THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 29, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 9 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada.
Senator Robert Black (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning, everyone. I want to begin by welcoming the senators, our witnesses on the committee and those watching this meeting on the web.
My name is Rob Black. I’m a senator from Ontario, and I chair this committee. Today, the committee is meeting on its study to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada.
Colleagues, just so you know, our first meeting on the study of soil health in Canada was on September 22, 2022, and today is our final meeting. Over that time and including our witnesses today, we will have heard from 153 witnesses over 36 meetings in this room, and we have heard 58.5 hours of testimony.
While wrapping up this study is bittersweet for some of us — or all of us — I eagerly await the forthcoming report that we hope to have within a few months, which I hope serves as a valuable resource on soil health in Canada for years to come, just like Soil at Risk: Canada’s Eroding Future, which was the first Senate soil study chaired by the Honourable Herbert Sparrow. It was completed 40 years ago.
I would like to start by asking my colleagues to introduce themselves.
Senator Cotter: Good morning. My name is Brent Cotter. I’m a senator from Saskatchewan.
Senator Burey: Good morning. Sharon Burey, senator for Ontario.
Senator McNair: Good morning. John McNair, New Brunswick.
Senator Cardozo: Good morning. I’m Andrew Cardozo from Ontario.
Senator Oh: Good morning. Senator Oh, Ontario.
The Chair: For our first panel on the impact of foreign ownership of agricultural land on soil care practices, I would like to welcome, from the National Farmers Union, Stuart Oke, co‑owner of Rooted Oak Farm. He’s joining us by video conference. Good morning, Mr. Oke. From Andjelic Land Inc., Robert Andjelic, Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Andjelic is in the room today. As an individual, we have Katherine Aske, farmer and researcher from the University of British Columbia. She is joining us by video conference.
I invite you to make your presentations, witnesses. We will begin with Mr. Andjelic, followed by Mr. Oke and Ms. Aske. You will each have five minutes for your presentations. I will signal at the end of four minutes, meaning that you have one minute left. When two hands are up, it’s about time to wrap things up.
With that, Mr. Andjelic, the floor is yours.
Robert Andjelic, Chief Executive Officer, Andjelic Land Inc.: Good morning. I’d like to thank Senator Black and the rest of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry for the invitation to appear as part of your study group. I am Robert Andjelic, and I am the CEO of Andjelic Land Inc. We are farmland investors, and we have investments in all the Western provinces, from Manitoba to British Columbia. The largest portion of our holdings is just under 233,000 acres in Saskatchewan.
There’s a saying on the Prairies: Only six to nine inches of soil feeds the world. Let’s think about that. A thin layer of fertile dirt in Saskatchewan produces around 35% of the world’s pulse crops and accounts for more than 40% of Canada’s total crop acreage.
Initially when we started buying farmland, there were quite a few listings of land that had been poorly farmed. The farmers had a rough time paying the bills prior to 2010, so they cut back on inputs with a resulting deterioration in soil health. We bought the better quarters and still it took up to six years — partnering with some of the best producers — to bring these lands back to a higher level of production. Through our efforts, even alkali soils can now support crop growth.
This lesson taught me that the tenants’ farming practices are of utmost importance, and we must screen our potential tenants with great care. We lease our land to like-minded individuals who will return all nutrients back to the soil and follow the best farming practices. Farmland is our mutual bread and butter, and we must do whatever is necessary to maintain its health for generations to come. We often get multiple bids, but rental rates are secondary to picking a producer with the best farmland stewardship.
Our field coordinators will go visit with the potential new tenant, check his existing fields and discuss his farming practices. They then visit all of our tenants throughout the growing season to make sure that the best farming practices are being followed and that proper crop rotation is implemented.
The top producers are eager to lease from us because of our land improvement work as that increases their efficiency in all aspects of farming. The land improvement encompasses clearing and removal of fence rows, removal of existing rock piles as well as removal of small bluffs.
We are often criticized by the environmentalists that we are trying to clear and put into production every two acres of bush on our land. They are missing the entire point as it actually costs us more per acre to reclaim the land and put it into production than it would cost to buy the same amount of land. But farming cleared land is more environmentally efficient than travelling to farm remote, newly acquired additional parcels. Tree cover and habitat are still provided by road allowances which surround every section. Nobody is allowed to clear them, so there is always wildlife habitat nearby.
The main reason for this clearing is that the most modern equipment with the least carbon footprint is very large and cannot manœuvre through these tight spots. The old seeders were 10 or 12 feet wide and could easily go between these obstacles. Today’s large tractors pulling a 100-foot seeder plus a fertilizer wagon have great difficulty manoeuvring between these obstacles, and, when it does, there is a lot of overlap. These improvements increase efficiency and cut carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 40% to 50%.
This efficiency is realized six or seven times per year as fields are harrowed, then seeded, sprayed three or four times, swathed and finally combining takes place. One of our tenants, Jeff Pizzey, verified this point by using sectional controls on cleared versus uncleared land, which resulted in half the amount of equipment use and carbon emissions.
In my view, it is just as important to save and optimize the use of arable acres as it is to save the trees. Canada, being the second-largest country in total land mass, ranks very low with the arable land ratio to total land mass. The percentage of arable land is only 4.5%, and with urban expansion and other factors, it is only going down.
Since most of our tenants are the more progressive producers, they use the latest soil testing and monitoring technology to maximize soil health. Their office looks like an agricultural research lab, and it provides them with data to minimize fertilizer use, optimize seeding and monitor moisture levels and potential yields. This contrasts with the historical practice of no soil testing then overlapping fertilizer, which actually deteriorated soil health.
Practices such as zero till result in minimum soil disturbance. That is where the latest technologically advanced equipment comes in, such as sectional control and variable rate technology.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Andjelic. Mr. Oke.
Stuart Oke, co-owner of Rooted Oak Farm, National Farmers Union: Thank you. Good morning, senators.
My name is Stuart Oke. I am a farmer. I own and operate a farm in North Augusta, Ontario, alongside my partner, Nikki, and a small team of employees. We grow vegetables that feed families from Ottawa to Toronto, with the long-term goal of ensuring that, at the end of our careers, our farm and its soil are left better than when we arrived — doing that weighty job all while feeding the community that supports our business.
I recently had the chance to speak with another farmer who shared with me the idea that there are only two things in farming you can never get back: time and soil. This is an ethos that my time farming has been in commitment to since I was 18 years old.
To build upon this commitment — and further it — I’m also a member of the National Farmers Union, a grassroots, democratic, farmer-run organization that advocates on behalf of farms like mine and for issues that affect us, such as that of degrading soils and increasingly unaffordable farmland. I’ve been a member of the union for many years and have held numerous positions, including that of youth president. I’m a member not just because the organization is made up of members who are passionate, intelligent and keen problem solvers, but because it is an organization unafraid to take hard looks at the problems facing our farming and rural communities, anchoring its solutions in grounded truths and well-researched positions unbiased by outside interests.
It’s that unflinching commitment to issues that drew my attention to reading the National Farmers Union, or NFU, report entitled Losing Our Grip. It explores the myriad ways land has been and is currently being consolidated and otherwise grabbed by an increasingly small number of actors, both domestic and foreign, and how that has created an over-financialization of the land to such a degree that I am genuinely concerned for the future agricultural stewardship of our lands and soils. It’s that over-financialization of land and its effects — creating an entire generation of tenant farmers as well as the corresponding effects on our soil, pushing us into reliance on agricultural inputs — that has led me to provide this testimony today.
My time spent in the leadership of the NFU allowed me to travel the country and speak with hundreds of farmers, hearing countless stories of farmers struggling to make ends meet, forced to rent land when none was affordable enough to acquire and forced to make tough decisions on how that rented land should be managed with the knowledge that it could be sold out from under them at any time. Put simply, as farmers owe more and more and own less and less and as farmers are forced more into the arms of corporations and investors, farmers lose control of Canada’s farms and foodland and, with it, the control to manage the soil in a way that will ensure long-term soil health instead of short-time investment in agricultural inputs. Inputs only feed the crop and are no substitute for common-sense practices aimed at feeding the soil and the increased resilience that comes with long-term soil improvement.
From relatively small farms like my own to multi-thousand-acre operations in the Prairies, right across the country, we are feeling the effects of an over-financialized farmland system. We know that Canadian farmers are facing a net-income crisis. In 2018, for instance, for every dollar farmers received, they only kept 6 cents. Similarly, we have a problem of massive farm debt. It was $138 billion in 2022 compared to $106 billion in 2018.
These compounding crises — combined with increasingly high land prices — force farmers seeking to increase those net incomes into farming more and more land using rental arrangements, on and on until the reality of today, which is that 40% of Canadian farmland is currently rented. We’ve seen systems like this before. Granted, that was hundreds of years ago, and the land was being consolidated in the hands of nobility. Now, it’s being consolidated into the hands of pension funds and investment schemes. This system didn’t allow for responsible stewardship of the land then, and it doesn’t allow for it now.
From my perspective as a farmer, and bearing in mind the topic of today’s meeting, we need to be equally cautious of large-scale consolidation and speculative investment endeavours, whether they be owned by foreign-owned corporations or Canada-based entities. Both serve to contribute to the over‑financialization of farmland, keeping control of our food system further removed from the stewardship of the farmers responsible for growing it.
I was recently speaking to a farmer at an event geared toward farmers trying to access land, and they said something to me that succinctly made this point, “I don’t have land tenure. I have land tenuousness.”
To promote soil health, we need common-sense solutions that ensure farmers have the security of tenure. We need a system that does more to protect farmland for farmers and food producers and that prevents large-scale consolidation of land by outside actors that financialize land, turning it into a commodity to be exploited rather than an irreplaceable ingredient necessary to sustain us.
I could say more, but I see my time is up, so I will leave it at that. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I welcome your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Oke. Ms. Aske, please go ahead.
Katherine Aske, farmer, researcher, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Good morning, senators. Thank you for having me and for taking soil health seriously.
I run an organic farmer training program at the University of British Columbia. I am also a researcher who has been part of a project analyzing the impacts of investor farmland ownership and concentration across the Prairies that is run out of the University of Manitoba.
I’m here to argue that it is not foreign farmland ownership we need to be concerned about with regard to soil health but farmland speculation as a whole, much like Mr. Oke just said, whether that be foreign, domestic or even local. Farmland investors might differ as individuals or in investment structure, but on the whole, they have one thing in common: a desire to extract financial value from the land and the work of the people who live on it.
It is difficult to know the impacts of any kind of investor ownership on soil health in Canada at present because provincial governments have not been using their land titles data to track and publicly report on changing farmland tenure patterns. That means that the public does not know how much land is owned by investors. In some provinces, university researchers have even been barred from accessing this public data. For example, in Alberta, our research team was told that it would cost us $50,000 to access it, more than we could afford. Without this data, I conducted qualitative research instead and interviewed over 50 grain farmers across the province in 2019 and 2020, ranging from 230 to 33,500 acres in size.
The only province where we do have a sense of the extent of investor farmland ownership and concentration is in Saskatchewan. That’s because members of our research team, led by Dr. Annette Desmarais, accessed the land titles data, analyzed it and publicly reported on the findings. They revealed a 19‑fold increase in investor farmland ownership from 2002 to 2018, up to nearly a million acres. Further Prairies research has shown that even a small number of investor purchases drive farmland prices beyond what most farmers can afford, which then propels high debt loads, farm deconcentration, short-term rental contracts that limit how farmers can practise and even farmers themselves relating to the land like a speculative asset, all of which have associated environmental impacts.
We now know that Robert Andjelic, who is here with us today, is the largest landowner in the province and perhaps in the country. As he indicated, his company owns over 233,000 acres in Saskatchewan, almost as much land as billionaire Bill Gates owns across the U.S. I mean no disrespect to you personally, Mr. Andjelic, but this kind of concentrated wealth and power brings us back to a kind of neo-feudalism that has devastating effects for our democracy, our communities and the health of the land.
You don’t have to take it from me. A recent survey of 400 Prairies farmers found that nearly 80% of respondents see investor farmland ownership as “negative” or “very negative” for their local communities.
Mr. Andjelic just spoke to the kinds of improvements that his company does on the land, and there is a video on his website that speaks to that and improvements on 22,000 acres around Yorkton. In the video, they talk about the clearing of trees and bush, creating fields that are open and cleared, with sloughs dried up, allowing for farming from corner to corner. Theoretically, this means more income for farmers through higher crop production in the short term and thus higher rental rates that can be charged.
Mr. Andjelic’s company is absolutely not unique in doing land improvement in that way. However, as soil begins to erode due to a lack of trees to block the wind or increasingly intense rainstorms and a lack of the ability to handle them, these anticipated yields may not be realizable, and reversing those changes will take decades.
My interviewees in Alberta described various types of domestic investor owners and the largest farmers doing the same things, and were deeply concerned about the corner-to-corner approach. Bush lines are coming down everywhere, they told me, as farmland speculation has created both pressures and incentives to do so. One of my farmer interviewees told me:
Some days, we will have days and days of wind. I often wonder is it because there is nothing to stop the wind or slow it down? The wind was always here. Just those bush lines and tree stands helped stop the wind. We never had soil drifting ever in this area. Now we do.
After widespread drought and ecological collapse on the Prairies in the 1930s, the government stepped in and established the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration. Western Canadian farmers were given free saplings in support to plant bush lines, and an estimated 600 million trees were planted through the 20th century. This program ended in 2013. We are now forgetting our history and regressing once more with so‑called improvements to the land, removing bush lines at a time of an ever-growing climate crisis.
To close, I am grateful for this standing committee’s research and concern, but question the emphasis on foreign farmland owners and suggest it is farmland speculation on the whole that presents a major concern for soil health and much more.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Andjelic, Mr. Oke and Ms. Aske.
We will now proceed to questions. With that, Senator Oh.
Senator Oh: Thank you, witnesses, for joining us this morning. My first question is to you, Mr. Andjelic. You are the biggest owner of farmland in Saskatchewan, probably the biggest in Canada. You have amassed over 250,000 acres of farmland. What type of farmland improvement has your company carried out with respect to beneficial soil management practices? What percentage of your total land has been leased out to smaller farmers?
Mr. Andjelic: All of our land is leased out to producers, and we work together to improve the land. With one of our tenants — a good friend also — we improved the land. We took saline or alkali areas and turned them back to crop production, which I don’t think has been done too often. I haven’t even heard of any, actually, prior to this. It took us about four or five years.
Prior to that, we tried to rejuvenate the soil. We were successful in making the alkali areas smaller, but we weren’t successful in getting crops in there. This is the first time we actually had a crop in that alkali area. It was one of the dryer areas during the drought. He had, I think, only about three inches of rain during that period, and his crop was 36 bushels per acre of durum wheat. The neighbours had anywhere from zero to 10 bushels or less. So we are improving the land.
On your question about the actual ownership, I think it’s just under 233,000 acres. But the tenants depend on me as much as I depend on them. A full line of equipment will do anywhere between 7,000 and 10,000 acres. If he owns 5,000 acres and he is farming only that, he is underutilizing that equipment, so he rents 2,000 from us and then he actually utilizes the equipment to its full extent.
Senator Oh: How many acres do you farm yourself? Do you farm yourself?
Mr. Andjelic: We tried doing some. It didn’t work out in our business model, so we rent everything out. But we work closely with the producers to make the land better, and I don’t see anyone doing that same amount. There is a lot of cost involved in turning that land around. We had to take it out of production for about three years because we implemented — from all plant families — about eight different crops that had to grow on there first to get the carbon dioxide back into the soil, get the salinity reduced and the fungi and bacterial levels back up and so on. It cost us in free rent or subsidized rent about $200,000 per year to do that. Small farmers can’t afford that because the land is out of crop production.
Senator Oh: Does your farm have any foreign ownership? Is it solely owned by you, a Canadian company?
Mr. Andjelic: Yes, absolutely. The Saskatchewan government doesn’t allow any foreign ownership or foreign funds to come in. They scrutinize that very closely, so you can’t be financed by a foreign power or foreign entity. You have to be financed by a Canadian registered financial institution.
Senator Cotter: Thank you very much to the witnesses who have joined us today. It is an exciting if semi-sad day as the last day of visits with witnesses regarding this study.
This study is about soil health, and I wanted to ask a couple of sets of questions to you, Mr. Andjelic. I think it is fair to say that economies of scale can create opportunities. They can create room for investing in new technologies and new approaches that can be beneficial on a wide range of areas, including soil health.
It seems to me to be fair to say — based on your testimony, on the articles about your company and on your own website — that you are not a farmer but an investor. There is a general view that people who own things, whether it is their own apartment or their home, are liable to be greater stewards of it than if they are just leasing it from someone else.
The argument you advance here is that that is not the case with respect to your line of work. Can you say why that might be?
Mr. Andjelic: What was the last part of your question?
Senator Cotter: The argument you advanced, I think, Mr. Andjelic, is that your ownership and leasing land out to farmers enhances the quality of the land.
Mr. Andjelic: Absolutely.
Senator Cotter: I am asking you why it is the case that it works for you but it commonly doesn’t work for others who might rent apartment buildings, for example, to people. Because the concept of ownership tends to make people more careful stewards of the property. You are saying it is somehow different for the land that you rent out.
Mr. Andjelic: Well, it depends on the individual investor and their long-term goals and so on. If I plan to hold this for generations and pass it on to my children and grandchildren, I want to pass on to them the best product possible.
To begin with, I think only 3% of total land ownership is controlled by investors. Invariably, when I talk to my tenants, the ratio is they own about 60% and they rent about 40%.
As I said, we like to rent to like-minded individuals where we work towards improving that land. That’s a must with us. There are a lot of good producers out there who are far ahead of anybody throughout the world. This is a world commodity we’re producing. They will out compete anybody given a level playing field. In other words, no subsidies by other countries such as Germany, for example. They subsidize their state-of-the-art equipment that might save some carbon credits, subsidizing it by 50% where the government contributes 50% of the cost.
Senator Cotter: Could I ask a related question? You mentioned the constraints by the Government of Saskatchewan on foreign ownership of farmland.
Mr. Andjelic: Yes.
Senator Cotter: Do you support that approach in terms of national boundaries on who can own farmland?
Mr. Andjelic: Farming is a very capital-intensive business. Land is only one component of it. You have input costs, chemicals, seed, equipment and so on. Every piece of large equipment is a million dollars plus. So to bring in foreign capital might work in that sense of helping the large capital requirements. But I do support their policy, yes, the Government of Saskatchewan’s policies.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you to our witnesses. It’s very valuable. I have one question for you, Mr. Andjelic. But I want to ask a question first to Ms. Aske. We heard many good things from farmers on the desire to move into regenerative agriculture and lower pesticides, no-till and crop rotation. We haven’t heard much about the importance of keeping the trees, tree lines and the impact of that. Since we don’t have that much about that on the record, I would like for you to elaborate on how important that is and how it should be done. Should it be encouraged? How do we make it happen?
Ms. Aske: Thank you so much for that question.
Yes, as I spoke about in my opening statements, in the 1930s, in the Prairies, we had a dust bowl — a decade of soil blowing and disaster. Part of that resulted from the stripping of trees and prairie grasses with deep roots from miles and miles across the landscape. After that happened, the Canadian farming community in the Prairies, the Canadian government and the provincial governments realized that something needed to change, and they went in the opposite direction and put millions of trees back into the ground, and the government supported farmers in doing that by offering free saplings and supporting the planting. We have learned this lesson already, but we are now going back the opposite way and forgetting it again.
In my interviews with farmers in Alberta when they would talk about how large farmers and investors are treating the land, the stripping of bush lines would always come up. They would contrast that with local farmers who would never tear down the bush line that their grandfather had planted, but would then watch the land across the road from them sold to an absentee owner from outside the community and immediately the 60 acres of forest would come down. It’s important to emphasize that what gets termed “bush” or “bush line” is often something like 60 acres of forest. It’s significant.
I had one farmer tell me that ever since the land across the road from him was sold and the bush line was torn down, the wind is so strong in his yard that he can’t leave anything lying around. He has to buckle everything down because now metal, equipment and everything else are flying through the air. People talked about soil erosion being a massive problem as the bush lines are stripped due to wind and water moving across the land in new ways. This is a massive issue. Again, I’m speaking from a Prairies context. I don’t know if there are similar issues across the country, but in the Prairies, it seems imperative that we reverse this trend. Thank you.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you. I find the model you are describing very interesting. Again, we haven’t heard much about it. I have a simple question. I understand that you want to make it happen and you are making it happen; I understand that. But how does it work with all the different producers? For example, are you in charge? Are you setting standards or do they make their own standards, and then do you collect data? I’m trying to get a sense of how it works and how you can document that the soil is getting better. It seems like there are many challenges.
Mr. Andjelic: We have the data. Everything we do is documented. We do a lot of soil analysis, testing and everything else, and then we implement the proper plants and everything to rejuvenate that soil.
On the subject of soil erosion, you are talking about the 1930s when the farming practices were completely different, when they tilled the land to the consistency of flour. Naturally, it will blow around. Now it’s zero till, where we leave stubble that is 10‑12 inches tall. That’s zero till. That stops the soil from eroding. You will hardly see any soil in the ditches and so on in Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan is a leader in zero till; I would say that 75% of the land is zero till.
Senator Cardozo: My question will be for all the witnesses. It’s quite simple: Could you please tell us your thoughts about best practices for rejuvenation and restoration of soil?
Mr. Oke: Thank you for the question. I would love to speak on that topic. It’s critical to the success of our operation and of every farm.
I would encourage the senators in their exploration of the term “soil health” to think beyond soil carbon and the yields that might be produced from the land. As we know, if you just treat soil as a medium and apply agricultural inputs, you can increase yields, but that doesn’t necessarily correspond to the actual biological activity and health of the soil. Truly healthy soil is going to have not only organic matter but also a complex biological system happening under the soil, which will be able to retain water both in times of flooding and drought and increase yields without needing to over-apply agricultural inputs that are costly for farmers and costly for the environment from an emissions standpoint.
So we need to be very careful about how we explore this topic of soil health and not just say that widespread zero-till practices are good. They are positive and can lead to very positive outcomes, but if those are coupled with heavy amounts of herbicide and fertilizer application, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the soil health will continue to improve and provide those ecosystem services that we know can make farms more resilient.
We need to be cautious about drawing direct correlations in that way and adopt practices which can actually build that microbial and microbiological activity under the soil.
Ms. Aske: I agree with everything that Mr. Oke just said. I would add, speaking broadly, that farmers need to be able to capture more of the value of what they produce. They need to be able to make a real living on fewer acres and they need to be able to make a living practising in agroecological ways.
Throughout this morning, we have been ping-ponging back and forth referencing soil quality or the quality of the land or improvements on the land without defining what that means. I think it’s important to distinguish between, for example, being able to pull more crops off the land and the quality of the soil. Those are not inherently tied together, especially not if we’re thinking in the long term. Thank you.
Senator Cardozo: Mr. Andjelic, your thoughts about best practices for rejuvenation?
Mr. Andjelic: I have the data here where they talk about bacterial, fungal and everything else. Everything was increased. All the major nutrients were increased. Therefore, you need a lot less nitrogen, even. You make the soil cycle through increasing all the beneficial factors in it.
Senator Cardozo: How do you do that?
Mr. Andjelic: Through the use and growth of plants and introduction of organic fertilizers and organic foliage sprays and so on.
Senator Cardozo: Is it a diversity of crops?
Mr. Andjelic: Absolutely a diversity of crops. I have here 13 different varieties of crops going to different root zones. I have photos that show roots going down three or four feet deep, and they introduce the organic matter back. That’s being done at a cost of about $400 or $500 per acre. It’s very hard for small producers to do that because of the high cost, and you have to take the land out of crop production to do the rejuvenation portion. We do that for a thousand or more acres per year.
Senator Cardozo: Does that happen through the rotation of crops from year to year?
Mr. Andjelic: There is always rotation otherwise you are just asking for trouble with introduction of disease and everything else. Proper rotation is a must.
Senator Cardozo: Okay. Thank you.
Senator Burey: Good morning. Thank you again for being here. My questions are for Ms. Aske and Mr. Oke, but if we have time, Mr. Andjelic.
Back to the role of the soil health study and the role of the federal government — as the Senate here — trying to integrate policies and practices that are going to lead to the kind of society that we want to have, one that’s ecologically sound, sustainable and inclusive. I would like to add something to this. The compelling testimony that we heard from young farmers about the precariousness of tenant farming, the speculative practices, especially by large land owners.
I would like your comments on what this could do for food security. This is a soil health study. We have to tie them together. So what do these speculative practices — the tenant farming, large land ownership — do for food security, both in Canada and around the world?
Also, how do these practices — I’m talking about land ownership and, because of that, soil health — how does owning a lot of land impact beneficial soil management practices? Those two questions. Food security and beneficial, how does that affect those two practices?
Ms. Aske: Those are big questions. Thank you so much for asking.
In terms of food security, when financial metrics drive how we treat the land and when outside investors are the ones calling the shots, the land becomes increasingly less capable of handling the dramatic and ever-increasing effects of climate change. We have been seeing fires, floods and droughts across the country, last summer being perhaps the most dramatic yet. So the land loses its ability to be resilient, to be able to handle these kinds of effects in order to produce food for communities or for those around the world.
Can you repeat your second question?
Senator Burey: One was about how does land ownership affects decisions about beneficial soil management practices?
Ms. Aske: Right. Fundamentally, personally as a small-scale organic grower, I believe that it is not possible to manage the land and the soil at a large scale the same way as it is possible on a small scale. Also, it’s imperative that farmers themselves are the ones who make the decisions about what happens on the land. They know best, and the only way that they can truly look after the soil is if they have true, long-term security of tenure that does not have to look like individual ownership, but it certainly can’t look like a three- to five-year rental contract where they have the pressure of annual payments that inhibit them from transitioning to organic or that inhibit them from putting the land in a cover crop or doing something that will not bring them income on any given year. I’ll pass it to Mr. Oke.
Mr. Oke: Thanks for the opportunity and the question, senator.
I won’t bother repeating any of the points that Ms. Aske made because I largely agree with what she said. I will build on that to say as land is consolidated into fewer hands and the people who are farming — whether they be tenant farmers or very large‑scale mega farms — get further away from the land that they are cultivating and growing on, they are less able to be aware of the needs of that land but also be present in the communities that surround that land, I’m sure.
Being from Ontario, you have seen lots of farming communities that have been in decline over time in rural areas, and some of that can be laid at the feet of bigger farms. You can’t go to the corner store and you can’t patronize the local corner store when you are an hour away and you don’t live in that community. So there are knock-on effects for our communities as our farms get larger, where our rural communities are also eroding. I know that is not what this committee is specifically looking at, but it is a knock-on effect that we need to be aware of in addition to what Ms. Aske said.
Senator Burey: Thank you.
Senator Robinson: Wonderful to hear from these three witnesses. Thank you all for making the time and effort to be here. I wanted to recognize the diversity. Obviously, we have got some age and gender diversity in the witnesses, but we also have some fantastic regional approaches to farming diversity. I’m a firm believer that we need all types of farms, and they each respond to a different nuance or niche market.
My first question, if I can, is for our folks joining by video. I’ll ask it first maybe of Mr. Oke and then of Ms. Aske. I’m wondering, in regards to profitability, as young farmers — as new entrants — you are coming into an incredibly capital-intense kind of business. I would like to look at it from a different angle: Instead of limiting who can own it, making farming more profitable. New entrants — younger farmers — would have the means to be able to competitively access land. I’m wondering, in your opinion, what could be done to make your farming more profitable and put you in a better position to buy that land?
Mr. Oke: Thank you for the question. I think that really cuts to the heart of a lot of the issues, including those faced by younger or youngish farmers like me. We have a critical issue right now, which is that the value of farmland due to heavy amounts of financialization, partly due to some of the dynamics that we have discussed today —
Senator Robinson: I’m just mindful of time, Mr. Oke, and my question is specifically this: What can we do about profitability for new entrants, younger farmers, niche farmers and even large new entrants? What can we do about profitability, in your opinion?
Mr. Oke: The value of the land needs to reflect what can be produced on that land. Obviously, we can’t continue to raise prices, but as I said during my opening remarks, farmers are not keeping a large percentage of the costs; in terms of the money that’s left over at the end of the day, the farmers aren’t taking a whole lot of it from the value that’s being generated from the farms. That’s going to agricultural input suppliers or middle people in the food chain. The value that is left over for farmers is very difficult.
We need to make sure that the type of lands and agricultural protections that we have do not include the ability for farmers not to be able to purchase land and are left with the dregs after all the input suppliers have taken their share of the value. Hopefully, that answers your question.
Senator Robinson: Yes. Ms. Aske, please.
Ms. Aske: Thank you for the question.
How do we address profitability? First, I would say that a majority of new farmers are not entering the capital-intensive sectors because they cannot. They are direct marketing, they are becoming small-scale vegetable producers and things like that.
In terms of addressing profitability in some of our commodity sectors, I would point to structures like the Canadian Wheat Board, which we know was taken down by Stephen Harper’s government in 2012. It allowed grain farmers across the country to become price setters in the face of agribusiness corporations. Now that that structure is gone, grain farmers are individual price takers on the market, and that has led to farmers being able to capture less and less of the value of what they produce. Thank you.
Senator Robinson: I have one quick question for our in‑person witness. You spoke about your alkaline soils and reclaiming them. Can you just give us a quick rundown of what you did? You mentioned drought conditions. How did you reclaim alkaline soils in drought conditions? What water source did you use and what soil amendments did you use, if you have that information with you?
Mr. Andjelic: We have it. What we introduced were all the different plant varieties that send roots to different levels. Those roots, as they deteriorate, allow water to go down to different levels. This was in drought conditions, and the producer had 36 bushels per acre. I have all the documents to back it up.
Senator Robinson: To be clearer: Did you use calcium sulphate or some kind of product to help remove that alkalinity in the soil?
Mr. Andjelic: There is no single magic. This is an all-around effort to get the bacterial count back, to get the fungal growth, to introduce organic matter, carbon dioxide — everything — back in there. So it’s a complicated project, and it takes —
Senator Robinson: How long would it have taken from the time you start to reclaim —
Mr. Andjelic: Three or four years.
Senator Robinson: Thank you.
Mr. Andjelic: But it’s possible.
The Chair: We are moving to round two with the time we have left.
Senator Cotter: I should also extend a welcome to Senator Robinson. In fact, I feel like I should just shut up and listen more than ask questions.
It’s a question for you, Mr. Andjelic. I have looked at your website and read the stories about you and your success. It does have this flavour of investor orientation. Realtors praise you for obvious reasons, I guess, and you celebrate that a good deal. However, in my view, you underrepresented the degree to which you committed to acquiring green acres. A lot of those 200,000 acres are in green acres, and that’s to your credit in thinking about the quality of soil and the environment in Saskatchewan. That’s an observation.
My question is this: If you were to advise us in writing up this soil health study report, what do you think, if any, are the things that the Government of Canada — which is mainly our focus here — should be attentive to so that we are trying to do things that help go forward with soil health rather than hold it back or cause its deterioration in the future? What advice do you have for us as to what we should say to the Government of Canada?
Mr. Andjelic: I do my crop tours. I start in Alberta, going east and end up in Manitoba. I would have to say that not much has to be done. We do have the best producers in the world farming the land, and they want to do whatever is the best for that land because they plan to have their children and grandchildren farm it. That’s one thing that’s missing that is not really covered. They think these are factory farms. They don’t exist. They are family farms. Just because they are large doesn’t mean they cut corners or anything else. If you take a 30,000-acre farm, it takes an individual participant; for every 2,000 acres, you need one full-time individual.
So they are all family and family-extended farms, even the employees — but they are not classed as employees. They are family members or participants. They get participation in the total revenues and so on. So the higher the yields, the more participation they get.
Senator Cotter: Thank you.
The Chair: I’m seeing no additional questions. Colleagues, let’s thank Mr. Andjelic, Mr. Oke and Ms. Aske.
Mr. Andjelic: May I make one more point?
The Chair: Yes, please.
Mr. Andjelic: They talk about young farms coming into the business. If you look at rents, rent is, let’s say, $80 per acre. At $80 per acre, if he buys the land, it would be based on, let’s say, $3,000. With today’s interest rates, 3 times 7 is 21, so it is $210 rent. That equivalent would be paid to the bank.
So young farmers can come in by starting to rent at half the price or less. As they build their equity and the financial situation gets better for them, they can buy land after. But renting is half the price.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Andjelic, Mr. Oke and Ms. Aske for your participation today. We certainly saw the passion that you brought to our witness table, and we appreciate all you have done. With that, thank you.
For our second panel on sustainability, regenerative agriculture and building soil health, I am pleased to welcome, from the British Society of Soil Science, Dr. Jacqueline Hannam, President. She is joining us by video conference. Thank you for joining us.
We have Dr. Penny Wensley, former National Soils Advocate, Government of Australia, by video conference. I want everyone to note that Dr. Wensley is receiving the 2024 International Union of Soil Science distinguished service medal in May at the centennial congress. Dr. Wensley, thank you for joining us.
As an individual, we have Mr. Don Lobb, a farmer. Don first appeared on this study on September 22, 2022. He also participated in the first Senate study, Soil at Risk: Canada’s Eroding Future. We are delighted to have Mr. Lobb back again.
I invite you to make your presentations. We will begin with Ms. Hannam, followed by Ms. Wensley and Mr. Lobb. You will each have five minutes. When I put my and up, that means you’re about a minute out. When you see two hands, I would appreciate it if you’d start to wrap up.
With that, the floor is yours, Dr. Hannam.
Jacqueline Hannam, President, British Society of Soil Science: Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to this important study that the committee is undertaking to better understand soil health in Canada.
I am Dr. Jacqueline Hannam. I’m a soil scientist working at Cranfield University in the U.K., but today I am representing the British Society of Soil Science as the current president of the society.
I am delighted to see you again, Senator Black and Penny Wensley. We met at the World Congress of Soil Science that the British Society of Soil Science hosted in Glasgow in 2022.
The British Society of Soil Science is an established international membership organization. We are committed to the study of soil in its widest aspects. The society brings together those working in academia and education, and professional practitioners who use soil science in business, consultancy and in policy. We also support others working with or who have an interest in soils. Our vision is to ensure sustainable soils for people and planet. Our mission is to support and promote the discovery of new knowledge of soils and their role in global sustainability.
We aim to make a positive difference in the sustainable management and long-term security of soils. We do this through a variety of activities and advocacy. We publish two international journals, the European Journal of Soil Science and Soil Use and Management. We have a comprehensive program of national soil science training courses and events. We host international conferences for members and non-members. We promote research and education, both academically and in practice, and we build collaborative partnerships to help safeguard soil for the future.
The British Society of Soil Science engages in evidence-based advocacy. We share our collective, peer-reviewed and trusted knowledge with a range of stakeholders, including the general public and policy makers. We hosted the first policy session at the World Congress of Soil Science, which provided an open forum for debate on the complexities, challenges and opportunities of soil policy and governance.
At our annual conference in December, in a dedicated policy session, we heard from the four national policy teams in the U.K. who highlighted their latest approaches to soil monitoring and management.
We have raised the profile of soil health at COP 28, co-hosting and speaking at several focused side events. Last year, we gave evidence in the House of Commons in the U.K. when a select committee had an inquiry into soil health very similar to this one. This analyzed the government’s role in preventing further soil degradation and restoring soils across England. I am delighted to be able to give evidence again in an international context within this committee session.
From our experience of this evidence-based advocacy, our key comments and recommendations to the committee are highlighted in following three points.
First, to ensure there is support for fundamental transdisciplinary research that can provide robust evidence for policy development. This is needed to demonstrate, implement and scale the benefits of soil health in Canada and beyond.
Second, to develop an overarching policy for soils that sets a clear ambition and sets targets for soil health. This should involve co-designing the policy with farmers and foresters in Canada who will need to implement the policy in practice.
Third, to provide robust information and advice to farmers and land managers on how to maintain and improve soil health, ensure that this advice is delivered by independent and trusted parties, the advice is widely available and, importantly, is tailored to environmental, social and cultural contexts.
I will leave it there. Thank you again for the opportunity to provide some insights from the work that we are doing to inform your study on soil health. I look forward to responding to your questions. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Hannam. I know it is later in the day where you are. We appreciate you being with us.
Even later in the day — in fact, it is tomorrow morning — we will hear from Ms. Wensley, who is joining us from Australia. It is after midnight there. Ms. Wensley, you are up.
Penny Wensley, former National Soils Advocate, Government of Australia, as an individual: Thank you very much. Good morning, senators. It is actually 2:08 a.m. on March 1.
Thank you very much for the invitation to contribute to your study on soil health, a subject of growing policy attention internationally and of obvious importance for both our countries as major agricultural producers and exporters and, importantly, world leaders in sustainable food production who want to maintain that pole position and do it for the benefit of our own peoples and the global community.
Our soil and climatic conditions are very different, as are some of our land management challenges — certainly listening to the last panel — but we also face many common problems to conserve, maintain and manage our soils. Among them are soil degradation, pollution, urbanization and the impacts of a changing climate, including more frequent and intense events such as droughts, floods, bushfires and storms.
I don’t need to tell this well-informed group about the value of soil, about the essential services it provides. You all know this. You all know the role healthy soil should play in addressing the big global challenges of food security, climate change and biodiversity loss. But as you are now at the final stage of your study and you’re thinking about your final recommendations, I have a few observations and suggestions to offer drawn from my own long involvement with national and international policy development and advocacy, my recent experience as Australia’s National Soils Advocate and with the development of Australia’s new National Soil Strategy. Unlike Dr. Hannam, who had three points, I have more than that, and I hope I can crunch them all in.
One: Put the issue of soil health in the broader context. Soil should be a national policy priority. Use the language of defence and security and of building national resilience in the face of compounding threats and cumulative impacts. Make the case that soil is not just a valuable natural resource but a strategic national asset which is at risk and should be conserved and protected.
Two: When you are addressing threats, the report needs to convey a sense of urgency and the need to accelerate action to ensure soil health and soil security. There are always competing priorities and demands on resources, but what is the cost of inaction? What is the cost of failure to address soil degradation?
Three: Don’t look at soil health only through the prism of agriculture and land management, agricultural productivity and profitability. I know you are an agriculture committee, but you should emphasize that soil health is a cross-cutting issue and that paying more attention to soil and soil health has relevance for multiple portfolios and sectors beyond agriculture and forestry. In our case, it is health, education, science, environment, energy, Indigenous affairs, infrastructure, tourism, national parks, sport and recreation. You might call them by different portfolios, but I would bet they are pretty much the same in Canada and probably in the U.K.
Four: Argue the need for strong soil advocacy and a public outreach strategy. Although soil is moving up policy agendas, there is still insufficient understanding or appreciation of its importance and value right across government, community, industry and the private sector — and, certainly, low media attention. The resources to implement any recommendations you may make won’t be forthcoming without a higher profile for soil reaching beyond the obvious stakeholders. Consider establishing a National Soils Advocate position, as we used to have, and a Parliamentary Friends of Soil group. Consider ways to make soil a part of primary and secondary school education curricula.
Five: Underline the critical importance of maintaining and increasing support for soil science, research and related disciplines. There are many reasons for this, and Dr. Hannam mentioned some of them.
Six: Include the need for quality extension services to accelerate the adoption of new and transformative land management methods.
Seven: Quantify the value of soil-related services, the benefits of sustainable soil management and the costs of soil degradation.
Eight: Data is key. Make data a central focus of attention. Better data collection and sharing is fundamentally important. You need data that is collected and managed in a way that is nationally consistent, comparable and accessible. Improved understanding of soil condition and trends through better measurement and monitoring, and, in particular, to assess the effects of interventions and practice change — the sort of thing talked about by the senators in the previous panel — should be a pillar of any new action plan. You need a unified, strategic national soil monitoring approach to help understand the state of your soil and changes in its condition.
Nine: Emphasize the importance of integrated approaches, collaboration of new partnership approaches and set up mechanisms, structures and networks to support this.
Ten: Recognize the need to involve all levels of government and incorporate regionally and locally specific approaches to the planning and application of strategies and actions.
Finally, consider the issue of legislation and whether changes are needed to provide for greater protection of soil resources. In my view, this is an underused tool. No one likes sticks rather than carrots, but a lot of countries are looking at this, most notably, the EU with its new EU soil health law and the U.K. — Dr. Hannam may be able to talk more about that.
Take account, finally, Senator Black, of Canada’s international commitments and obligations, including reporting obligations. I’m thinking about the climate change convention, desertification convention, biodiversity convention and Ramsar. You have, I think, a quarter of the world’s total wetlands; this is important stuff. Finally, the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. Of the 17 SDGs — and I know Canada is committed to meeting them — there is no goal for soil, alas and alack, but at least seven of them cannot be met without improvements to soil health.
I will leave it there, Mr. Chair. I didn’t want to offer gratuitous advice, but I thought these points might provide a reliable checklist as you move to the drafting stage of your study. Again, thank you for the opportunity. I am happy to provide more information on the points raised in the questions and answers.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Wensley. Mr. Lobb.
Don Lobb, farmer, as an individual: Honourable senators, I thank you for the privilege to contribute to this hearing.
Your report on the status of soil health in Canada will be the most important responsibility of your careers. How you position findings will determine both their utility and your legacy.
This report is important because soil is where everything begins. Soil health is essential to food availability. That determines standard of living, which then underpins social, economic and political stability. Soil is a finite strategic resource of consequence far beyond agriculture.
Testimony during the past 18 months effectively brought into focus every element of soil health as it contributes to human health, environmental health, urban soil management, forest productivity, water and air quality and our capacity to produce food. The interaction among these elements has been shown to be real and to be important. We live in a holistic environment.
From that testimony, it is clear that we need to protect our best crop-producing soil from non-food production use. We need to support the restoration of eroded or degraded soil. We need to care for that soil in a way that ensures maximum carbon storage and precipitation use, and we need to protect rangeland and fragile lands to ensure their sustainable use.
In response to these needs, we must engage those who influence soil manager decisions. We must provide, through incentives, a financial advantage to those who use proven soil care practices. It will take four generations of support to ensure lasting change.
We must build from the experience of innovators who have demonstrated that, for the first time in history, we now have the knowledge and the tools to protect and improve soil health both profitably and sustainably.
We must encourage municipal, provincial and federal governments to work collaboratively for the protection and care of foodland in real and measurable ways.
We must create a new, effective model for technology development, embodiment and delivery.
We must engage soil-focused organizations that can provide credibility to a new and charged soil health initiative.
We must also attract support and participation from the agri‑supply industry, the communications community, the food industry and the consuming public.
Honourable senators, the testimony on the status of soil health in Canada aptly brought real focus to the frailty of our long-term food production capacity and to urgency for soil protection and care.
As we move forward, the global situation will vastly add to that urgency. Will the articles of this report convincingly advocate for a new and different influence paradigm? Will those articles plot a path of fresh opportunities that leads to soil health protection and improvement? This is necessary to ensure enduring soil productivity.
Can we define a soil care “ethic” that will be the rally point for all Canadians? Will we demonstrate the perception, perseverance and leadership for which Senator Sparrow was immortalized in the Soil at Risk: Canada’s Eroding Future report of 1984? At stake is the well-being of all Canadians long into the future. The strength of this report will contribute to the fate of my grandchildren and the fate of your grandchildren. What will be our legacy? Thank you.
The Chair: Thanks very much, witnesses. We will now proceed to questions from our colleague senators.
Senator Oh: Thank you, witnesses, for being here with us. Mr. Lobb, welcome back to the committee. My question to you is: As a farmer, what is your perspective on assisting soil-related legislation and policy at the national and provincial levels? Also, how does this policy impact your farming practices? What improvements and adjustments would you suggest? Thank you.
Mr. Lobb: How many hours do I have?
Senator Oh: Your lifetime of experience.
Mr. Lobb: Most of the initiative to soil health improvement has come from farmers, and the researchers and politicians followed. I think those who have been close to farming will understand that, but we do need research and development to inform policy makers and politicians and to provide support for those who have innovated and made some real progress.
What we need is long-term activity in the form of government support. Following Soil at Risk in 1984, we had a flurry of activity and many programs that lasted three or four years. A generation later, much of the impact from that effort has been lost, and we are starting over again. So we need long-term support and a financial incentive that really moves people forward.
Senator Oh: You are a long-time farmer. May I ask, is the second generation of your family ready to take over? Are they running your farm now?
Mr. Lobb: My youngest son has been farming. I have another son who is quite involved in the soil issue at the University of Manitoba, and they are all interested and involved in one way or another, but not directly in farming.
Senator Oh: Good. It is important to see the second generation coming into farming. Thank you.
Mr. Lobb: I think that’s the highest compliment any farmer can have.
Senator Oh: Thank you.
Senator Cotter: Thank you very much and thank you, Mr. Lobb, particularly for the continuity you provide on this important topic. My main question will be for Ms. Wensley. Senator Black and I met you in Glasgow, and both of us were inspired by the work you are doing and the vision you have provided.
For a while now, I have been very much looking forward to the opportunity for you to join us. There were days when I thought if you could be an honorary member of our committee, we would greatly benefit. Indeed, I was hoping to be the first questioner to ensure that Senator Black would give you enough time to describe the themes you identified for us. I don’t have many questions except to ask what your advice would be on what we should be looking toward in our report.
I will ask you one question in particular. You worked as the National Soils Advocate in the context of a country in a federation with federal and state governments which have responsibility for land, agriculture and the like. We have the same situation here in some respects. Constitutionally, agriculture fits within both federal and provincial jurisdictions in Canada. What is possible for us to say, in that context, based on your experience? You made an observation about governments working together, but are you able to be any more specific on that to be helpful to us?
Ms. Wensley: Thank you very much, Senator Cotter, and very good to see you again.
It is complicated to have several layers of government. It’s also tricky because in our system — and I think it’s the same in yours — the federal government or the central government has principal responsibility for some things, but it is, in our case, the states and territories and, in yours, the provinces that have the responsibility for land management, natural resources management and also legislation. It’s very difficult to have an overriding federal legislation in some areas, particularly in relation to the environment, unless it is demonstrably of national importance. That is why I hammer away on the need to talk about soil and soil health having national significance. I think Don Lobb also made that point very well.
We did succeed — and this was a breakthrough — for the first time in Australian history in having all the states, territories and jurisdictions sign on to our new National Soil Strategy. That involved an extensive process of consultation and collaboration as well as a lot of public consultation. We had to get all the stakeholders on board. But I think it is possible if you have that overarching vision that people are prepared to sign onto with regard to what you want to achieve. You can convince the provinces, in your case, and the states and territories, in ours, that it is in the interests of all of them.
Our vision, which was agreed upon by everybody after two or two and a half years of negotiation and discussion, was that our soil should be recognized and valued as a key national asset by all stakeholders and that it be better understood and sustainably managed to benefit and secure our environment, economy, food, infrastructure, health biodiversity and communities both now and in the future. That sounds a little bit romantic, but I think it is actually a very strong vision and it is very important to bring together everybody around that common sense of purpose. Other things flow from that.
Senator Cotter: Thank you. That was very helpful.
My last point is really just an observation. This is our last hearing on this topic, which has occupied us over the course of 18 months, and I think that you deserve the prize for the most inconvenient time to be a witness for us. Thank you very much.
Senator McNair: My question starts with Ms. Wensley. You talked about the vision, and I agree with Senator Cotter that we could take your points that you set out and use them as a template for the report. You talk about the vision of the soil and how critical that is.
Your second point was around the sense of urgency. I wanted to ask you to expand on that a bit. How critical is it to stress the urgency at this time?
Ms. Wensley: Thank you, Senator McNair.
I’m not sufficiently knowledgeable about the threats to soil health in Canada and the extent of soil vulnerability and degradation. I have tried to read a fair bit about it. Presumably, you have some of the same pressures that we do resulting from a changing climate. We have got the oldest, driest, saltiest, poorest soils in our country, so we have always had soil challenges.
But to me, the sense of urgency is the evidence that we have of the degradation of the soils worldwide being exacerbated by intense weather events and climate factors. That’s really important.
The second thing that gives us an urgency in addressing this and accelerating action to improve soil health relates to climate change again and the crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. It seems to me that the issue of soil health as it relates to soil carbon and issues of carbon sequestration is the thing that — probably more than anything else recently — has pushed the issue of soil health policy agendas for national and international communities. They are the things that give a sense of urgency about it. We all know, just from looking at the television every night, the crises that are happening everywhere linked to climate change: floods, cyclones, droughts and bushfires.
For us, this is very real, and I know it’s very vivid for your country as well. These are a few factors that really create a sense of urgency.
I would add that Canada, like Australia and the U.K. is on the line as well — we’re all good international citizens who attach importance to contributing to the resolution of these big global challenges. I would suggest that would be another element in defining the urgency for action.
Senator McNair: Thank you.
Mr. Lobb, thank you for being here. We were talking about winning awards. You win the awards for being the most determined. According to my calculation, the Soil at Risk report was 39 or 40 years ago, roughly. As you say, there was a flurry of activity at the time, but we lost that sustainability.
In your mind, how important is that sustained activity — obviously, it’s critical — and the sense of urgency that we just heard about?
Mr. Lobb: The importance really comes to the urgency issue. I did the calculation a few years ago, and if we were to add up all of the land that we have lost from agriculture to urban, industrial and infrastructure development over the last 60 years, it would amount to a strip of land about 11 kilometres wide right across Canada.
Development has always happened on our best land because people build where it’s easiest to provide their food supply. As that happens, and with growing demand for agriculture products, we push production out onto more and more fragile land — out onto prairie land, where those lands have a high capacity to sustain carbon. When we put crop production on those lands, we start to lose that carbon pretty quickly. That’s an important issue.
Worldwide, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, we have now passed peak soil within the last two or three years. That’s the point at which we can no longer replace our food production land as quickly as we’re losing it. We have been losing land at the rate of about half a per cent per year since 1960. Their prediction is that we will increase the population by about 2.4 billion people in the next 60 years before we reach peak population, so if you look at the numbers, we’ll gain 2.4 billion people but we’ll lose another 30% of our food‑producing capacity. Is that urgent?
Senator McNair: Thank you.
Senator Burey: Thank you so much. I feel it’s a real honour to be here in the presence of our three distinguished witnesses today. There is so much knowledge, experience and passion.
This question is to all of our witnesses but particularly to Dr. Hannam. It is regarding the U.K. government’s 25-year environmental plan, which states that England’s soils must be managed sustainably by 2030 and that steps must be taken toward restoring the U.K.’s degraded soils. I like this wording — a new system of public money for public goods will reward farmers for environmental outcomes such as protecting and regenerating soil.
Could you speak a bit about how the U.K. farmers are currently incentivized for environmental outcomes related to soil health management practices? What policy recommendations would you have for Canada based upon that?
Ms. Hannam: Thanks for the question.
We’re in a bit of flux here in the U.K. at the moment, coming out of the European Union. The environmental land management schemes you mentioned are currently still under development and in pilot. These schemes are also developed to different nations within the U.K. as well. There is a scheme being developed in England, and that is linked to these targets in the environmental improvement plan to improve sustainable soil management by 2028. The idea is then to incentivize farmers to meet this target through subsidy schemes which are not just for soils; they are for a whole host of different things. Essentially, it is replacing the premise of the common agriculture policy, which was just rewarding farmers for the amount of land they had. This is actually incentivizing farmers to provide public goods for public services.
So the schemes themselves are currently under development, as I said. Some of the schemes are specifically related to soils and particular practices, essentially, that are beneficial for soils, such as incorporating cover crops and herb overlays into different systems.
The other nations are taking a similar approach. In Wales, they also have a similar type of scheme, but the focus is slightly different. That has been co-designed with some of the farmers. Again, the specifics in terms of the soil actions have not been developed yet for those particular schemes. The idea is that to meet these particular targets, for those farmers entering into those schemes, there should be knock-on benefits to the health of the soils as they are incentivized to adopt these types of practices.
Senator Burey: Thank you very much.
Would Ms. Wensley or Mr. Lobb like to speak to that or add to the types of systems, using the U.K. language, which is public money for public goods, that rewards farmers for environmental outcomes? Could you speak to the Australian experience with that?
Ms. Wensley: Thank you, Senator Burey, for the question. There is a lot of attention being given to this in Australia, and some areas are better developed than others in terms of incentives for good stewardship on the land. We’re quite advanced in the areas of carbon credits, although there is quite elaborate schemes in relation to something they call Australian carbon credit units, or ACCUs, but across the board in Australia, there is a lot of attention being given to financial incentives.
It’s not always public monies. There are different organizations that are — some of them are not-for-profit organizations — building quite a reputation for working in this area of credits. There is a new emphasis on the part of the federal government on nature repair and giving farmers credit for changing their practices and demonstrating better soil stewardship, but it’s not fully developed. I would be very happy to send some information to the clerk of the committee about this, which is handled more by what is now the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, bringing all of those together and doing a lot of work in this area of incentives.
I agree with Don Lobb that it’s the farmers who really know their land, and they probably don’t want to have legislation imposed on them, so the issue of economic incentives is a really big one. As National Soils Advocate, we hosted a policy forum on this subject. Again, I would be very happy to forward you some of the material from that policy forum.
Senator Burey: Thank you.
Mr. Lobb: The best incentive I had was — we did a pretty thorough economic study on the changes that I implemented over the years, and the practices that were most conservation effective were also the most profitable. Somehow we need to get more farmers past that stage where you are going through a bio-reset when you start making changes in the amount of soil disturbance you are doing. It puzzles me why, with check-offs with the various commodities in this country, a percentage of that isn’t allocated to rewarding soil improvement. Every one of those products for which there is a check-off starts with the soil, and yet there is no way to implement a soil check-off. That’s not something we market.
There is the potential to work with municipalities and provinces to introduce something associated with property ownership, property taxes and incentives through that, and that’s more complicated, but that brings some responsibility to the land owner. I think that’s a good thing because then the land owner in his or her own interest would engage in the process of making sure that good practices were in place. We have already heard some discussion about that today.
There are a few different concepts. That’s one that we really need to work on. Somehow we need to reward good activity to get people past that time where they are introducing new practices because it does take four generations before a new practice is adopted with any certainty.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Robinson: My question is for Mr. Lobb. I really appreciated your response on urgency. We just heard from some witnesses who were expressing concern about accessing land, and when we look at land disappearance, it’s interesting to think beyond competition within agriculture as a concern about who is farming and how that land is being farmed.
You had mentioned all the other pressures on disappearance through development. I think we could talk about that for a really long time, but it is really important to note that there is some land use planning, as well as some profitability issues, that we could talk about for a long time. I don’t know any farmer who would sell land if they could be profitable. When we see the monetary pressure put on land — and as you said, when people settled here, the people who came after, we settled in places where we had the most productive soil because that’s where we could eat, that’s where we could produce food and we could really thrive.
My question is different. You had mentioned the Soil at Risk study from 1984, which I think is the year that Senator McNair started practising law. Within that, you had mentioned that there were a few programs that came out of that which lasted three or four years and then disappeared. I’m wondering if there is anything that you see from those three or four years, those programs, that were super valuable that we should know about and try to reinvigorate?
Mr. Lobb: The two components of the National Soil Conservation Program, which was introduced in 1989 — and that is where actual money is flowing from. I was involved in the delivery of those funds, and that was the Permanent Cover Program and the Green Plan. They were useful, but they needed to carry on because, through those programs, there was money for the purchase of equipment and that sort of thing. Ten years later, people weren’t doing that anymore because crop prices had increased, and every time crop prices increased, farmers did not spend the money on soil improvement, they buy iron, because that’s where our status symbols lie. Bigger, faster, newer, and one of the ways to demonstrate that is with newer and bigger iron. It happened in the 1920s, it happened in the 1970s, and it happened again a couple of decades ago.
We need to have programs that continue to reward good soil management with something like the Permanent Cover Program or no soil disturbance other than the seed zone and that kind of thing. Mr. Andjelic has talked about some of that. That needs to last. It’s not a cost to the public; it’s an investment in the future of our food security, and it’s a strategic investment because, as we go through the pressures that we were talking about a few minutes ago, Canada is one of the few countries that has both good soil and an adequate supply of water, and we’ll come under extreme pressure in the next couple of generations.
Senator Robinson: We come from different parts of the country and both have agricultural backgrounds, and I would like to say that when I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, secrets were kept. If we were producing something really well on our farm, we didn’t share with our neighbour because they were our competitor. What I’m seeing in my region now is recognition that competition happens well outside of our region, so instead of being competitors with your neighbour, you are actually collaborators. I’m seeing groups come together of farmers in their 30s, 40s and 50s, sharing information and recognizing that we all feed water into our watershed. And we have mandatory buffer zones and things like that, which are quite the envy of other provinces. Prince Edward Island has done some great work because of the fragility of our soil and because no-till is not really an option for the crops that we grow on Prince Edward Island in a large scale.
There is recognition now of the value of a cover crop, of a green manure, of a year of rest, of biofumigants and all these things, and that recognition is on the bottom line. Farmers are business people at the end of the day. A lot of them make bad decisions because they get emotional about their legacy and what they do, but we are turning a page, just as a note of encouragement.
Mr. Lobb: There is some work being done on no-till potato production.
Senator Robinson: Yes. In Germany or Belgium.
Mr. Lobb: That’s the way they grow naturally.
Senator Robinson: Low till, not no-till.
Mr. Lobb: Yes, no-till.
Senator Robinson: Okay.
The Chair: I have a couple more questions. I think this is important as we wrap this study up. I would like to hear about this one more time — please give us your best shot at it, Dr. Hannam, Ms. Wensley and Mr. Lobb. Tell us what you think about where we need to go. Give us a two-minute wrap-up. Your messages are more important than my questions.
Ms. Hannam: Thank you. I would like to reiterate the three points I made at the beginning as well. We want to circle back to them. Try to think about — and Ms. Wensley mentioned this as well — how we can create this direction of travel through a strategy so that we can then identify the direction of travel for soils for Canada which can then trickle down through the state systems as well.
Fundamentally, thinking about what those key incentives are for farmers to be able to shift to different types of practices. Is that through a combination of both public incentive, public financing but also the private sector? I think you had some witnesses looking at green finance options as well. This is the way the U.K. government is going in terms of blending those financial incentives for farmers to adopt those kinds of practices. Canada needs to trickle down that information to encourage this bottom-up approach that was discussed just now by the farmers while valuing those peer-to-peer networks and ensuring that information is contextual for them. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you.
Ms. Wensley: Thank you. I think it will be clear from what I said that I see a need for an overarching national strategy that has soil identified as a strategic national asset. I also think that you need to have a long-term perspective. Our new soil strategy is a 20-year strategy.
There is a real problem — and Don Lobb has illustrated it — that programs start and then aren’t sustained. There must be a long-term plan with set milestones and reviews. That’s very important, particularly because of the stop-start nature of politics, elections and changes.
You really want to get this big framework with targets, timetables and provision for review. Again, there is a major need for a public outreach program to convince everybody that this is important for all Canadians.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Lobb: I would encourage the report to identify water‑stable aggregates as the ultimate measure of soil health. Dr. Cristine Morgan was encouraging that when she testified to this group a month or so ago. When we have that condition in the soil, every element that contributes to soil health must be in place. With that, we end up with water-stable soil aggregates to be established, increased or maintained.
Water-stable soil aggregates are the found in the natural environment. When we have those in place, we don’t have wind or water erosion. We have maximum capacity for water infiltration and storage in the soils. I discovered this on my own farm in 1993. It’s taken 30 years for the scientists to catch up. I have been promoting it ever since that time.
The most important thing that would be of value to this report is to have ethics embedded in it based on the use of foodland soil as a privilege that comes with responsibilities.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Lobb.
Dr. Hannam and Ms. Wensley, Mr. Lobb, I want to thank you for your participation today. Your assistance with our study is very much appreciated.
I want to thank the committee members for your active participation and thoughtful questions, and, as I always like to do, I want to thank our staff that support this committee, namely, the interpreters, the debates team transcribing the meeting, the committee room attendant, the multimedia services technician, the broadcasting team, the recording centre, ISD and our page, our clerk and our library analysts. Thank you all very much. Our regular library analyst is watching online and has been conversing with our clerk, saying she wishes she was here.
Lastly, but certainly not least, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to every individual who has played a role in our study on the status of soil health in Canada. To all the witnesses who testified here in Ottawa, virtually from across the country and, in some cases, from around the world, thank you very much. Thank you to those who generously shared your insights to our committee whether through testimony or through submission of briefs and other documents. Each and every one of you has made an indelible and impactful mark on this study. I urge each of you who have been involved in this to take pride in the pivotal role that you played. Your dedication to advancing our understanding of soil health in Canada and your commitment to the betterment of Canadian agriculture is admirable.
I also want to thank my colleagues that are here today as well as past members who were integral parts of this study. Your active participation and dedication to advancing soil health have been truly commendable. Thank you for engaging in insightful discussions over the course of the 18 to 19 months and for posing thought-provoking questions. May we continue to champion the cause of soil health and agricultural sustainability with the same passion and determination that has characterized our collaborations so far. Thank you for being an indispensable participant of the journey of this study.
Our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, March 19, at 6:30. If there is no other business, I will adjourn the meeting.
(The committee adjourned.)