solely impact the land parcel in which that management practice is deployed. If water runs off field A and enters stream B and impacts fish habitat C and there is no penalty for that, then there is no incentive to make a change. Yes, individual landowner rights need to be respected, but individual landowners also need to take responsibility for the impacts downstream of the management decisions they make within their local catchment.
In my opening comments, I spoke to landscape resiliency, and that landscape includes numerous growers, watershed groups, conservation agencies, wetlands and grasslands. All of it comes together. If we’re going to see true resiliency in Canadian agriculture, in the long term — I am going back to Senator Simons’s comments about increased drought — that landscape functionality becomes very important.
I have to agree with Mr. Lobb that the cross-compliance model needs to be considered. Having a management plan — a conservation plan — in order to qualify for crop insurance sounds like a good deal to me. We’ve seen that through the Environmental Farm Plan, or EFP, process. I know I’m a very conservation-minded farmer myself, and I walked through the EFP, and I found some things on my farm that needed to be changed. So I did it. That process of walking through that management plan allowed me to take a hard look inside and make the changes that I needed to. I was ready and willing to do that, and I would probably be in that early-adopter category, as was Mr. Lobb when he was farming. But if we don’t require some of that cross-compliance to access crop insurance, there is actually a reverse incentive toward conservation. Because if you can get crop insurance on Class 4 or Class 5 land to grow canola or potatoes when it should actually be in permanent cover grassland, that has a very negative impact on the landscape as a whole.
You’re putting me in a bit of a corner here because I’m not going to be very popular with my farming colleagues. But at the top of what we’re talking about today and for really driving landscape resiliency and soil health, it needs to be considered.
The Chair: Mr. MacLeod, that’s why you’re getting paid the big bucks from us — not.
Senator Cotter: This is more of an observation than a question.
I feel as though we are talking to people who are knowledgeable but also visionaries on this question compared to a lot of folks who are out there farming their land. My now‑deceased father-in-law was a farmer in western Saskatchewan. He probably farmed five sections of land. He was a good, honourable farmer. He said to me and to others that we’re not farming the land, we’re mining it. So in a certain way, he recognized what he was doing. But he kept on doing it. It generated good income for his family and a plan for his children to own the land later. Absent some incentive or obligation, it was unlikely that he was going to change his practices. I guess that’s the thing I worry about the most — the degree to which we can find mechanisms by which it becomes clear to everybody that requirements are necessary here — “sticks,” I guess, in your words, Mr. MacLeod — in order to solve this problem for everybody.
Government has a role in constructing a regulatory framework so that good-quality farmland is not turned over to other uses that are not really for the benefit of mankind the way farmland and food production can be. However, to make this major step and reverse the trend we’re on, there also seem to be interventions that are liable to be unpopular.
Mr. MacLeod: I wrote down a further comment around independence and being that landowner.
When the wheels fall off the wagon and things go sideways, even the independents will be coming to the door of either provincial or federal governments for help. I think that’s an important consideration. They push back on doing that action plan, but as you said, Senator Cotter, with really great initiatives like in Ireland and New Zealand, it’s not hard to do a management plan. If you’re going to do a management plan to get the incentive, I think that is a really good first step.
Again, we also need to recognize that the negative impacts of not making changes will impact us all, regardless of how independent we consider ourselves. So for the good of the whole, the very clear role for government is to just stand fast on this and require some change.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you to our guests. It has been very instructive and such a good way to begin this important study.
I do have one question that I want to continue to explore. We had some talks about the importance of the potential transitioning into more regenerative agriculture and farming. I’ve been reading about it. One of the things that came out in some documentation was that, as of now, there is no certification scheme to regenerative farming. So I’m wondering if our witnesses have an opinion on that.
My understanding is that it’s not cheap for farmers to transition to regenerative farming, especially in the first few years of the transition. Without a certification — like, for example, if you take organic food, it comes at a cost, but it has a certification that maybe justifies that cost. However, farmers wanting to transition to regenerative don’t have that certification. Would that make a difference? Is that conversation happening?
Mr. Lobb: I don’t know that it would make a difference. Basically, I was practising regenerative agriculture about 40 years ago. I guess I was doing it for my good because it was a better way to farm. What I was doing was good for the environment. I was using windbreaks and trees in the farming program. I was retiring land that had lower productivity and converting that to tree planting and pollinator reserve — doing all those things. I just never saw the need.
The issue with some of these trends has been, for example, that organic farming is entirely dependent on pretty aggressive and extensive tillage, and that is not sustainable. Organic farming has the same Achilles heel as mainstream agriculture because they’re both tillage based. The regenerative movement recognizes that organic is not good enough, and they are moving on to being able to farm without extensive and excessive tillage. So I see that as a really good move. It is very tied to animal production, using manure as a nutrient source. With the interest in meatless diets, I’m not sure how that squares.
Mr. MacLeod: I agree. I was a regenerative farmer before it was cool. Thanks to the Lobb family for instilling that in me.
My answer is no, I don’t think certification is necessarily going to drive it. Quite honestly, I don’t think it’s expensive. I’m a no-till farmer. I can put my crops in with one pass of iron to touch my soils, and I do it quite effectively. So this comes back, Senator Petitclerc, to mindset. There is no question about it. A freshly tilled field that is nice and smooth, dark brown and ready to receive seed looks really nice and smells really nice. However, it’s not really nice when the rain comes. I’d love to show you the pictures of the farm above mine on the road that took a two-inch rainfall and dumped hundreds of tons of soil into my ditches. It didn’t put it on my field. It put it in the ditch. So speaking of cheap, now that ditch has to be cleaned out, which was the future of that farmer’s children’s ability to eat. So cost is not the factor here. It’s the mindset.
One thing I will say is that what’s likely going to impact the adoption of regen practices is value-chain requirements. We’re seeing more and more of this from McCain Foods and General Mills. I was talking to a grain buyer from Parrish & Heimbecker, a major wheat buyer, and they were saying, “We need you to prove to us that this wheat has been grown regeneratively.”
So we’re seeing this push from upstream in the value chain — or downstream; whatever your perspective is — but they are requiring us to do a better job on the landscape.
That’s going to move those of us who are engaged in contracting. Those who are free-market operators and have no engagement with that value chain, outside of maybe delivering to the high-throughput elevator, they’re certainly on their own.
I think this whole conversation about regen, these practices and what they mean requires more thought, consideration and discussion on how we can move it through. There’s certainly a place in this report that you and your colleagues are going to generate on what that looks like. In a lot of cases, I almost describe regen as a feeling in how you approach your soil and animal resources, and how you blend them all together.
Regen means different things to different people. There are four factors; I have a list of nine that I use for my personal farm. That’s my regen plan; there are nine of them.
We need to be careful not to try and put it in a box. I would suggest that evolution of the mindset, adopting my comments earlier to Senator Cotter, and accepting that we all play a collective role in our landscape-management decisions that impact the whole is part of that evolution.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Mockler: To the chair and this committee, on looking at this matter of soil health, I want to congratulate you, and I think it’s very important going forward. When I hear Mr. MacLeod, I want to say to you that you’re using carrots and sticks; don’t use potatoes and sticks.
On this, I have a few questions. Across the land — and New Brunswick is very similar in Atlantic Canada — we have land that is Crown land, owned by private landowners and there is industrial land. With the experience you have, which group or category of the three that I have named is doing a better job regarding soil health?
Mr. MacLeod: Thank you, Senator Mockler, for the question.
In New Brunswick, it’s the private landowner, hands down, from my perspective.
Back to those early-, middle- and late-adopter communities, it is the early-adopter community within the private landowner group that is doing the best job. The middle-adopter community is coming up behind and watching what that early-adopter group is doing. As they see success in the early adopters, that is being adopted.
For public lands here in New Brunswick — and I’ve worked fairly extensively with the grassland and the beef sectors here — our Crown land pastures could really use some shine-up; they could really be doing a better job. There are initiatives under way. Don’t get me wrong: There are programs in play, but they could be kickstarted and more emphasis could be put in.
To Mr. Lobb’s point, where I’m probably the most disappointed here in New Brunswick is with large corporate ownership of lands that are not hitting the mark. There needs to be the responsibility of those large corporate operators that, in some cases, are dictating practice to others; they need to put their money where their mouth is and show better leadership.
Senator Mockler: Which country in the world has the best soil health program?
Mr. Lobb: It’s a real challenge to answer that. It could very well be Brazil or Argentina. As they have developed their lands in the last 40 or 50 years, they’ve gone almost 100% to no till, partly because they had to. As I understand it, the lands that have been developed in Brazil, in particular, are very fragile, so they really needed to move aggressively on getting really good soil‑care practices into place right from the start.
The United States has had some really good programs over the years. In fact, with the 1985 farm bill, they were requiring that to participate in government programs, they had to have a conservation farm plan. So all the farmers there were scrambling to get their plans in place through the latter part of the 1980s.
While there is really good innovation and leadership there, there’s also a big part of that landscape, as I understand it, that really needs better attention.
Mr. MacLeod: I’ll leave it to Mr. Lobb’s wisdom on that, but my thought is around his use of the word “leadership.” While I can’t point to an individual country, I can point to individual counties and/or municipalities where you have local individuals who have a very strong conservation mindset and the ability to engage and impact the local producer community. We see real progress where we have really good people who are working one-on-one with the grower.
I made this comment in my opening statement: The challenge that we have is having enough people to go out and go one‑on‑one with those growers. Our extension programs aren’t what they were.
I’m not going to point to a country, but I will point to those regions and the importance of having people installed to help us to deliver these regen or conservation practices.
Senator Mockler: Mr. MacLeod, where I come from in Madawaska County — you would know my area very well — the best inventors, we say, and the best innovators in soil are the farmers themselves.
Which region of Canada has the best soil-health program?
Mr. MacLeod: Probably the greatest leadership I see is in Quebec, which rolled out some new programming last year with a focus on soil health; Ontario has their soil-health initiative and is very clearly looking to advance the concept.
But, again, I think the best program is the best person to help unpack and deliver the program. I know I’m giving the same answer again, but at this point, the limitation does not seem to be financial resources; there are a lot of dollars flowing out of a lot of programs from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and ECCC to help with that. Where we’re challenged is with people to get it on the ground.
Mr. Lobb: You’re exactly right: Our problem isn’t a lack of information; we have enough information right now and enough scientific support that we can farm sustainably. The challenge is to get those actions on the ground.
In Ontario, we’ve had the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association providing leadership here since I was born in 1939. We had the Innovative Farmers Association of Ontario, a networking group that I helped to organize. We were trading information back and forth and it evolved into a large organization that has been maintained. We now have the Ontario Soil Network, a new group that has started up. Their total focus is on information transfer between farmers. That is where the action really happens, when the information is transferred between farmers.
We do not have the support groups that we used to have from government to provide leadership in this area. We get some from industry, but too often vested interests get involved in the kind of recommendations that come from there. We need to foster these groups that operate within the farm community.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Simons: When I began my questioning, I was thinking about the dangers of drought and soil erosion caused by drought and winds. It was not until both of you gentlemen started to speak at more length that I really understood how much of the importance of this deals with flash floods and the kinds of extreme weather conditions that we’re also seeing as a result of climate change.
We have just completed a study about the impact of flooding in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley. I want to give each of you the opportunity to speak more at length about what the potential impacts are of flash floods and heavy rains. As we’re meeting here, our friends in Nova Scotia are about to get hammered by a legitimate hurricane.
What are the concerns about soil erosion that come from this aspect of climate change?
Mr. Lobb: It is those big storm events that have caused, by far, the most damage to cropland. We can do a lot on cropland that will minimize the impact of those storm events by developing those soil aggregates that I showed you earlier. By keeping root systems intact in the soil, we can virtually stop the effect of those major storm events.
I did other work on the farm to back that up. We built earthen berms across slopes to slow down surface runoff so that we would not have sediment and nutrients running into our waterways. Windbreaks help to reduce some of that effect, and subsurface drainage helps to minimize soil moisture content in critical seasons where we are most likely to have surface runoff events.
The term “cropland drainage” is a misnomer because it is a tool we use to manage soil moisture, not to get rid of water. The objective there is to simply reduce the moisture enough so that we can do field work early in the season, but we want to save as much moisture as possible for those dry periods. Moisture management is so much a part of soil management and then it all rolls into air issues.
Does that help?
Senator Simons: It does. Mr. MacLeod?
Mr. MacLeod: Yes. I agree 100%. The note that I wrote here was that we have to keep the water on the field. Residue helps us to do that.
I encourage you, Senator Simons, to Google “raindrop impacts on soil.” When every individual raindrop hits the soil directly and that energy is not absorbed by crop residue, or by forages, or by some sort of cover, it creates an explosion. When you explode those soil particles, they are now free. Once they are free and we have overland flow of water, then it takes the soil with it. It is amazing to watch it and to see just how destructive it is.
I saw this last week. I mentioned to Mr. Lobb earlier that we built a house. I have a beautiful two-acre lot. I did a great job. But then I had to get the oats and the fall rye out there and get the cover crop on because the fall rains were coming. We then went out and did that. We had a rainstorm coming; we had three inches of rain coming, so I put straw bales out to create terraces because I knew that the lawn was going to run. I looked at the weather and it was supposed to be one millimetre per hour. So I thought, that’s great; it’s a nice, slow rain. It will water the lawn. I put my son on the bus and by the time I got back, a thundershower cell came through and my entire driveway and the entire lawn was boiling. It was just boiling. The soil was running. Luckily, I had a trailer full of bales, so out I went to try to save the lawn. While I was able to do that, this was a very localized example.
This morning as I drove to the office, I thought about how moldboard plowing is still a thing here in New Brunswick, in Carleton County. At lot of that has been happening here. I’m looking at Hurricane Fiona and how it will drop three inches of rain that will come a half-inch per hour. I’m thinking of the impact of those billions of raindrops on that freshly tilled soil. When I get back to Centreville, New Brunswick, I can guarantee you that the Presque Isle Stream will be chocolate milk; I guarantee it.
Senator Simons: So are you saying it is not just the volume of water but also the intensity with which it falls?
Mr. MacLeod: It is the intensity.
To your original question, as we get more intense storms and we get more of that intense impact at the soil surface, it is that much more critical that we have something on the surface. We have to stop with the tillage. It is only going to get worse if we leave bare soil to the impacts of these weather systems. It is going to end up in the river, it is going to kill the fish and it is going to leave my son and my 13 nieces and nephews, and maybe their children, challenged with how to feed themselves. At some point, this train will go off the tracks.
Senator C. Deacon: This has been absolutely fascinating and a riveting conversation about the future of feeding the world. I gather that we have to feed as many people in the next 40 years as have been fed to date on earth. We have a growing population that is demanding a lot more food be produced.
I want to dive into the carbon credit opportunity and how Canada can start to make some headway on rewarding farmers and increasing farm gate revenue for carbon they are sequestering in their soil. There are issues around the permanence of that sequestration, but that early storage could provide us with a big early win in our fight against climate change. I also believe that this is a great opportunity for Canadian companies who specialize in this area to create businesses that can export the tools, such as the satellite tracking of soil health and the market in carbon credits around the world, as innovative businesses. Indigo Ag is a big company that is well financed in the U.S. and it is working in this space, as is Terramera in Canada.
What are your thoughts and what advice can you provide to this committee as it relates to the opportunity to have money flowing through that farm gate to reward farmers for the fact that they are helping us in the fight against climate change?
Mr. MacLeod: My career has largely been focused in greenhouse gas management and the adoption of best management practices, or BMPs, in farming.
Thank you for the question, Senator Deacon. I agree 100%. There is value to be generated through the carbon offset systems. Especially as we move toward $1.70 carbon, the market gets real. At current prices of $20 in the voluntary market and $50 in the regulated market, yes, there is some money there.
The challenge we have in engaging in those offset markets is that we do not have the quantification protocols. They have not necessarily been embedded in the national offset system. I know Jackie Mercer and her team at ECCC are actively working on developing that marketplace. But those protocols need to be generated first, Senator Deacon, before an individual farm can participate. That is the next step, to move it through so we can realize that opportunity.
Senator C. Deacon: That means that it has not been prioritized, and that needs to be prioritized. If we cannot catalyze private market opportunities, we’re leaving that money off the table for farmers who are doing the right thing.
Mr. MacLeod: Yes, I would certainly agree with that. The second angle on this is that there are two ways to be paid for carbon: to run through the carbon offset program or accept funding for best management practices implementation, and that is what we’re currently seeing with the On-Farm Climate Action Fund. The federal government put $250 million on the table implementing BMPs, some of which I’m doing on my farm and I’m getting incentivized for that BMP, and the Government of Canada assumes ownership of that carbon for the life of the program. I think that is a reasonable exchange.
We either work to develop that offset market and have it all run through market dynamics, or the public purse pays for BMP adoption and absorbs those carbon offsets into its own inventory. I’m not advocating for either one. I think that there is a role for both. I look forward to further discussions as you do your study on those impacts.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you.
The Chair: Colleagues, we have come to the end of our list. I know that I probably have 15 or 16 more questions, but I will use those another time.
Mr. Lobb and Mr. MacLeod, I want to thank you very much for your participation today. Your assistance as we start this study is very much appreciated. I want to thank my fellow committee members for your active participation and your thoughtful questions.
I also want to share with my colleagues that on February 20, 2018 — four years and seven months ago, or 1,670 days — someone who has become a dear friend was sitting beside me and said, “Here’s the last study that was done by the Senate of Canada. It is time to do a new one.” And here we are today starting that new one. I want to share with you that that dear friend was before us as our first witness today. Thank you very much to both Mr. Lobb and Mr. MacLeod. Thank you again.
(The committee continued in camera.)