THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, December 14, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 9:01 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: Good morning, everyone. It’s good to be back.
I want to say thanks to Senator Simons for chairing the last couple of meetings.
I really appreciate it, Senator Simons. I watched some of it online. It’s nine hours’ difference, but I did watch, and it was good stuff. Thanks very much for doing it.
Senator Simons: It’s always fun to have the gavel.
The Chair: I’d like to begin by welcoming members of our committee, our witnesses here in person and online and those watching this meeting on the web. My name is Robert Black. I’m a senator from Ontario, and I chair this standing committee.
Today the committee is meeting on its study to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada. Before we hear from our witnesses, I want to start by asking senators to introduce themselves, starting with the deputy chair.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Cotter: Good morning. I’m Brent Cotter. I’m a senator from Saskatchewan.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Good morning. I am Senator Chantal Petitclerc from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Jaffer: I’m Mobina Jaffer from British Columbia.
Senator Oh: Victor Oh. I’m a senator from Ontario. Welcome.
The Chair: For our first panel on circular economy and food waste composting, organic trade and horticultural peat sectors, we welcome from the Circular Innovation Council, Jo-Anne St. Godard, Executive Director, by video conference; from Hansen Beef, Colby Hansen, Owner-Operator; from the Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association, Asha Hingorani, President; from the Canada Organic Trade Association, Tia Loftsgard, Executive Director; and Derek Lynch, Professor, Faculty of Agriculture, Dalhousie University. Mr. Lynch will be joining us by video conference.
I’ll invite you to make your presentations. We’ll begin with Ms. St. Godard followed by Mr. Hansen, Ms. Hingorani and, lastly, Ms. Loftsgard. Dr. Lynch will be sharing his time with our last witness.
Each of you will have five minutes to give us your presentations in total. When you see my hand go up, that means you have one minute left. When two hands go up, that means it’s time to wrap it up.
With that, colleagues and witnesses, the floor is yours, Ms. St. Godard.
Jo-Anne St. Godard, Executive Director, Circular Innovation Council: Good morning. Thank you very much, senator.
First of all, thank you to the committee for allowing me to speak with you today about the connection between the circular economy, food waste and soil health.
A little bit about the Circular Innovation Council, we are a national, membership-based not-for-profit organization with over 40 years of experience delivering programs that educate and empower Canadians to take action on the circular economy and realize its environmental, economic and social benefits. Through our research, market pilot projects, policy development support and extensive educational programming, we aim to accelerate Canada’s transition toward a circular economy by simply putting these concepts into action.
Our organization has been at the fore of organics recovery, currently piloting a food rescue and food waste diversion pilot that targets the industrial, commercial and institutional sector, also known as the IC&I Sector. This sector generates more food waste than households, averaging between 5 and 9 million tonnes annually, the bulk produced collectively by the small- to medium-sized establishments within it.
Addressing this issue of wasted food and valuable organics from the IC&I Sector presents three important benefits and a direct opportunity to improve soil health. As you know, over 50% of all consumable food in Canada is wasted every year, while one in six Canadians suffer food insecurity. In a time where food prices are at their all-time high, this wasted opportunity has never been more obvious, nor more important.
Secondly, organics are a valuable natural resource that can and should displace synthetically produced fertilizers. They are an available, inexpensive and a local soil enhancer. Despite generating more organic materials, the collection performance of the IC&I Sector compared to the residential sector is much lower, and this could be attributed to three main factors: The high cost of diversion services compared to disposal, a lack of regulatory interventions and limited program supports.
In Canada, only six local governments have existing bylaws that require businesses and institutions to collect organics, and only two provinces have banned it, this while many are struggling with diminishing disposal capacity.
A third benefit is the opportunity to address the largest source of greenhouse gases of all materials disposed in Canada. Emissions from Canadian landfills account for 19% of national methane emissions. While over 500 Canadian municipalities have declared climate emergencies, as mentioned, only six are addressing organics collection from local businesses and institutions.
The bedrock to a circular economy is to re-examine our current take-make-waste production and consumption patterns through a system’s lens. Our food rescue and waste pilot is designed with this in mind, targeting the nexus of food waste diversion and its positive impact on food insecurity, greenhouse gas emission reduction and waste reduction.
The pilot follows circular economy principles for food systems, keeping food at its highest value to feed people wherever possible, ensuring food scraps and organic waste nutrient value is recovered through composting, and enabling the food system to transition to renewable inputs, such as applying compost to local farms and reducing synthetic fertilizers.
For this pilot, we work with multiple stakeholders to simplify food rescue and divert organic waste through shared collective services for neighbouring IC&I businesses. The goals are to reduce cost, waste and greenhouse gas emissions while increasing access to nutritious food and high-quality compost.
Piloting our solution for over two years in a small catchment area in Guelph and Wellington County in Ontario has rescued more than 400,000 kilograms of surplus food, diverted 380 tonnes of food waste from just 61 businesses and created 80,000 kilograms of valuable compost while avoiding 4,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, which is equivalent to taking about 1,300 cars off the road for a year.
We are now launching a second pilot in Strathcona County and the Town of Westlock in Alberta. We have partnered with the AltRoot composting company — and you’ll be hearing from Colby Hansen — testing a fully circular local solution, local businesses collecting organics for local composting applied to a local regenerative farm — a triple bottom line effect of low waste, low carbon and low cost.
Others will be speaking to the research that demonstrates that compost benefits soil health, water retention, agricultural productivity and opportunity to reduce use and dependency on synthetic fertilizers. Proper organics management also presents a critical opportunity to sequester carbon, which is an essential natural solution not offered by other food waste processing options that coincidentally require considerable capital investment and potentially far distances to transport materials.
The linkage between local organics collection and improved soil health is strengthened by another key learning from our pilot — the surprising high participation rates and low contamination. At the moment, compost is considered on par with anaerobic digestion in food waste reduction hierarchy. However, as systems move slowly away from natural gas toward renewables for electricity and heat, more research is needed to identify criteria and geography for which organic compost materials may have higher values.
Additionally, while the Government of Canada is leveraging important infrastructure funding through its low carbon challenges, these investments tend to focus on narrow aspects of food and food systems.
In closing, I’d like to re-emphasize to this committee that there is a tremendous opportunity to prioritize the simple things first in its plan to improve soil health in Canada. By examining food production and consumption and to reorganize it within a circular system, and by using its role as a convenor, it has tremendous opportunity to improve soil health while addressing environmental and social objectives.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr. Hansen.
Colby Hansen, Owner-Operator, Hansen Beef: Good morning, senators.
Thank you for having me here today to speak with you about the work my team and I have been doing and continue to cultivate, which positively supports Canada’s local bio-circular economies, regenerates soils, grows more nutrient-dense food, supports communities, mitigates climate change and diverts food and organic waste from landfills.
With the help and support of my family, we operate a mixed grain and beef cattle farm as well as Hansen Beef in north-central Alberta where, over the past 25 years plus, our operation has continually strived to adopt and develop new ways to keep the family farm transferable to the next generation.
By utilizing innovative practices on our farm, we have managed to achieve the following: healthier soils, crops and livestock; supplied beef and pork to our local communities; lowered our synthetic fertilizer up to 75% and lowered our CO2 equivalent footprint. Yet, farmers still struggle to get paid fairly for our stewardship efforts.
Tools required for farmers to increase uptake of soil health practises are a regenerative agriculture committee commission to be our voice on policy grants, direction and focus of research, as well as new and emerging commodity markets. We must start approaching companies’ growing appetite interested in purchasing our sustainably raised goods, financial incentives and loans catered to regenerative agriculture practices.
Building soil is a long-term investment and ROI, a not-for-profit or government organization to establish a carbon credit bank. Carbon sequestered and emission offsets are earned by the farmers, yet we do not receive fair value. Funds for grants and research is awarded to farmers who demonstrate they are going above and beyond to expedite the participation of soil health and growing Canada’s bio-circular economies.
Over three years ago, my team and I established Alternative Root, or AltRoot, a public-privately run municipal composting facility in Westlock, Alberta situated 50 minutes north of Edmonton where, to date, we have diverted 40,000 tonnes of organic waste destined to landfill. In turn, the 20,000 tonnes of finished compost has been applied on my lands and used as an invaluable tool in my transition to regenerative agriculture. To date, in our community, AltRoot has supported seventeen-plus businesses, created seven new jobs, donated to the local community and organizations while engaging heavily in research and education.
AltRoot’s model is a simple, viable, proven long-term pillar that supports our climate, community, economy and soil health which can be established in strategically placed communities across Canada, or the world for that matter.
Our cart-to-crop model goes as follows: Generators of organic waste work directly with the processors who, in turn, work with local producers. To benefit the common good, investment should be placed in public-private partnerships between communities, processors and farmers in each region. Responsible sorting of waste streams down to the responsible end use of the compost, and is of utmost importance.
Organic waste, communities and farms will be here for generations. It makes sense to support a model that will foster a resilient bio-circular economy.
My team and I are fortunate to be a part of and actively working with the following parties: Dr. Derek MacKenzie, the University of Alberta; Dr. Henry Chau, Agri-Food Canada; Alberta Beef Producers Living Lab; Food Water Wellness Foundation Living Lab; Results Driven Agriculture Research; Circular Innovation Council; Gateway Research Organization, and other successful, innovative individuals in the agriculture sector.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Hansen. Ms. Hingorani.
Asha Hingorani, President, Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association: Good morning, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee.
As you mentioned, my name is Asha Hingorani. I am the president of the Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association, or CSPMA, an association that represents 90% of the yearly extracted peat across Canada, all used in horticulture. Our members operate in seven provinces and provide thousands of direct and indirect jobs in rural communities across the country.
Among the topics covered by the committee on soil health, we would like to address those of food security and carbon sequestration.
As a backdrop, let me state that the peat extraction industry does not operate over vast areas, but extracts peat over relatively small parcels of land. The industry’s footprint, a total area of all peatland surfaces disturbed since the beginning of our activity in the early 1930s, is equivalent to 0.03% of Canada’s 119 million hectares of peatlands.
Peat is the growing media constituent of choice, with unequalled characteristics. Without a doubt, it’s essential for North America’s food security and well-being. Alternative components for use in growing media, like coco coir, wood fibre, bark, green compost, et cetera, exist, but none have the properties to be used alone; all have significant benefits from the unique properties of peat when blended with it, with peat acting as an enabler to compensate for deficiencies and our own environmental footprint, which they all have.
Peat-based growing media is used by consumers, but mostly by professional growers who use peat as their primary soil substrate, notably for flower growing but also for food production, especially in the mushroom, herb and vegetable-growing industries.
Peat is also the most common substrate for field agriculture transplants such as broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes and lettuce. No surprise it was deemed essential by governments across North America during the pandemic.
I am not a scientist, but I will explain what has become a central pillar of the industry’s responsible peatland management commitments, which include carbon sequestration.
For over 30 years, the industry has made possible millions of dollars’ worth of research projects that inform its actions and collaboration with Université Laval’s Peatland Ecology Research Group, as well as federal and provincial government agencies such as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, or NSERC, McGill University, University of Waterloo, the University of Alberta and other universities.
The goal is to acquire knowledge and develop a bog-restoration method that would be operational, feasible and ecologically sound to bring back the ecosystem functions: biodiversity, hydrology and carbon sequestration to post-extraction bogs.
This partnership with the scientists has led to many things, including the development of a technique called the moss layer transfer technique now applied across Canada and the globe, and even used in other peatland disturbances like oil and gas, roads, septic lines and other activities that have a significant impact on peatlands. Using this technique, typical peatland plant communities re-establish within three to five years, and peatlands resume becoming carbon sinks within one to two decades after restoration.
As of late, the industry as also partnered with Environment and Climate Change Canada, or ECCC, on a five-year program to restore and secure additional extracted peatlands known as legacy bogs. With this said, the academic, government and industry partnerships have fostered concrete results and are world-leading and recognized.
Many of you probably have never had the opportunity to visit a peat-extracted site or a restored peatland. I would like to officially invite members of this committee to any of the seven provinces we operate in this upcoming summer to learn about our history and our long-lasting commitment to food security and carbon sequestration. We would invite the scientists we work with so that you can have an exchange with them and the opportunity to learn more about our industry.
Last, I will distribute fact sheets. I hope you have the opportunity to review them. They will review many of the topics I have discussed today.
Thank you for this opportunity to appear this morning.
The Chair: Thank you.
What are the seven provinces? You can tell us during your answers, if you don’t mind.
Ms. Hingorani: Sure.
The Chair: Our final speakers, Ms. Loftsgard and Dr. Lynch.
Tia Loftsgard, Executive Director, Canada Organic Trade Association: Good morning, chair and honourable senators. Thank you for inviting the Canada Organic Trade Association and our scientific expert, Dr. Derek Lynch, to present today.
To incentivize farmers toward optimal soil health management practices, alignment with robust business practices is crucial.
The international acclaim of organically produced goods, attributed to their sustainable cultivation methods, designates them as a premium product. Consumers exhibit a readiness to pay a nominal price differential for these products, conferring a significant financial advantage upon organic farmers.
Noteworthy is the fact that 63% of organic farmers in Canada surpass the $100,000 earnings threshold, as opposed to 46% among their non-organic counterparts. That is from Statistics Canada.
Despite being the fifth-largest global consumer of organic products, only 3% of Canadian farms hold organic certification, presenting a substantial opportunity for organic expansion. Canada’s distinct lack of a policy framework for organic agriculture sets it apart as the sole major agricultural nation without such directives. In ongoing dialogues, we’ve actively engaged with members of Parliament, soliciting political support for the formulation of an organic action plan for Canada, of which I brought a copy today.
The regulated nature of the organic sector, coupled with trade agreements involving 35 countries, underscores its global presence. However, without explicit policy directives, support mechanisms and an overarching framework for organic growth, Canada faces a risk to its competitiveness. The United States and the European Union, with significant investments and growth plans in their policy directives, present a formidable challenge to Canada’s standing in the absence of a comparable strategic approach.
Now, I will hand it over to my colleague to speak to you about organic agriculture’s significant contribution to soil health and why we ask for your support to develop further organic policies and programs in Canada.
Derek Lynch, Professor, Faculty of Agriculture, Dalhousie University, as an individual: Good morning, and thank you again for this opportunity to present and focus on what we know about soil health in organic farming systems in Canada.
I’ve had the opportunity over the last 20 years as Canada research chair in organic agriculture and from leading a number of research projects nationally to look at soil health as influenced by the diversity of organic farming, both livestock and cropping systems. We’ve looked at productivity, nutrient status and many different measures of soil health over that period.
I just want to highlight some points of that work from me and many other researchers, which I’ve highlighted in a review.
Organic farmers are particularly interested in soil ecology, and many social surveys and other studies have shown this to be the case. That’s obviously central to soil health. They’re very interested, particularly in soil life and functioning.
Even though there’s a diversity and intensity of management within organic farming sectors, which is sometimes not recognized, we can generalize that organic farming systems are low-input systems in terms of external nutrient inputs, nitrogen and phosphorus, but with some exceptions, they are not low input in terms of the frequency and amount of residue or carbon returned to soil, which is critical to soil health.
Organic cropping systems require, for nutrient cycling, weed and pest management combining or stacking best management practices, including the best management practices that promote soil health. They are what I like to call the 4 Rs for carbon, namely diversified locations, including crops and cover crops; ensuring residue return; return and use of organic amendments; and adopting a range of tillage intensity. Those are really the central principles of regenerative farming.
As a result of that added decomposition of organic matter or the flux of carbon, if you like, and vegetation diversity on organic farms, we typically find soil health measurements, both physical properties of soil or structure, and soil biological properties, are typically higher on organic farms.
However, there can be situations where there are negative phosphorus deficits on organic farms. Those have to be avoided — so there are potential situations like that — because that can lead to a negative feedback in terms of biomass productivity and cover crop productivity.
In closing, the challenges to soil health in Canada are not primarily technical or soil science related. They’re related to database development, baselines, soil health calibration, and programs and policies to incentivize farmers in adopting regenerative farming practices. Organic farming is a regulated system that provides a premium to farmers exploring and refining a low-input crop and livestock production system that’s necessarily focused on soil health.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you very much to our witnesses. Now, we’ll proceed to questions from senators.
Senators, you have five minutes for questions and answers. We’ll go through more than one round, if necessary. I’d encourage you to limit your questions and answers accordingly, please. With that, let’s start with the deputy chair.
Senator Simons: Mr. Hansen, I had the privilege of visiting your compost operation and your farm this past summer. I’ve had the opportunity to see the scale on which you’re working, but I wonder if you can explain to my colleagues just how much organic waste you’re bringing in, from where and how you are experimenting on your test fields to see how the different combinations work. I think it’s important to understand that you’re not just picking up some restaurant scraps. This is a major operation.
Mr. Hansen: Yes. We are a registered 20,000-tonne facility, regulated under the Alberta environment and parks for feedstock. When you make compost, you need a certain carbon-to-nitrogen ratio — about 10,000 tonnes of wood waste for our carbon source and 10,000 tonnes of food and yard waste. It comes from the Edmonton region and Sherwood Park. When we compost, it reduces to half its weight. Roughly 20,000 tonnes to date is what we have done — about 10,000 tonnes per year.
Unfortunately, there is a major deficiency in composting facilities in our region. Sadly, a lot is going to landfill. I believe there’s roughly 100,000 tonnes of food organics being produced out of residential homes, and that isn’t even accounting for the commercial sector. Therefore, the need to increase capacity and bring it to a facility and bring it to farms like mine that are invested in soil health is critical at this point.
Senator Simons: I’ve seen the operation. You have trucks coming in all the way from Edmonton, bringing Edmonton and Strathcona County garbage. Then you have test fields. You mentioned you are working with the series of academics to see how the different combinations work.
I wonder if you can tell us about what the findings have been so far as to what happens when you’re applying compost — the fields that are purely compost, the fields that are compost mixed with something else and the fields that are compost mixed with nitrogen.
Mr. Hansen: That’s a great question.
We have not just been diverting food waste, but there are other soil amendments in local regions, such as gypsum, which is recycled drywall, or wood ash from pulp mills. We have been exploring with Dr. Derek MacKenzie to mix into the compost to try to provide custom blends to replace synthetic fertilizer. We’ve been two years into it and seeing the best results when it’s a combination of both natural soil amendments and a little bit of synthetic fertilizer; that has been the trend so far.
One challenge, I suppose, is the garbage that is in the compost. It’s polluted with garbage, and there is a huge gap in educating the public. There’s also a huge opportunity to reconnect the urban and rural people. One of our goals in doing these soil studies and compost trials is to show the benefits.
Senator Simons: Right now, you’re primarily using the compost you’re creating on your own fields. At what point do you think you will be able to scale up to be able to take some of that compost product to market?
Mr. Hansen: Right now, we’re trying to work with experts. There is no agronomist who can tell me, “Put this much compost on. It’s going to do X for your field.” We are working with agronomy like that — agronomy catered to soil health — so we can do prescriptive regenerative agricultural practices and reduce the compost used on my farm to supply more acres. That’s my end goal.
Senator Simons: Thanks very much. I’ll also go on a second round.
Senator Oh: Welcome, witnesses. Welcome back again. You were with us a few years ago at another committee. I would like to say that this will probably be our last session for committee work, so happy holidays to everyone.
According to a recent article in The Western Producer, in 2021, Canada was the fifth-largest market in the world for organic food and products, as the industry was worth about $9.35 billion. The Canada Organic Trade Association has stated that the time is right to expand organic agriculture in Canada, because it can provide the environmental solutions that governments and society seek.
What is known from a research perspective about soil health under organic farming in Canada? Can you also tell us what the adoption rate is of organic farming throughout Canada and in which provinces or territories are organic farming most practised and on which type of farms?
Anyone, please.
Ms. Loftsgard: I’ll start off, and then I’ll defer to Derek Lynch.
When it comes to organic adoption, it has been a growth sector year over year with new acres and new operators. This past year was the only year that we haven’t seen a growth in operators, and we have been digging into that. There’s been a lot of consolidation and aging out of farmers. That’s happening in conventional and organic, but this is, certainly, still a growth sector. We are holding on. We are now a $10 billion industry. That figure is outdated. I’m giving you a fact sheet that has all the updated statistics.
The largest adoption has been in Quebec. They have had a policy framework in place for many years to be able to encourage and put together program supports for the adoption of organic. I would say Quebec is a leader in organic, and if we honestly had what Quebec is doing on a national scale, we would be light years ahead.
I will defer over to Dr. Lynch now in regard to the environmental benefits that we see coming out of organic.
Mr. Lynch: Thank you for that question.
Organic systems, when you have less nitrogen and less phosphorus inherently very available in the soil, enhances the amount of legume abundance, for example, and persistence, so you get that more symbiotic production of nitrogen without needing nitrogen coming into the system. Organic systems really rely on this for the legumes to function well. They are doing that in concert with rhizobia in the soil; it’s a symbiosis.
With the low phosphorus, you get another symbiosis. You get mycorrhizal symbiosis in the soil. On top of that, if you’re adding a lot of residues to the soil in one way or the other from cover crops, from retaining the straw residue or adding compost, et cetera, you’re really enhancing biological activity. When we measure soil health, we tend to see more abundance of microbes and more respiration from the soil, so more soil life. That, in turn, enhances soil structure, and we measure that when we do soil health measurements.
We look at aggregate stability that reduces erodibility. It enhances water holding capacity and water infiltration, so we get multiple benefits of just feeding the soil with more residues. That inherently has to be done in organic farming systems. They rely on diversity of cropping to manage nutrients but also manage weeds and pests.
It’s no surprise that you get higher soil health measurements in organic farming systems, as long as they are not running nutrient deficits. That is one of the potential weak links that we’re finding in organics as we study it distinctively in Canada, in particular, a risk of low phosphorus. That actually links to our other speakers, and it’s really interesting. Organic farming is leading the charge, really, in looking at ways of linking to urban sources of phosphorus and closing that loop because organics cannot rely, at the moment, on phosphorus fertilizer. So there’s an incentive in organic systems to look at closing those urban-rural nutrient flows.
Senator Oh: Thank you.
Senator Petitclerc: I want to continue with Dr. Lynch, just to dig in a little bit. I’m interested in knowing, does anybody quantify differences in organic, for example, versus conventional agriculture and the impact on soil health? You have told us the science, but if we were to look for numbers, if we wanted to say, “This is what you get when you do this, and this is what you get when you do this in terms of soil health,” does that even exist?
Mr. Lynch: It does, and there have been excellent long-term studies, particularly in Western Canada — in Manitoba and Alberta — that have compared typical organic and conventional farming. They weren’t always focused on soil health. That’s a bit of a more comprehensive paradigm we are looking at now, and soil carbon.
But just as interestingly, what myself and other researchers have found when we looked at organic farming systems is that there is a surprising range of intensity of management. Even if you take organic dairy production, we did studies almost 15 years ago now on organic dairy that had been long-running in Ontario, and we found quite a spectrum of management. It’s a real trade-off between profitability and productivity versus environmental and soil.
I think that’s what’s really interesting. There’s much more of a spectrum and an overlap in conventional and organic. I’m far less interested in just organic and conventional as though they are one system; they really aren’t. When we’re promoting soil health for all of agriculture and carbon sequestration, inherently we’re talking about trade-offs between productivity and intensity — I like to use that term — versus soil benefits and environmental benefits.
I think there’s a lot to be learned from the diversity within both systems and the overlap, and those are going to be regionally specific as well. I hope that’s a way of answering it.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you. This is helpful.
I do have another question as well. I am hoping it’s not a trick question, but I have the impression that when it comes to organic farming, many are of the view still that it remains a niche market. Even here, in this committee, we sometimes heard, “Yes, but you can’t feed Canada on organic.”
If it is a perception, is this part of the barriers you were referring to?
Ms. Loftsgard: It’s a perception. I don’t think it’s the truth.
Senator Petitclerc: And that’s why I use this word.
Ms. Loftsgard: Thank you for that. Two thirds of Canadians are buying organic products weekly, and when we look at the barriers, definitely it’s cost, but a study that we have done multiple times with Leger with over 1,000 Canadians tested over three years, consumers earning over $100,000 and those earning under $40,000 are consuming organic at the same rate.
It’s a values choice, and I think the more that products become available — and they are the fastest growing category. All the Nielsen studies and all the SPINS data in the United States indicate that there are more and more organic products coming to market as more consumers learn about food systems, and the price is coming down in regard to organic, particularly with inflation. We have been getting a lot of questions, “Oh, is inflation going to price organic completely out of the market?” The premium differential between organic and conventional products has actually declined, because other products have higher input costs; whereas, we don’t have as many input costs that are affected.
The last thing I wanted to say is that we would be happy to share a study. We just had a speaker from the Rodale Institute, which is the pioneer of organic in the United States, and they had an amazing presentation where they showed a long-term study on the effects of organic practices versus conventional, but they also looked at how if a premium is not paid on organic, then it also becomes not sustainable.
As Colby Hansen mentioned, there needs to be an acknowledgement for farmers doing these extra measures.
Senator Klyne: I will probably need three rounds this morning. Welcome to our guests.
My first question is for the Canada Organic Trade Association. Can you summarize for us the fundamentals of organic agriculture, what distinguishes it from conventional agriculture, and share your thoughts on the climate change impact of these agriculture systems?
The second part of that question is: Are there mistaken assumptions around traditional versus genetically modified organisms, or GMO, versus organic cultures? With regard to organic, I think at one point it was given a bad rap for lettuce having to be called back because the organic created some type of issue.
Ms. Loftsgard: I can speak to it, and then I’ll ask Dr. Lynch to chime in.
With organic, organic is a regulated production standard. It is about the methodology that’s used. I don’t like referring to what it’s not, but it’s no synthetic pesticides; no genetic engineering; no sewage sludge; no irradiation; and no preservatives, additives or colouring allowed in the processing. It’s much more than that, because you need to keep everything segregated. Traceability and transparency are in those standards. Of course, we have to look at our international trade partners’ standards as well so that we are able to trade internationally for organic. We have a Codex Alimentarius for organically produced food, internationally.
Simply, when it comes to the benefits of organic, there have perhaps been some cultural barriers that have been put out there in regard to understanding what organic means. Essentially, it’s the original regenerative. Now, “regenerative” is becoming a popular term. “Regenerative organic” were the original words coined by the Rodale Institute in the United States.
Maybe we regret not using “regenerative” enough and saying “organic,” but the word that is trademarked by the Government of Canada is “organic,” and it’s internationally known. But we are talking a lot more about the regenerative practices of organic, and I think we need to do a better job of conveying what that is, beyond a logo.
Senator Klyne: That was a full answer. You mentioned Professor Lynch perhaps chiming in, but I have another question. Maybe both of you can answer.
On your website, there’s a call to action opposing the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s, or CFIA’s, current proposal that would allow product developers to release some genetically engineered, or GE seeds without any government oversight or mandatory notification. Can you explain why you state that the proposal threatens the viability of organic food and farming? Are there possible ramifications of this policy on soil health?
Ms. Loftsgard: Absolutely.
We have been in discussion for over a year on that topic with CFIA and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The rationale of why it is opposed is that genetically engineered will not have the same rigour and oversight by the federal government since it’s not considered a genetically modified organism, or GMO. With that lack of a definition, there will no longer be any traceability or transparency of genetically engineered seeds or feed coming into Canada, which we need to avoid using. There’s no GMO or GE labelling, so farmers will not know what the seeds are. That poses a huge risk to our sector.
We have been in dialogue for over a year. The measures moved ahead in May. We are still in dialogue in regard to the transparency that’s needed for us to be able to coexist, and we continue to call upon the government to be able to ensure that there will be traceability and transparency on genetically engineered seeds and feed, as they have never been released into the environment before. We should take a precautionary principle measure to make sure that we’re protecting the agricultural sector and biodiversity.
Senator Klyne: Okay. Thank you.
Ms. Loftsgard: You’re welcome.
Senator Klyne: Are we out of time?
The Chair: You have 40 seconds.
Senator Klyne: We’re out of time.
The Chair: Okay, thank you.
Senator Cotter: With my five minutes and 40 seconds —
The Chair: You’re dreaming.
Senator Klyne: You’re welcome.
Senator Cotter: I have a small question for Ms. Hingorani, and then one somewhat larger question that I’d invite each of the four of you to answer in the course of a minute or so.
Briefly, with respect to peat, Senator Black and I were briefed on peat restoration on the British Isles, for example. It hadn’t occurred to me that this was an issue or potential here. Can you give me an idea of how much peat there is and where it is?
Ms. Hingorani: Yes, absolutely. Thank you for the question.
To answer Senator Black’s question, and referring to yours, we operate in eight provinces. That was a mistake on my part. Quebec and New Brunswick have our largest production, followed by Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador. We have one member in Newfoundland, so that’s the one I forgot.
We don’t use peat in Canada for energy; it’s 100% for horticultural use. Over the last 30 years, the industry has invested in science — and I spoke about the moss-layer transfer technique — and that is the result of 30 years of partnerships with universities, figuring out how to mitigate the impact we have on the environment. That’s where we came to the moss-layer transfer technique in terms of restoring our bogs. It’s a practice that’s carried across Canada, and there are different methods based on which province you’re in and whatever ecological factors are involved.
Within our eight provinces, we take it very seriously. It’s something that is deemed as the Canadian method and used overseas as well.
Senator Cotter: In the second round, I’ll re-ask that question, Ms. Hingorani, because I wanted to know how much peat there was, but I do have another —
The Chair: You have three minutes. We might not have a second round.
Senator Cotter: Let me pose my larger question for each of you, if I might.
I will make a proposition and invite you to tell me whether I’m accurate in this. It feels to me as though it links the perspectives that each of you are bringing to this — and this has really been a fascinating and helpful panel for us; let me say that.
In terms of organics, composting and strategies around this, markets are a challenge for your products. Mr. Hansen, you mentioned the issue of getting a fair and good price for them. We probably don’t have an enormous amount of influence over that issue, other than the ways in which we might encourage the value of people embracing the products that you produce and sell, and the ways in which you generate it.
But on some other fronts — first, the work you are doing is good for farms and producers, but there’s also a public good connected here that we have, essentially, talked about. That might be less use of pesticides and the like, greater carbon sequestration, probably healthier foods — all of those things — where governments have a role to play in a richer way than trying to get you a higher price for your product, for example.
I guess I’m interested in whether that’s a fair formulation and whether there are messages that we can be building into our work that can assist in that being recognized and championed in some ways, whether it’s the recommendations that you’ve shared with us or otherwise.
Have I got the equation right? Am I too diminishing of the contributions that you’re making? Mr. Hansen, maybe you could start.
Mr. Hansen: I feel you’re right in the respect that if we could get working with our communities on promoting. For example, if we say, “Hey, if you divert your food waste in a responsible manner, I will grow you a pound of beef that is more nutrient dense.” It connects people back to the soil, and from there, I feel everyone will be incentivized to do a better job of sorting their organics.
Senator Cotter: Thanks. Ms. Hingorani?
Ms. Hingorani: Yes, just to answer your first question.
Senator Cotter: No, I don’t want you to answer that right now. I would like your reply to this larger question about whether it is our role as the federal government to help recognize the public good that you’re doing and not specifically try to get you more money for your products, because we can’t tinker with the markets, in some ways.
Ms. Hingorani: Right. The peat industry is regulated provincially, not necessarily federally, but I think the federal government has a responsibility to recognize the industry in terms of the responsible management practices that we have been invested in. We could be an example to other natural resource industries in terms of restoration and responsible management.
Senator Cotter: I should get credit for getting an answer to your question, shouldn’t I?
The Chair: There are no credits given.
Ms. St. Godard: Sorry to interrupt, but is there time —
The Chair: Did you have a really quick response?
Ms. Loftsgard: No, I don’t.
The Chair: Okay, Ms. St. Godard?
Ms. St. Godard: To perhaps add to Mr. Hansen’s comments around this broader question, the sentiment of my opening statements was this policy disconnect and that there are policy silos. There is definitely a role for the federal government, which is obviously focused on soil health and the connection to climate and sequestration, which are maybe obvious connections.
However, there is this disconnect maybe tied to the different roles and responsibilities of the different levels of governments, provincial being responsible for waste management and organics within that, then local governments or municipalities who are charged with the management of those materials and work independently.
There’s a critical role with this plan and report that you’re developing, and the federal government more generally, to connect and be convening these policy advancements, recognizing agri-food as a system.
The Chair: Thank you.
We have ten minutes left. We have three speakers, then three in round two. I’m going to propose that we carry on with the two or three speakers in the first round.
I will give each of you who want to ask secondary questions the chance to ask your questions, then you could provide us — after the fact — with answers to those questions as part of the submission. That way you will get your questions answered.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you to the witnesses for being here. There are so many questions. Five minutes will not be enough.
Mr. Hansen, I get the feeling — maybe I’m wrong — that you’re frustrated that the federal government is not doing a good job in raising awareness on how we can help with organic content or with composting, especially in the household.
You may not have an answer now, but if there’s one recommendation from you, what should the federal government be doing?
Mr. Hansen: Thank you for the question. That’s a great question. I will give you some follow-up information on that.
I feel they are trying, like farmers are trying, to find solutions. We’re at a point where people are being asked to meet targets and farmers are being asked to meet carbon-emission targets.
We need people who are problem solvers and innovators using new techniques to be heard and engaged because we have solutions to these new problems. There are groups of us who can provide viable solutions for a better tomorrow.
Senator Jaffer: May I respectfully ask that you set that out more specifically and send your answers to the clerk?
Mr. Hansen: Absolutely.
Senator Jaffer: The clerk will send it to us, so it’s better understood by us. One of the things the committee does is to make recommendations. That would be something we could recommend.
We all collect compost in our house religiously; from what I understand, we are not doing it correctly, so can you provide your recommendation on that as well?
I want to ask you, Ms. Hingorani, in the light of recognized environmental impacts of draining peat soil, what innovative strategies could the federal government implement to protect Canada’s peat soils and support Canada’s peat growers?
Ms. Hingorani: It’s a great question. The industry over the last 30 years has already come up with those innovative ways. It’s up to the federal government to endorse those practices and, as I was telling Senator Cotter, to use it as an example.
As I mentioned, we work with various universities across Canada. Those are the experts that have developed and helped us understand the impacts we have.
The fact that Canada has come up with a method to restore and bring back the ecological functions of peatlands, that’s something that needs to be championed. We are showing the rest of the world how it can be done.
The federal government can certainly champion that as well and shows many in Canada and various natural resource industries that restoring the land after use is significantly important and it can be done.
I will add that these regulations were industry-imposed and not government-imposed. We did this before any regulations were imposed upon us. We took it upon ourselves to understand the impacts and figure out how we can be better stewards.
Senator Jaffer: I will ask you the same question, if you can kindly reflect on what recommendation we can make, that would be helpful.
I see I’m almost out of time, so the same with you, Ms. Loftsgard — both of you — please give us some specific recommendations. You have spent so much time thinking about it, if we can have some specific recommendations from all three of you.
Ms. Loftsgard: What I have handed out is our recommendations. It’s an organic action plan for Canada. It is solely the federal government that has the ability to regulate organic, because it’s a federal jurisdiction. We do have provincial organic regulations in most of the provinces, except for Ontario and Saskatchewan. It is the federal government who owns the trademark, the claim of organic, and regulation.
Senator Jaffer: I saw that. I will look at it. Thank you.
Senator Burey: Thank you to the witnesses. It’s so interesting to hear this information.
Tagging along on your policy framework — everyone can answer these questions — I’m always interested in the data and the demographics. Who is in this space? Can you shed some light on women, racialized Canadians, Indigenous Canadians?
Secondly, how could we have a more inclusive policy framework so that we can include all Canadians? This really gets to Mr. Hansen’s proposition of connecting urban and rural communities. That’s the larger question for everyone.
Ms. Loftsgard: We do have statistics in regard to women and youth being more representative in organic agriculture, and that is from the Statistics Canada’s Census of Agriculture. We worked closely to make sure that there were questions on organic so we could parse out the data.
There were no questions in regard to Indigenous or racialized, so that is a difficult question for us to answer because it was not part of the agriculture census.
When it comes to Indigenous methods of agriculture, it’s very much aligned with the organic principles and our health care ecology and fairness.
When it comes to organic, you’ll see more and more women and youth being involved because of the next-generation farmer being more aware of what’s going on the soil and what’s going on in their human health as well as the fairness principle and making sure that they are being paid for their ecological services.
Ms. Hingorani: Thank you for the question.
I don’t have any specific data in regard to that question. I will say that in the seven or eight provinces we do work with, the majority are family businesses. We employ many different age groups and genders.
The fact that most peatlands are on Crown lands, we have the duty to consult. Many of the businesses work with the Indigenous communities to educate them, bring them in and provide jobs, et cetera.
I’m proud to represent an industry that does have these inclusive policies. In terms of the specific data you are asking for, I do not have it.
Senator Burey: Would you be able to get it?
Ms. Hingorani: Yes, I can definitely try to see if I can find that information. Yes, thanks.
Senator Burey: Those outcomes would be good.
Mr. Hansen: As a farmer practising soil health principles, there’s a connection to the land. An observation is key to success. That goes back to respecting the Indigenous ways of doing things.
Absolutely, in a broad spectrum, there’s a huge opportunity to bring back Indigenous people and learn from their past experiences of how to truly take care of the land.
Ms. St. Godard: I’m happy to add to some of the points and elaborate.
While we don’t have specific statistics either in this area, I would say there is obviously a direct connection between the food insecurity populations and marginalized populations.
Insofar as we’re helping to educate Canadians in general around agri-food as a system, and their role in their homes, businesses and institutions to take care of organic waste — and to understand it as a valuable resource that should be redirected into compost, and then ultimately land applies and how that connects back to improving security of food and nutrition — that is embedded in all of the educational resources and programs that we have available for Canadians.
The Chair: Thank you.
As I said, Senators Simons, Oh and Klyne, can you ask your questions, direct them where they need to go quickly and then we’ll ask them to send responses to the committee through Ms. Simpson.
Senator Simons: I question was going to be for Ms. Hingorani. Natural peat bogs are natural carbon sinks, and although the peat, when used in soil, enhances soil health, there’s a countervail, which is that extracting the peat releases CO2.
Could you tell us what the trade-offs and balances are? Extracting peat eliminates its function as a carbon sink, never mind as a bird habitat, a fish habitat or a water filtration system.
Senator Oh: Organic is doing well in Canada. Are we doing well overseas? Are we exporting enough? Because there is commercial value. I travel a lot overseas. I don’t see many Canadian organic products on supermarket shelves. Can you give us some information? Thanks.
Senator Klyne: I have questions, and I’d be happy to send them to you if you give me some contact information.
First, for Ms. St. Godard, on your website, it says the nutrient-rich compost will be applied to local regenerative mixed farms. Later on, your website also states that, as of September 2023, you generated 94 cubic yards of compost. Are there different grades of compost? In one spot, you mentioned nutrient-rich compost and in another spot it’s compost.
Also, you reference regenerative mixed farming. It’s my understanding that not every region of Canada is conducive to regenerative farming. Do you serve specifically, or is it a misnomer that regenerative farming is not for every region?
I’ll ask another question of Ms. Hingorani. With respect to Senator Simons’s question, I’d like to frame that with respect to a specific article published by the University of Oregon. We’ll send you the details on that.
Mr. Hansen, you mentioned regenerative farming, so I have the same question about every region being suitable for regenerative farming. I don’t think every region is suitable, so maybe you can set me straight on that.
Mr. Lynch, I was interested in some of the things you said. You’ve stated that it’s inconclusive whether organic systems promote carbon sequestration, but organic definitely promotes soil health. I wouldn’t mind hearing your opinion on that.
As I said, if you give me contact information, I’ll frame it in a nicer way.
The Chair: Can I ask, Senator Klyne, that you frame your questions and send them through the Clerk of the Committee. That way, it all comes back to the clerk and can be distributed.
Senator Klyne: Yes.
The Chair: Thank you. Quickly, I’m glad Ms. St. Godard mentioned the Guelph-Wellington County pilot project. It’s very close to my heart and home. I’d like you to consider that it was started because of a significant financial award through a competition. Is that the only way we can encourage those types of things? I’d like to hear some thoughts on that. It was a $10 million award through a competition, I believe.
Mr. Hansen, I’d like to know how we can get the good stuff that you’re doing out across the country. We’ve heard there’s a lack of repositories of information; it’s a siloed effect. The work you’re doing could very well happen in Wellington County, my home region, but we might not know about it. Please give us a recommendation on how that stuff can be shared.
Thank you, Ms. Hingorani, for telling us that there is an opportunity to appropriately reclaim areas. I’m very pleased to hear that.
Those are my comments and questions.
Colleagues and witnesses, thanks very much. We could talk to you for another hour, and then we’d have more speakers after that. We appreciate the time you’ve given us. We will make sure you get a final report when it comes, but I encourage you to follow us as we move long. I know many of you are. Your assistance with that study is very much appreciated.
For our second panel on canola and potato growers, we welcome to the committee, the Canadian Canola Growers Association, Roger Chevraux, Chair by video conference; Dave Carey, Vice President, Government and Industry Relations in person. From the Prince Edward Island Potato Board, we will be having Greg Donald, General Manager by video conference. He has stepped away for a few minutes, and Ryan Barrett, Research and Agronomy Specialist, again by video conference.
I invite you to make your presentations. We will begin with Mr. Chevraux, followed by Mr. Donald. And if he doesn’t show up, Mr. Barrett, you’re on. You’ll each have five minutes to make your presentations, and I’ll give you a one-minute warning. When you see two hands up, it means that it is time to wrap up. With that, the floor is yours, Mr. Chevraux.
Roger Chevraux, Chair, Canadian Canola Growers Association: Thank you for the invitation to speak today. I appreciate the offer.
I am joining you today from Killam, Alberta, where our family farm, Century 12 Farms, grows cereals and oilseeds. I serve as chair of both Canadian Canola Growers Association, or CCGA, and Alberta Canola Producers Commission. I mention the name of my farm because it tells you a lot about it. My great-grandfather started farming our land in 1912, which makes it one of the oldest farms in our region of the Prairies. This makes me a fourth-generation farmer and my son a fifth. Joining you in person today is Dave Carey, who is based in Ottawa.
CCGA represents Canada’s 43,000 canola farmers on issues that impact their success. Canola is one of Canada’s most widely seeded crops, generating the largest farm cash receipts of any agricultural commodity, earning farmers $13.8 billion in revenue in 2022.
We are committed to a sustainable future. By 2025, we plan to reduce fuel usage by 18% per bushel, increase land-use efficiency by 40% per bushel, sequester an additional 5 million tonnes of CO2, use 4R nutrient stewardship practices on 90% of canola acres and continue to safeguard the more than 2,000 beneficial insects that call canola fields and surrounding habitat home.
Soil health is critical to the success of farmers and their livelihoods and our ability to pass our farms on to the next generation as my family has done all these years. A number of on-farm practices such as crop rotations, conservation tillage, diverse seed varieties, soil testing and precision agriculture technologies help maintain and improve soil health and support biodiversity.
For example, canola has helped prevent soil erosion by enabling the adoption of conservation tillage practises. One of the largest challenges with growing canola is competition from weeds. Farmers previously relied on tilling the soil to remove weeds from their fields. With the introduction of herbicide-tolerant canola and continual improvements in farming practices, farmers have reduced tillage leaving the soil structure largely intact.
In 1991, 7% of Canadian farmland was seeded with no-till practices and by 2021, this number increased to 61%. By voluntarily adopting this practice, farmers like myself have improved soil cover, sequestered carbon and reduced soil erosion risk while reducing fuel and labour requirements.
More generally in the Prairies, soil erosion risk has decreased over the period of 1981 to 2016, with the majority of farmland in Canada now considered to be at very low risk from soil erosion. Adopting conservation tillage has contributed to this as well as replacing summer fallow acres with canola, a crop that sequesters a significant amount of carbon due to its deep root system.
Improved soil management also provides a range of benefits to society as a whole. Increased food production, climate change mitigation, water quality improvements and biodiversity conservation can all result from improved soil health.
To support the further adoption of beneficial management practices, farmers should be supported through government investment in programs supporting continual improvement in soil health. For example, one of Alberta’s On-Farm Climate Action Fund providers, Results Driven Agriculture Research, supports farmers with nitrogen management by covering soil testing costs to increase sampling intensity. Unfortunately, the program is oversubscribed.
In 2023, 276 projects that would support on-farm sustainability were not funded.
Farmers take on risk when adopting new technologies, equipment or practices. We make investments when we are confident in the economic stability and sustainability of our operations. In addition to improved government support, another way to encourage farmers to invest in new technologies and practices would be to pass an unamended Bill C-234. By providing relief from carbon pricing on natural gas and propane, those dollars can be invested into technologies that will have a positive environmental outcome.
In conclusion, canola farmers are partners in the protection and improvement of soil health but need additional support to accelerate the adoption of new technologies and practices. We care about the health of our soils as we understand the important role it plays in producing the high-quality canola crop we are known for. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Mr. Donald is next. Nice to see you again, Mr. Donald. Thank you.
Greg Donald, General Manager, Prince Edward Island Potato Board: Good morning. Thank you for the invitation to speak to you this morning.
My name is Greg Donald, and I am the General Manager of the Prince Edward Island Potato Board. Joining me is Ryan Barrett, Research and Agronomy Specialist for the Board. I’m pleased to provide you with a brief opening statement to share the board’s perspective on soil health, but both Ryan and I would be glad to answer any questions you have afterward.
The Prince Edward Island Potato Board represents P.E.I. potato growers, working together to ensure long-term profitability and sustainability through marketing, advocacy, negotiations and activities to support quality potato production.
We represent approximately 175 family farms — most of them are multi-generational farms, seven or eight generations in some cases — producing more than 1.1 million tonnes of potatoes each year.
Like all farms, our soil is the very foundation of our industry, and its health is fundamental to our short-term and long-term viability and profitability.
Unlike many commodities, growing potatoes necessitates some level of soil disturbance to plant and harvest our crop. Nonetheless, our producers have been actively engaged in finding ways to disturb soil less, keep our soils covered and improve our practices to prioritize the health of soil.
P.E.I. generally has a sandy-loam soil, high annual precipitation — over 1100 millimetres a year — and rolling topography. While these qualities have made our province ideal for potato production in many ways, they also make us vulnerable to soil erosion. This erosion, combined with frequent tillage and a decline in the livestock population, led to a long-term decline in soil organic matter and soil health as measured by our province’s Soil Quality Monitoring Project. Over the past many years, this has occurred.
Thankfully, we have seen these trends stabilize and start improving in recent years, no doubt due in large part to the implementation of a number of best management practices that prioritize soil health.
According to surveys of our member farms — we like to quantify things — about half of P.E.I. potato acres are now planted with fall cover crops before and after potato production, easily one of the best rates of cover cropping in Canada. The majority of our farms now use residue tillage practices, often seeding cover crops at the same time. Erosion control structures are now commonplace in most potato fields. The P.E.I. Department of Agriculture provides free soil health testing services through the provincial soil lab, so farms can benchmark the health of their fields and use that to monitor long-term improvement.
P.E.I. was home to the first Living Labs project in Canada — we’re very proud of that — with a focus on soil health and water quality. It has been a very successful initiative that has now been renewed under the Agricultural Climate Solutions program.
Our Agronomy Initiative for Marketable Yield, or AIM, which Ryan Barrett leads, is a collaborative industry research and agronomy program with an entire working group committed to soil improvement, including projects in soil compaction, soil mapping, precision agriculture, improved fertility management, optimizing crop rotation and the use of organic amendments. In addition, we have seen a shift toward faster-maturing varieties which allow us to harvest earlier, decreasing the risk of soil compaction and increasing the window for cover crop establishment.
There is a lot more that we could share, of course, but we know our time is up. I would encourage you to visit our website for more information at www.peipotato.org, where you can learn more about our organization, our sustainability efforts and our research and agronomy initiatives.
Thank you again for your invitation to appear in front of the committee. Mr. Barrett and I are happy to answer any questions that you might have.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Donald and to our other witnesses.
We will proceed with questions from senators. We will try for five minutes per senator for questions. We may not get to a second round, but we’ll see.
We’ll once again start with the deputy chair, Senator Simons.
Senator Simons: I want to start in Alberta with canola. Canola is, of course, a very lucrative and successful crop for a lot of Alberta farmers, but we have heard witnesses who have come before us and with whom we’ve met on our travels who have expressed concern that because canola is such a lucrative crop to grow, that it’s sometimes being planted in fields where it’s not best suited. Specifically, on land that is better suited to forage, or the more drought-stricken parts of the Prairies such as the Palliser’s Triangle, and that kind of area. The concern that’s been raised is that the insurance programs for canola farmers are such that if the canola goes in and fails, there’s reasonable compensation; whereas, there isn’t the same kind of insurance for forage, or ranging beef.
What advice do you give to your own farmers about how they can best decide, whether something should be planted in canola or if it would be better to turn a particular field back to forage or another crop altogether, a legume, say?
Mr. Chevraux: Thank you for the question.
The first thing to note is that agriculture is definitely a business, and we do, as a rule, always make decisions based upon what is going to get us the best return on investment. In some cases, that is canola over legumes.
One of the things that we’re striving to do in the industry right now with some of the new breeding techniques that were talked about in the previous session is to develop canola varieties which are better suited for areas that are drier. I can speak to some of the advancements that have occurred in the past 35 years since I started farming.
For our crops at home, in a good year, the best we could get was about 21 or 22 bushels. During the drought season that we have had over the last couple of years, I averaged over 44 or 45 bushels to the acre, so in poor conditions we are growing double the size of the crop. That is really being able to expand the number of acres that we can grow across the Prairies. As a result, it’s making it beneficial for a lot of farmers to be able to have an option that is very economical and helps their businesses as a whole.
It’s always something we’re changing. Our breeding processes are getting better every time. I would like to see some advancements in some of the gene editing to finally get approved, and I think that will take us a step further.
Hopefully, that answers your question.
Senator Simons: Well, that’s interesting, because we just had the Canada Organic Trade Association in, and they were raising concerns about genetically modified organisms, or GMO, product. I’ve seen the benefits of GMO in many cases, but do you feel there’s a tension between the need to be breeding and gene editing and the fears that certain people have about GMO in terms of taking your product to market?
Mr. Chevraux: I think there needs to be a real distinction made between GMO and gene editing. Those are two distinctly different things, and they are being recognized around the world as being two distinctly different things.
Gene editing is basically an acceleration of normal plant breeding that has occurred in the past. We are just taking the processes which would have taken 10, 12 or maybe 20 years and we’re able to do it quicker, but it’s not changing the plant. We’re not introducing something different into the plant, which GMO is. It’s just enhancing our plant breeding techniques.
I think there are some unknowns about it. A lot of people don’t understand the differences, but it is something that I think is very beneficial overall for agriculture in Canada and in the world. Because, honestly, we do feed the world. Ninety percent of our canola production, for example, is exported either in the form of canola seed, canola oil or canola meal.
I see my time is up.
Senator Simons: I had a very quick question. With P.E.I. potato production, apart from cover crops, is there any capacity to do more aggressive crop rotation so that you’re not mono cropping with potatoes all the time, or are the climate and soil conditions such that you can’t switch to another crop in off years?
Mr. Donald: I’m glad you asked that question.
There’s approximately 600,000 arable acres on P.E.I., and in any one year, in fact, only 15% of that acreage is planted with potatoes. We have a very diverse cropping on Prince Edward Island. Likewise with potatoes, the standard rotation is every three years for the acres that are planted.
But having said all that — and Mr. Barrett can, perhaps, comment more — we’re forever seeking other crops that we can grow in rotation that will also give a good return to farmers, and that has been a big challenge.
Mr. Barrett, do you have anything to add?
The Chair: Very quickly.
Ryan Barrett, Research and Agronomy Specialist, Prince Edward Island Potato Board: Just briefly, as Mr. Donald said, in our three-year rotation, the majority of our acres use a non‑cash crop in the year before potatoes, which is usually a perennial grass or perennial forage, which is uncommon in most of Canadian potato production.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Oh: My question is for Mr. Chevraux.
We know that canola is a very important cash crop for Canada. We do a lot of export on that. My question to you is: What supports from the federal government do canola growers need to adequately account for the carbon that is sequestered in their soils?
Mr. Chevraux: That’s a great question. There are a couple of things that I would like to point out. I think that our benchmarking that we’ve done into how much emissions are actually occurring in agriculture is really lacking. It doesn’t recognize the advancements that the Canadian farmer has done. No-till farming has done such a tremendous amount of good for our soils and, I think, for emissions, because we are leaving the organic matter.
I can speak to the fact that in the past 30 years since we’ve switched over to zero-till farming, our soils have improved greatly in the quality of where they stand. I don’t want to knock what my great-grandfather did. He used the best technology he had available at the time, but our advancements have done so much to our soil.
I have pictures and examples of where soil erosion occurred as a result of my grandfather’s practices, and today I can tell you that those have been stopped and our soil is completely better.
It was noted earlier in one of the conversations about having some recognition about how much carbon is being sequestered. I think it needs to be recognized how much work the farmers are doing and are being paid for that effort, because to take agriculture from the conventional, where we were using tillage, to where we are today with modern machinery, precision agriculture, zero-till equipment, all of that is tremendously expensive. A new drill this year, with a tractor to pull it, would cost me well over a million dollars, and I’m an average-size farmer. Then if we are taking a look at some of the costs associated with precision farming, it’s reoccurring all the time, all the soil testing that occurs.
I did some numbers for my own farm. I have 18 different fields. A normal soil sampling would have cost me about $135 per field. To do precision farming that cost goes up to $840 per field. For my farm alone, that’s just about $13,000. Some support in those kinds of things, recognizing that these are costs that occur every year, that the support isn’t just for one year, and that it goes across to all farmers, not just those farmers who have been late to adopting but also to the early adopters.
That’s where a lot of the programs fall down. It’s very expensive. It’s a big gamble to take on new practices, new equipment and everything else in the hope that it might work, and then to find out later on, once we prove that it works, that those late adopters then get some reward for adopting the practices that we have already proven are true. There needs to be support all the way across agriculture for all those who are adopters.
Hopefully, that answers your question.
Senator Oh: For the 18 fields that you have, what is the production in metric tonnes per year?
Mr. Chevraux: It depends on the crop. I grow three different crops in crop rotation. I grow canola, wheat and malt barley. Canola, I’m probably close to a tonne or maybe, in a good year, a tonne and a half per acre. For wheat, it’s probably very similar, one to 1.5, maybe 1.7, tonnes per acre, and the same with barley. Barley is probably even a bit better than that in a really good year, maybe over two.
Senator Klyne: Welcome to our expert witnesses here. My first question is for the Canadian Canola Growers Association.
Mr. Curtis Rempel, Vice-President of Crop Production Innovation, said:
Our challenge is to increase our yields and increase our carbon sequestration through yield intensification while reducing our greenhouse gas emissions on the production side.
One of the canola industry’s stated sustainability targets for 2025 is a “40% decrease in the amount of land required to produce one tonne of canola.”
There are two questions to both these comments. On the latter, can you explain how you’re going to do this in terms of the 40% decrease in the amount of land usage? Could you elaborate on the specific techniques and what would be the impact on soil health? Also, thinking about that and Mr. Rempel’s comments, are those complementary objectives there? With regard to both of them, what tools are in place, or need to be in place to support strategies for boosting productivity and carbon sequestration as well as the 40% decrease in land usage?
Mr. Chevraux: Thank you for the question. I am familiar with Mr. Rempel and the canola council.
Yes, it is a target that we are going to achieve. It may take us longer than 2025 to get there. As I mentioned to the previous senator, the production of my farm has more than doubled over the past 30 years, and that’s a trajectory that we hope continues.
To answer your question about soil health, if they are the same or if they go hand in hand, the answer is absolutely, yes. I think it was even mentioned by the organic people that when we return more plant material or more residue back into the soil, our organic matter increases. It makes the soil better. That has happened as a result of our increase in production over that period of time.
The soil health on our farm, for example, is far ahead of where it was 30 years ago. It’s obvious to those who have walked out in the fields, the differences in what has occurred.
To answer your question, I think it is. I think there are a lot of things that we need to have done in the regulatory rules that are happening in the government. One of them is the approval of the advanced breeding technologies. This is one of the biggest things that are going to get us new varieties which are more capable of handling the environmental conditions that we’re facing through climate change or just regular farming activities. We do have droughts, we have always had droughts, and we always have had years with too much rain. So we need varieties that are able to adapt to those things more.
The other thing is support from some of these programs to move to precision farming. There are programs out there right now. The OFCAF program is a great one.
It will take time for farmers to realize the benefits to precision farming because it is, as I said, an extremely expensive process to move into. Certain areas of farming can see more of a benefit quicker, so those farmers are adopting it quicker than some areas where the benefits aren’t as quick or as great.
It’s just a continuation of promotion of those types of activities.
Senator Klyne: In the coming years, what kind of federal assistance will canola farmers require in order to properly account for the carbon stored in their soils?
Mr. Chevraux: I will defer that one. Mr. Carey, have you got an answer to that one?
Dave Carey, Vice President, Government and Industry Relations, Canadian Canola Growers Association: We have been waiting for Environment and Climate Change Canada’s enhanced soil organic carbon protocol. They have been extremely delayed. They did explain that that was a priority. It was supposed to be out last year. We have still not seen it this year.
To Mr. Chevraux’s point, the notion around that is that farmers should be compensated for the carbon they sequester. It’s a very difficult science, but we know that canola accounts for approximately 70% of all sequestration from field crops because of its deep root system. Maybe 11 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year are sequestered. However, ECCC is languishing in their ability to actually bring the protocol to bear. We have not seen consultation or a draft on it yet, senator.
Senator Jaffer: I want to first start with you on the canola growing. I didn’t quite understand. Could you clarify what you meant about newcomers and those who have already done? Could you expand on that? If I understood you, the people who are coming on and newly adopting the policies are getting better compensation than those who have already implemented the policy. Could you please expand on that idea?
Mr. Chevraux: Sure. An example of that is the OFCAF program and the 4R Nutrient program. There are farmers who have been using those types of principles for a long time and been using environmentally safe nitrogen or smart nitrogen. There have been people who have been using zero tillage or precision farming.
If you’ve already been using it before the OFCAF program, those acres don’t qualify for a subsidy. If you haven’t been using it up until the program, then you qualify for those subsidies from the government. If you have been an early adopter, developed the technology, proven that it works and your neighbours start picking up on it, they qualify but you don’t. Does that make sense?
Senator Jaffer: Absolutely. What you are saying is just because you have started better farming habits earlier, you are being penalized and not being properly compensated. Is that correct?
Mr. Chevraux: You’re not getting compensated to the same level or you’re not being recognized for your part in doing it.
The early adopters are the ones who are really taking the biggest risk off the bat. Again, the cost associated with a lot of this equipment is extremely high. As I said, I’m an average-size farmer, and that’s a hard pill to swallow when you’re having to pay for that kind of equipment and that kind of a process.
Another example, as I mentioned, is environmentally smart nitrogen. I use around 200 tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer a year, and the cost associated with ESN, as it’s called, is about $140 a tonne more.
It is good for the benefit of the soil, and it does help in the development of good crops. My crops have been better as a result of it. However, that’s a reoccurring cost. I’ve used it over and over again, and now someone who comes in late gets a bit of recognition and some subsidies back for it, and I don’t get that because I previously proved that the system worked.
Senator Jaffer: If I extend that, saying that your crops are better, then don’t you get better compensation for your better crops? Have you not been benefiting from that?
Mr. Chevraux: It depends on the year and on the market. Right now, the commodity prices are falling. So I paid for fertilizer a year ago with the hopes I was going to have a great crop and then the commodity prices this year — now that the crop is off, the commodity prices are actually falling, but my expenses are already set from a year ago.
So the answer is “not necessarily.” Yes, hopefully in good years, I do get some reward for that in the fact that I have higher yields, but it doesn’t always happen that way.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you.
I have a question for you, Mr. Donald. You have talked about cover farming. Considering the benefits of cover crops, and reducing erosion and nitrate leaching, as well as boosting potato yields, what challenges do potato farmers face in implementing these practices? How might they be addressed to promote future sustainable farming?
Mr. Donald: Mr. Barrett can probably comment on this as well. As far as the first part, one of the biggest challenges with potatoes is, as we said, we have over 50% uptake now before and after potatoes. The issue is having cover crops that will germinate after potato harvests, particularly those potatoes that are harvested after the middle of October that are more tolerant of the cold. Finding cover crops that can be seeded at that time of the year would be really important, for example.
The other thing I’d like to comment on more broadly — and it’s similar to some of the things that Mr. Chevraux was saying — is that we are seeing the benefits of cover cropping, new tillage practices — all kinds of new practices — but the challenge is that costs are getting high and that investments that are needed, such as longer-term investments, like potato storage, irrigation infrastructure or drainage when we get too much rain, it’s getting really hard — and I know I’m very concerned — making it difficult to continually invest in longer-term things.
Although they are very open and eager to try and do more things that are more sustainable from an environmental point of view and that build soil health, sometimes with those, you don’t see the returns until further down the road.
Ryan, I don’t know if there is anything else there you want to comment on.
Mr. Barrett: No, thank you.
Senator Jaffer: Can you give me some examples of cover crops? What do you mean by cover crops? I’m not so familiar with that.
Mr. Barrett: I can take that if you want, Mr. Donald?
Mr. Donald: Yes.
Mr. Barrett: Thank you, senator.
Cover crops are usually fall-seeded cover crops that we are planting either after the harvest of a crop or maybe after the termination of a forage crop in preparation for potatoes next year, mostly using cereal crops like oats, barley, rye and things like that, that are fast establishing and relatively inexpensive.
Also, if we’re doing it in September or August, we’re using Brassica crops, largely mustard, radishes or mixtures of different crops — anything that will establish quickly and hopefully have a high biomass and that will protect the soil in the fall.
We also, then, have a number of growers that, in the year before potatoes, will employ what I would call more like a full‑season cover crop. Those are often forage species, like alfalfa, clover and grasses, maybe mixed with Brassicas or some other species as well that are hopefully feeding the next year’s crop by creating nitrogen and also by hopefully reducing soil-born pests and diseases.
Senator Cotter: Thank you to our witnesses for joining us and continuing to expand our knowledge in this area.
I think, my question is for Mr. Chevraux and Mr. Carey. It’s a general question even beyond canola. If I understood your answers, Mr. Chevraux, the challenge of cost and the cost, for example, to do precision farming and, therefore, to achieve probably more environmentally effective soil-healthy practices seems then to militate toward farms getting noticeably larger so that the economies of scale make this more efficient healthier form of farming more achievable.
Am I right in that? Are we inevitably, in order to, say, achieve these soil health goals that we’re talking about here, needing to see and even hope for farms to get larger so that you and your colleagues can achieve what you’re doing, especially in large-sector farming? Mr. Carey or Mr. Chevraux.
Mr. Chevraux: I’ll answer first, and then I’ll let Mr. Carey add after.
Yes, farms have been naturally been getting bigger since I think farming started in Canada. When my great-grandfather began, we started off with, I think, 1 or 2 quarters and now we are up to 37 quarters. That is a natural progression. It does concern me, because my son is coming back. In my local area, a lot of kids are coming back to farm, so the pressure is on for us all to look for new places that we can grow and make our farms bigger.
The challenge has always been that the equipment, as it gets more precise and more technologically advanced, has more complications, which just makes it more difficult to purchase those types of equipment. I mentioned the seed drill itself, but a lot of it also stems from the technology that’s involved in my combines. My combines when my dad was buying them were about $100,000, and today, the latest price is $1.5 million. You can’t do that on a small farm scale anymore, and you need that information from the combine to give you an idea of where the best soils are and where the best potential is for the crop in order to be able to develop part of the equation as to where to put your fertilizer to get the biggest return and the fewest emissions, as well as increase your soil health.
In a roundabout way, I guess the answer is, “Yes, the farms are going to continue to grow.”
The federal government, by supporting us and recognizing and paying us for sequestering carbon into our soil, will help slow that down. It will make it easier for us to afford those costs. Also, the support in making these additional costs to go to precision farming cheaper for us will help slow down that process of making the farms get bigger all the time. But truly, in the long run, I think it will go that way.
Senator Cotter: There’s a certain sense to this in that, for soil health in the Prairies to get better, we have to hope to hollow out rural Saskatchewan, for example? It’s kind of disheartening, isn’t it?
Mr. Chevraux: It certainly is, and I hope that we don’t hollow it out at a rapid rate.
There are some other things that come with that.
With the development of these new technologies, we will need support in learning how to run them. That’s actually one of the things that holds us back a little bit. The average age of farmers now is 57 years old, and the challenge in a lot of cases is that these technologies are very complicated and technical. We are dealing with computers, satellites and GPS systems. It will require a lot of support. There is no other industry that will develop that will help bring people back to our rural areas.
We need to have a better broadband, and cellular coverage to make these technologies work. We need to have better support from people who will come out to the equipment and make it work for us. I’d like to say I’m as good on the computer as my 29-year-old son, but that would be lying. He’s far better at this kind of technical stuff than I am, and I rely heavily upon him. I think a lot of other farmers rely upon other people on the technical side, just like we have seen develop in the computer systems that we have today.
Senator Cotter: Thanks very much.
The Chair: You have 30 seconds, Mr. Carey, if you have anything to add.
Mr. Carey: I just want to say that farming is inherently risky, so a lot of farmers have exited over the last few years. Land prices in Ontario range from $20,000 an acre to Saskatchewan where they are $1,800 an acre. Farmers have to find those economies of scale to be profitable.
The Chair: I have a few questions, and then we will move to round two.
Very quickly, in Prince Edward Island, I have heard through this study that the soil health and the work that government is doing — supporting, encouraging — is second to none in this country. Would you agree, Mr. Donald or Mr. Barrett? Are your farmers being expected to do more because of government rules, regulations, et cetera? It’s just a question.
Mr. Barrett: Thank you, senator. We have a large amount of support from our provincial department of agriculture, and they have done quite a bit to invest in soil health programming and soil health monitoring. Soil health testing is available here. We are one of the only provinces that have a provincial lab that can do soil health testing, and the uptake of that is increasing all the time. We really welcome that partnership with the provincial department of agriculture, but I think the extension to the growers has also been quite good as well in multiple commodities, not just in potatoes. A really big focus of our research and extension for the last 10 years, I would say, is around soil health.
The biggest way that we can be resilient in the face of a changing climate and manage those stressful years is with healthier soil that can absorb more water, cycle nutrients and protect against hot periods and dry periods is through healthier soil with higher organic matter.
In a manner of farming that requires more soil disturbance, we probably have to do extra to try to make sure that we are conserving that organic matter and building on it. That has been a really big focus of our research and extension for the last number of years.
The Chair: Thank you very much. In light of the time, I will leave with a question to each of you. If you had pen to paper and you were writing this report, give me three recommendations you’d like to see included in this report. If you could send them to Ms. Simpson, our clerk, that would be great. You have pen in hand. Let us know what we should do.
Moving on to round two, we have four folks and seven minutes.
Senator Burey: Thank you to our witnesses. I am following up on your question, chair, because I just wanted to know from our witnesses from P.E.I., how was it that you were able to achieve this sort of investment into free soil health testing? We heard from so many witnesses that this is one of the barriers faced by farmers to the take-up of best management practices. What was the culture like in P.E.I.? How were you able to do it?
Mr. Donald: I think one of our biggest disadvantages is how small we are, but flipping it over, it’s also one of our greatest advantages. We’re a relatively small province with a small industry related to other places, there’s very close communication and good collaboration between the stakeholders, namely the farmers, our provincial government, the industry and our educational institutions as well. I think I would attribute the success to that. We have worked under the motto that it’s very difficult to get bigger here, so we have to get better.
On one side, because of all the reasons we talked about, the vulnerabilities, we want to make things better. On the other side of it, it’s very difficult in our agriculture to be competitive in a commodity market, so we have to be better in more ways than one. Not just with the soil health and the environment, but certainly in the products, the needs and how we differentiate ourselves in the marketplace.
Senator Burey: Thank you.
Senator Klyne: This question is for the Canadian Canola Growers Association. There are many uses competing for canola variations these days, and of course, there’s the oil on the dinner table as well. We have now figured out how to extract the protein out of the canola seed and then the remnants can go further down the line for value-added oil in meal.
We are also building plants in Saskatchewan for biodiesel fuels and jet fuel. I’m just wondering, with all of this going on, if maybe the government is starting to think about imposing certain percentage needs to go to the dinner table and a certain percentage can be set to other areas, like jet fuels or biodiesel.
Mr. Chevraux: As producers, we welcome any opportunity for our crop to have more uses and demand, because that helps us economically. Unfortunately, recently our prices have actually fallen, but I hope to see that turn around in the next little while.
Yes, it’s a question that’s there. It’s not one that I think Canada can’t live up to. As I said, our goal is to increase the amount of production that we are doing on a per-acre basis, and I think that’s quite achievable in the long run.
Senator Klyne: The question is: Is anybody talking about imposing quotas with a certain percentage needing to go to the dinner table before it goes off for other varied uses?
Mr. Chevraux: I am not aware of anywhere where that has been the case. Mr. Carey, do you have anything to add to that?
Mr. Carey: No, there’s been none of that. The one benefit, senator, of the biofuel and the new wave is that instead of exporting our raw product to other countries to do with what they will, when we crush it here we actually keep the meal and the oil here, which can then go to different places.
There has been no discussion as far as a quota system for canola. I don’t think it would work for our bulk handling system. It works in supply management, but you have 20 million tonnes of canola that get bulked up. It goes where the market wants.
Senator Klyne: If it happens, you heard it here first.
I have a snap question for the Potato Board, and they can send an answer in.
The Chair: A snap question with an answer to be sent in.
Senator Klyne: One of the objectives of the Living Labs focused on examining ways to manage nutrient flow and runoff in farm fields and the implementation of farming practices to increase soil organic matter. In a written answer, can you please expand on some of those findings?
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Jaffer: Mine is not a snap question.
The Chair: Would you like to ask it and ask for a written response?
Senator Jaffer: I would love that. It’s a long question.
Given the potential impacts of agriculture runoff from potato farming on water courses and wetlands, what innovative strategies or tools could be developed or utilized to enhance best soil management practices and mitigate these effects? How might the federal government collaborate with the province to support these efforts of yours?
The Chair: Great questions sent to the Potato Board. Did you get that, Mr. Donald and Mr. Barrett?
Mr. Donald: Yes, thank you. Can I make a snap comment?
The Chair: Please.
Mr. Donald: Generally, and relative to the previous question for us, in my experience when we had more issues, often the tool was regulations and penalties to farmers. What’s working on a lot of things is working together, incentives and supports, because farmers — as we all know, there are probably no people who are more resilient and adaptable who want to make things better than farmers. Penalties don’t work. Incentives, supports and working together does work.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr. Chevraux, Mr. Carey, Mr. Donald and Mr. Barrett, thank you very much for your participation today. You can see the passion that my colleagues have for this topic, and we can see your passion in your answers. Thanks for participating; it’s appreciated.
Also want to thank our committee members and senators for your active participation today. As always, I would like to thank the folks that support us, the interpreters, the debate team, the reporters who transcribe the meeting, the committee room attendant, multimedia service technicians, the broadcasting team, the recording centre, ISD and our page. We are supported very well.
Senator Jaffer: I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I thought we were taking a picture today.
The Chair: We will talk after that.
Senator Jaffer: Okay, sorry.
The Chair: We are strongly supported, and we never say thanks enough. Thank you.
This is our last meeting of the year, and so with that, we should note that we have accomplished a lot during 2023, and it’s because of your significant contributions. Staff, colleagues and our witnesses who have met with us during the year. I want to wish each of you a happy holiday season. We will reconvene back in the new year when the Senate resumes in the latter part of January or early February. With that, if there’s no other business —
Senator Jaffer: I have other business, chair.
One of the reasons we have achieved so much is your passion on this subject. Your leadership on this committee has been the reason why we’ve accomplished so much. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you.
Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
The Chair: With that, colleagues, if there’s no other business, the meeting is adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)