Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue No. 42 - Evidence - Meeting of February 13, 2018
OTTAWA, Tuesday, February 13, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 5:07 p.m. to study the potential impact of the effects of climate change on the agriculture, agri-food and forestry sectors.
Senator Diane F. Griffin (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I welcome you to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry and would also like to wish you a happy Agriculture Day today.
I’m Senator Griffin from Prince Edward Island and chair of the committee. I would like to start by asking the senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Mercer: Terry Mercer, Nova Scotia.
Senator Gagné: Raymonde Gagné, Manitoba.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Chantal Petitclerc, from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Oh: Victor Oh, Ontario.
Senator Doyle: Norman Doyle, Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Chair: Thank you. Today the committee is continuing its study on the potential impact of the effects of climate change on the agriculture, agri-food and forestry sectors.
I will get the senator who just arrived to introduce himself.
Senator Woo: Yuen Pau Woo, British Columbia.
The Chair: Our first witness is by video conference, Dr. Ralph Martin, Professor, Ontario Agricultural College, University of Guelph.
Thank you, Dr. Martin, for accepting our invitation to appear.
I will invite Dr. Martin to make his presentation, but I would also remind folks that after that we will have a question-and-answer period.
Ralph Martin, Professor, Ontario Agricultural College, University of Guelph, as an individual: Thank you very much for this opportunity. I would like to thank the Nishnabe Attiwandat, known in our language here in this area as “the neutral people.” What is really interesting is they have lived here for millennia, not just decades or centuries, and they have been able to balance production and consumption.
We predicate a lot of our agricultural production on the assumption that we will continue to have to grow crops for producing meat to ship to China as their consumption increases. It was 13 kilograms in 1982. It’s up to 63, rising to 93 if nothing changes. But the Chinese government has decided it should go back to 30 kilograms, and the reason is they don’t want to pay high health costs for obesity and diabetes, and they want to reduce GHGs.
It’s not only in China. Michael McCain of Maple Leaf last summer announced they want to be the most sustainable protein company. He talked about the fact that North Americans consume four times more meat than non-industrial companies, and he says that’s unsustainable. He is saying that this is while we still have a forecast of rising meat consumption.
He’s not a wing nut; he’s the CEO of Maple Leaf. He says that they’re expanding in plant-based proteins — so is Cargill — and I think this is important.
I would also like to point out that McCain said that food waste is an issue. We could feed a billion extra people if we just used current technology and applied it. This does not mean new technology. We’re wasting $31 billion of food in Canada.
This is a shot of farmland in Ontario in May 2013. The farmers here argued that they couldn’t help it because there was an unusual amount of rain. The problem, in my opinion, is they were violating the “Gospel According to Martin,” which is keep your soil covered. If they had kept their soil covered, this erosion would not have taken place.
There’s also an issue of the fact we may not get below a 1.5 degrees Celsius limit; we might be higher than that. What we really need to do is take carbon out of the air and not keep adding to it. We need to bring on cover crops to sequester carbon.
It’s ironic that we’re still subsidizing something to the tune of over $3 billion to the fossil fuel industry. We should be taking that money and putting it into farmers and cover crops to get carbon out of the air rather than adding carbon to the air.
If you add carbon into the soil, you have soil organic matter, and that’s good. We add it with green manures, brown manures and crop residues. It helps to bind soil particles and allows infiltration. It’s really important that water infiltrate into the soil and not run off, and soil organic matter does improve that.
What should soil organic matter levels be in Ontario? For sand it’s different than for clay, but anywhere from 2.1 to 4.5 per cent. That’s where we should be.
Recent data from OMAFRA shows that over just 15 years, soil organic matter declined from around 4.3 to just over 4 per cent. That’s in Ontario as a whole, but in Essex, Lambton and Kent, it dropped by at least 0.8 per cent. That means less water-holding capacity, less infiltration and less aggregate stability.
In Waterloo-Wellington counties — I take this personally because I grew up on a farm in the area — they had soil organic matter way above the Ontario average back in 2002, and now it has decreased so much it’s below the Ontario average.
The value of forages in rotation is that forages help to mitigate issues with soil and crops. So if we have a complex rotation with forages such as corn-corn-soy, winter wheat with red clover or corn-corn-alfalfa-alfalfa, then corn and soybean yields will be higher than in a simple rotation with corn-corn-corn-corn or corn-corn-soy-soy.
In a bad year, the difference will be even more pronounced. This study has been going for 35 years, and we’ve been able to analyze data with the soil organic matter under the complex rotations with forages, and the difference is more pronounced between complex and simple rotations in bad years. We’re likely to get more of those bad years with climate change.
Silvopastoral systems can sequester more carbon than pastures alone, which is something I think we need to look at in Canada. We can do this with very little loss to productivity.
This slide is perhaps the one that I want to put the most emphasis on. I think that what we should be doing in Canada is measuring the outcome of soil organic matter in every field every five years. There are all kinds of good practices that can contribute to this. We should leave it up to farmers to decide what they want to do and measure the outcome, do it with a scientific protocol and adjust farm property tax accordingly. If soil organic matter goes up, your property tax goes down and vice versa.
This could be somewhere close to revenue neutral for government, but if a whole lot of farmers buy in and their soil organic matter goes up, it’s well worth it for government at any level, whether provincial, municipal or federal, to provide funds so farmers can keep building soil organic matter. I would argue soil organic matter is a public good just as clean air and clean water are.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. I have one question for you. It’s a very interesting concept of mentioning a reduction in property tax if a person has more organic matter in his fields.
Could that also apply to the fees one would pay to participate in a crop insurance program? Theoretically, if there’s more organic matter, more water is being held in the soil, more nutrients. Hopefully there is less crop failure and, therefore, less risk for the crop insurance program. What’s your take on that?
Mr. Martin: I think it could work. We’ve looked at that. I have a colleague in agricultural economics who has looked at that.
The argument is that with crop insurance, not every farmer gets it. In Ontario, crop insurance is based on a per operator basis, not a per field or per farm basis. We want to measure soil organic matter per field or per farm.
Coming back to the issue of making sure it bites across the board, everyone has to pay property tax. Much of the issue with soil organic matter declining is with large operators in Ontario who might manage 30,000 acres. They are renting from owners who just want to get the highest rent per acre. If those owners realize that their property tax is going to go up if the operator is driving the soil organic matter down, I believe those owners will pay attention and put pressures on the operator to do it appropriately.
The Chair: That’s an interesting concept.
Senator Mercer: Thank you very much, Dr. Martin. That was a very interesting presentation. Of course, I’m now going to go away and try to find out how I can develop a “Gospel According to Mercer.” You have one named after you.
You say 1 billion is the number of extra people that could be fed if we globally applied the best current methods to reduce wasted food. Are you suggesting that soil organic matter is the key to us being able to feed another billion people?
Mr. Martin: No. Those are two separate concepts.
I just wanted to point out that one of our big issues is wasted food. There are technologies in the household and in plants and on farms that could reduce wasted food. Along with everything else, we have to reduce that.
Senator Mercer: I understand it’s 1 billion. Some us who have visited India know that they produce enough food to feed themselves but don’t properly store or distribute it. There is huge wastage. So I understand that.
Mr. Martin: Right.
Senator Mercer: The soil organic matter theory you’ve proposed, is this an exportable theory? Could we take this theory and move it around the world to help increase production in most other parts of the world?
Mr. Martin: Well, I think so. That gets to practices, and the practices will be different in every location to improve soil organic matter.
Basically, it boils down to including forages — timothy, red clover and so on — in rotation, making sure we have cover crops, adding soil amendments and having rotations that are long enough. No-till helps to conserve soil organic matter but doesn’t add it. It helps to make sure we’re not losing it, but it doesn’t add soil organic matter. The combination of practices is important.
Senator Mercer: But you are a proponent of no-till?
Mr. Martin: Oh, yes.
Senator Woo: If higher soil organic matter contributes to better sequestration of carbon, why wouldn’t we create an incentive structure tied to the carbon content and the sequestration properties of soil organic matter, rather than tying it to farm property tax?
I understand what you’re getting at and that you’re trying to create an incentive for more soil organic matter, but if the policy goal is to reduce carbon in the atmosphere and there’s a measurable effect from soil organic matter to the sequestration of carbon, why don’t we use that policy instrument or measure rather than the farm property tax measure, which seems to me ancillary to the principal policy objective?
Mr. Martin: I think that would work well. The reason I haven’t proposed it up to now is there seem to be different policies in different provinces right now with the carbon tax and carbon credit programs, and we don’t have anything uniform across the country.
Generally, with the cap-and-trade system we have in Ontario, I think it’s a tad complicated. But if we could do it so that they would agree that for every increment of soil organic matter that goes up that means that so much carbon has been sequestered and they paid farmers directly for that, yes, I would be in favour of that.
Senator Woo: Thank you.
Senator Oh: Thank you, professor.
Your opening statement was that in 1982, every Chinese person ate 13 kilograms of meat per year, and now it’s 63 kilograms per year.
I went to China. I don’t see too many fat people walking around overweight.
Mr. Martin: Well, yes, but I understand that the concern of the Chinese government is that it has gone up. This was according to The Guardian Weekly.
Senator Oh: While hundreds of millions of households around the globe struggle to meet their basic dietary needs, a huge proportion of the food produced worldwide ends up in the garbage. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that each year approximately one third of all food produced for human consumption in the world is lost or wasted, including about 45 per cent of all fruits and vegetables, 35 per cent of fish, about 30 per cent of seafood; 20 per cent of dairy products and 20 per cent of meat.
What do you think the government could do to reduce food waste, addressing consumer behaviour, such as consumers failing to plan their shopping, overpurchasing or overreaction to “best before” dates? Also, there is a lack of communication in the supply chain. Can you comment on that?
Mr. Martin: Yes, I would be happy to.
I’m with a research group here at the University of Guelph, with Dr. Kate Parizeau and Dr. Mike Von Massow, and we’ve been looking at wasted food for about five years.
In Canada, in fact, the proportion of wasted food is 40 per cent. Globally, it’s about 33 per cent, or a third. In developing countries, most of the wasted food, as alluded to earlier, is because of poor storage after harvest.
In Canada, half of the 40 per cent, or 20 per cent, is wasted in our households. Part of that is because we buy too much when we shop too infrequently, and we have big fridges that we stuff full. I actually think that in Canada, in some cases, food is too cheap to get the attention of people so that they don’t waste it. I know that’s a very problematic statement in some ways, but I do think that people are not valuing food enough.
We have gone to the curb and picked up regular garbage, recyclable garbage and composting garbage, and we’ve looked at what proportion is food. It’s amazing what people throw out. I think it’s an education.
I think a lot of people misinterpret “best before” dates. It just means the food is not the best it could be after a certain date. It doesn’t mean it’s unsuitable to eat. There’s a lot of misinterpretation about that. I think that if we had smaller fridges and shopped more frequently, that could help as well.
Senator Oh: That’s a good idea.
Also, the supermarket food chains play an important role. I’m sure they also throw out a lot of food every night.
Mr. Martin: They do. It depends a little bit on how it’s managed. Part of what we’ve looked at is that sometimes they download their waste to customers, with two-for-one specials and so on. If they see that food is starting to go bad, they make it very cheap to purchase, and then it’s wasted in the household.
Regardless, wasted food means that we’re wasting energy. We are wasting water. We are degrading soil organic matter in order to produce food that we don’t need. That’s a compounding waste.
Senator Doyle: Welcome. Good to have you here.
I am wondering about the breakdown of organic fertilizers. They release GHGs into the atmosphere. Can organic fertilizers be applied as sparingly as chemical fertilizers and still get the required benefits that you need for the growth of crops?
Mr. Martin: Yes. I think a nutrient management plan, such as we have in Ontario, can apply to organic fertilizers and organic amendments, just as it can to synthetic chemical fertilizers.
The thing about working with compost and manure is that we have to be very careful about phosphorous. On organic farms, we can add nitrogen with legumes in rotation. So, if we manage in such a way so as to not have too much phosphorous and then get our nitrogen from legumes, it is quite possible for organic farms to fine-tune their fertility and nutrient management.
Senator Doyle: You’ve done research into organic farming. Do these farms produce more GHG emissions from their fertilizer protocols or the emissions that come from mechanical equipment or from their buildings? Which produces more GHG emissions?
Mr. Martin: Nitrogen fertilizer is by far the biggest producer of greenhouse gases in agriculture. Nitrogen fertilizer is one third of the agricultural energy budget. Greenhouse gas emissions result from the manufacture of nitrogen fertilizer, because we need so much heat and pressure to manufacture nitrogen fertilizer. Organic farmers don’t use it.
Dr. Rod McRae, Dr. Derek Lynch and I have papers where we’ve compared and contrasted organic farms and non-organic farms. If you look at the full life-cycle assessment, the energy efficiency per acre is much better on organic farms. Per kilogram of food, sometimes it’s not quite as good because non-organic farms produce more food. Overall, the energy efficiency when you take into account nitrogen fertilizer is much better on organic farms. We have two or three or four papers that have looked at that directly.
Senator Doyle: To what extent, would you say, have farmers been using lower GHG emissions techniques and technologies in their daily operations?
Mr. Martin: I don’t know, actually. I think it depends on any one farm.
In agriculture, we are emitting CO2, nitrous oxide and methane, the three big greenhouse gases, and we’re sequestering carbon with trees and forages and some crops. What we’re really interested in is the net effect.
I know that quite a bit of work has been done on methane emissions from cattle and so on, and we are becoming more efficient in agriculture so that we have less methane emitted per kilogram of meat or milk. But I think one of the big ones in agriculture is still nitrogen fertilizer. That’s the biggest GHG emitter because of all the heat and pressure required and because of the nitrous oxide emitted if too much is applied.
Senator Petitclerc: I want to go back to all of the numbers on the kilograms of meat per person, per year. We heard from a few witnesses from different organizations in the meat industry, and so I want to hear you on what they told us. Obviously, they strongly defend a couple of things. One of them, if I recall correctly, is that, in perspective, the meat industry produces and leaves a very small footprint; that they do provide what they call some sort of a unique protein; that it is not realistic to have scenarios where the goal would be to lower meat consumption too much; and that maybe this is not where we should spend our energy when it comes to addressing climate change challenges. I want to hear your perspective on the importance of how much energy that part of the whole challenge should be taking.
Mr. Martin: I have been talking to my students about this in the last week or so. I think meat consumption per person is going down, whether meat company people want it to or not. I know that Maple Leaf is investing in plant-based proteins, and they’re rebranding themselves as a protein company rather than a meat company. Cargill also has been investing in plant-based protein. I think it’s inevitable that as people have more and more concerns about animal welfare and associated issues with livestock, we are going to simply be eating less meat. I think the trajectory is going in that direction.
It’s hard to say exactly where we’re going to end up with that. We just did a paper recently and are about to publish it, so I’m hesitant to say too much about it. We looked at the agricultural land in Ontario. We looked at what would happen if people in Ontario ate the recommended amounts of meat rather than the actual amounts of meat they eat now.
Generally, people eat way more meat than is required for good health, and vitamin B12 and all of the benefits associated with meat. My argument is that we can eat meat. Just eat less of it and pay for the high quality of meat that may come from pastures or forages. Meat that comes from pastures and forages has higher conjugated linoleic acids, higher omega-3s. It’s better for us. Eat less of it. Make sure we get more forages into rotation. I think we have to be very careful about feeding grain that is food quality to livestock.
One hundred years ago, my ancestors would have been appalled at the idea of feeding food-grade grain to livestock just to improve the feed conversion efficiency. I’m betting that 100 years from now our descendants will never think about feeding food-grade grain to livestock. It is the bubble in time where we are doing that.
To become more efficient in agriculture, I think that we cannot afford to feed food-grade grain to livestock. Ruminants work well with forages, and there are all kinds of benefits to the meat and milk that comes from forages. I think we’ll be starting to eat more meat from forages and less meat overall, and I think that will have good impacts all across agriculture.
Senator Gagné: Welcome, and thank you for your presentation.
If you look at soil organic matter model development, the testing and the policy application of those SOM models, could you comment on the research being done in this area across Canada, and how do we compare to what is being done in the United States?
Mr. Martin: I’m not sure how well we are doing in contrast to the U.S. There are parts of the U.S. where they are doing a lot of really good work on soil organic matter.
With regard to some of the research now going on in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, the traditional way of taking a sample of soil organic matter is to put a probe in the ground to 15 centimetres, take it out, put it in a bucket, take it to a lab and test it. I’m working on research now with my colleagues where we are looking at proximal sensors. These are sensors on corn planters. We’re looking at sensors on satellites and on drones. We’re trying to find algorithms that would help us to identify soil organic matter. We’re still going to have to do some old-fashioned probing and ground-truthing, but I would guess that in about five years we’re going to be much more adept, with technology, at measuring soil organic matter more representatively across all of the field, in different kinds of management zones, in hollows and on knolls and slopes. We’ll be able to do it much more quickly and much more cost effectively.
My philosophy, generally, is that we should decide what our biological and ecological priorities are, set those, and then ask the smart people in engineering and computer science to develop equipment that can do it.
Senator Gagné: Have you been involved in supporting public policy in this area?
Mr. Martin: I have been involved on the Ontario Soil Health Working Group. We have been developing a soil health strategy. That has been for the last three years. I was also involved in going to the environmental commissioner of Ontario and initiating an EBR to make sure that this policy group would sit. I have been involved at that level, yes.
Senator Mercer: Dr. Martin, this is fascinating.
You have not talked about this subject, but you certainly have piqued my interest. I have been asking questions on this committee for years now about the fact that by 2050 — well, the number keeps changing — we’re going to have 9.5 to 9.7 billion people on this planet and need to find a way to feed them. Right now we can’t feed them, but is your contention that we might come close to that if we were more efficient and better in managing wasted food, better in increasing soil organic matter, and better in promoting no-till as opposed to continuing to till?
Is there any estimate as to how we could increase the yield? The other problem is that they are not making any more land. There are only a couple of countries in the world that can bring more arable land into production, Canada being one of them. Do you see a solution to this problem of being able to feed 9.7 billion people?
Mr. Martin: I think we have been spooked a little bit, and we still are, by data from the Second World War. In Europe and North America, we appreciate how vulnerable we can be to food scarcity. There are more and more people, but I don’t think we should assume that the way to feed these 9 billion people is to continue doing more and more of the same, i.e., feeding so much livestock. We could cut back dramatically if we ate the recommended amount of meat rather than the more meat that we are eating per person now. We could reduce wasted food, as I’ve talked about.
I think that with organic agriculture there are some tremendous opportunities. There are no-till methods developing. It used to be that “organic” could not use no-till because in “conventional” they were depending on herbicides. Now, there are methods to use no-till in organic.
I think it becomes a combination of what foods we choose to eat, how those foods are produced, and how we reduce waste. Then it becomes how we manage the land. This paper that we’re doing in Ontario, if we focused on just eating as much meat as recommended, it would free up an awful lot of land just to produce food for people directly, with pulses and so on.
Senator Mercer: Are you suggesting that our diet, just in our dietary habits, is one of the key elements of feeding 9.7 billion people?
Mr. Martin: Yes, I tackle the really easy problems. Telling people what to eat is not easy, and I know that people don’t like it when someone like me comes along and says, “You should change your diet.” But it seems to me that it is already happening, and as meat gets more expensive, for a number of reasons, I think it’s going to continue to happen.
Senator Mercer: One thing you haven’t mentioned is genetically modified organisms. What’s your opinion on that? My theory is that if we can’t produce enough food to feed 9.7 billion people in the traditional way, we have to find new ways of doing it. With GMOs, many of the things we eat have been modified in the past. Even if we were able to change our diet, how do we get production up to feed all those people?
Mr. Martin: There are a couple of ways to approach that. One of the things about transgenics is that they can work with one gene at a time and can stack those genes, but I don’t think they will really address the issue of drought resistance and some of the bigger challenges we have coming. I think we will have to rely more on a traditional type of breeding for that.
Some gains have been made, but a lot of the transgenic research has amounted to Bt and Roundup Ready. That’s very simple technology, in a way. It has not really helped us to address what we’re going to have to deal with as climate change comes and there will be a lot more variability from year to year. I think a lot of that will be with traditional breeding, building soil organic matter and getting more forages back into rotation.
Senator Petitclerc: I want to continue with that very interesting conversation and answers because what you are saying is really about major lifestyle changes that are happening already, and bound to happen in terms of diet, consumption and lifestyle changes.
I want to know what you think about what the role of the government should be in going in that direction. I have been following, and maybe you have as well, the new food guide that is under process right now, so I want to hear about what you think the role of the government should be, if we support going in that direction, like many countries do.
Mr. Martin: I think the emphasis has to be on healthy food. Our food today has too much salt, fat and sugar. I think it’s appropriate to regulate the amount of salt. I read recently that we have not decreased salt in food very much in the last number of years with education and with voluntary compliance by industry.
I think we’re going to have to get to the point where everyone is on a level playing field where we understand that this is the way it’s going be. That may affect our imports if our competing countries do not also reduce their salt. For example, consumers may want to try and buy that food, and that will get into trade issues. We have to address health first with food, and grow food according to principles of health and make sure that we have healthy food, eat enough of it and no more. And don’t waste.
Senator Petitclerc: To bring it back to the study, you’re saying if we go with the health focus, a bit of a side effect will be being a bit more gentle with the climate or the environment; they will come together.
Mr. Martin: I think so. For example, meat produced by forages and so on has higher CLAs and higher omega-3s. That meat may be more expensive and there may be less of it, but there will be plenty for what we need as a proportion of our diet in meat.
Senator Woo: I would like to go back to your comments on silvopastoral systems and the bullet suggesting that total GHG emissions of Canadian agriculture could be sequestered by 6.4 million hectares of silvopastoral systems. I don’t know if this is a big number or a small number, a big goal or a small goal, or how close we are or how far. Give us some context and tell us whether this is just a throwaway number or is there something realistic here?
Mr. Martin: It’s a big number. I think we are a long way from that. My colleagues here at the University of Guelph — Andy Gordon and Naresh Thevathasan — have been doing research in agri-forestry for 30 years. They have very good data to show that if you have rows of trees in regular fields with crops, that’s set aside from silvopasture with cattle grazing. But if you have rows of trees and have crops between, the yields of corn and soybean would stay about the same, and the yields of wheat would be a bit lower. But then you would have all the carbon sequestration, the nutrients recycled by the leaves that would go back onto that soil and reduce fertilizer applications. You would take out 7 per cent of the land with those trees.
The biggest objection they have heard so far is that if you don’t prune the trees, then the branches ding the combine cabs and the operators get upset. It means you have to keep pruning.
But I know that some farmers are now growing trees and looking at it as their retirement plan. Not only do the trees in rows sequester carbon and have very little impact on crop yields, but the farmers can harvest so many of those trees every year for their retirement. They can replant as they harvest. From the perspective of a family farm, it makes that farm more resilient ecologically because of the trees but also economically, and it makes it easier to transfer the farm to the next generation.
Senator Woo: And it would be even more economically advantageous if an incentive scheme could be constructed whereby the carbon pricing mechanism — either cap and trade or carbon pricing — could factor into the sequestration effect of the trees that are grown on those farms.
Mr. Martin: I couldn’t agree more.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Martin. This has been fascinating.
There were lots of great questions, senators; I appreciate that.
We are going to take a brief pause and go in camera for a few minutes.
(The committee continued in camera.)
(The committee resumed in public.)
The Chair: Honourable senators, the committee will now reconvene to hear our next witnesses by video conference. We have one of the witnesses with us right now and the other will get connected, we hope. Both are scientists with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
Dr. Karen Beauchemin is a research scientist specializing in sustainable production systems at the Lethbridge Research and Development Centre in Alberta.
Thank you, doctor, for accepting our invitation to appear. I would invite you to now make your presentation and we will proceed from there.
Karen Beauchemin, Research Scientist, Sustainable Production Systems, Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, Science and Technology Branch, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada: Thank you, Madam Chair and honourable senators. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you in the context of your interest in climate change and agriculture. I’m honoured to speak to you about my research into these issues.
I’m a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, with 30 years of experience. My expertise is in the area of dairy and beef cattle nutrition and production. My research is focused on ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cattle, specifically methane emissions.
I welcome the opportunity to provide you with some context around the issue, as well as an overview of the main findings from our research. The information is particularly relevant to the question of how governments can play a role in targeting reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Ruminants, especially beef cattle, are often portrayed as environmentally unfriendly, and recent concerns about greenhouse gases have come to the forefront. There appears, at least from my perspective, to be considerable misunderstanding of this topic. I hope to bring some science into the discussion.
I prepared for you a very small deck of slides. In slide 2, I wanted to illustrate the point that cattle and other ruminants, like sheep and goats, convert low-quality, human-inedible forage or grass into meat and milk, which are high-quality protein sources for human consumption.
There’s often the misconception that a lot of grain is fed to cattle, which competes with the human food supply. It’s true, but while beef cattle in feedlots do consume grain before they’re sent to market, when you average over the entire life cycle of producing beef in Canada, beef cattle eat a diet of about 80 per cent forage and only 20 per cent grain. So it’s really a forage-based diet.
In slide 3, I wanted to show the circular relationship between ruminant animals and grasslands. In Canada, about a quarter of the agricultural land is comprised of seeded forages and native grasslands that produce forage for ruminant livestock and bring economic returns to producers for maintaining those lands. Seeded forages are used in crop rotations to promote soil health, while grasslands are typically marginal lands for crop production that could not otherwise be used for growing food for human consumption. But those lands store vast amounts of carbon and provide ecosystem services.
The benefits of those grasslands can be overshadowed by the fact that cattle are a net contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. To reduce the environmental impact of livestock production and to build public trust, the cattle industry, private sector and government need to play a role in finding ways to reduce methane emissions.
In meat and milk production, methane is the predominant greenhouse gas. Ruminants have a complex digestive system that permits them to consume fibre, but they produce methane during the normal process of fibre or feed digestion. Enteric methane is formed in the animal’s rumen, or stomach, by the microbial population as a means of disposing of excess hydrogen that can have a negative feedback on digestion. A common misconception, for example, is how methane is released from animals. Almost all of the methane produced by a ruminant is released by the breath and not the back end of the animal.
In addition to being a greenhouse gas that has a 28-times greater warming potential than carbon dioxide, methane is a loss of energy for the animal. About 2 to 12 per cent of the energy fed to ruminants is lost in the form of methane. Therefore, reducing methane losses from ruminants would not only benefit the environment but may also improve efficiency of animal production, and that’s a very important point. It’s a win-win situation that could be an economic incentive for the industry to adopt practices that reduce methane emissions.
In slide 4, I present results from a study that shows that the Canadian beef industry has one of the lowest carbon footprints, or greenhouse gas emissions, in the world. This was a historical assessment of beef production conducted in Canada by myself and other researchers at Ag Canada and the University of Manitoba. We found that producing a kilogram of beef today results in 14 per cent fewer greenhouse gas emissions and 14 per cent fewer methane emissions compared with 30 years ago.
The reduction in greenhouse gases over the three decades occurred as a result of increased efficiency of production — better nutrition, better genetics, better management and so forth. These improvements in production efficiency that help the industry to be internationally competitive also decrease emissions relative to meat production.
In slide 5, this is from Canada’s national greenhouse gas inventory report prepared by Environment and Climate Change Canada. It indicates that enteric methane from all livestock production in Canada contributes about 3.5 per cent of the country’s total emissions. In comparison, for example, emissions from road transportation would be about six times greater than enteric methane emissions.
In slide 6, I address some of the aspects of our research. We’ve been examining ways in which enteric methane can be mitigated. What we found, for example, is that there are differences between animals in the amount of methane they produce. Animals that are more efficient, which means that they eat less feed to gain the same amount of weight, produce about 10 per cent less methane than less efficient animals. Diet also greatly impacts methane emissions, so feeding grain, as in the case of a feedlot animal, would shift the digestion process so that there’s less methane produced. For grass-fed cattle, there are differences in methane based on the types of forage plants, the quality of the grass, the grazing strategies. So well-managed pastures and grazing management can lower methane emissions from cattle, and that’s an area that warrants greater research activity.
For the feedlot and dairy sectors, we’ve been exploring whether alternative feeds or new feed additives could reduce methane emissions, and we’ve identified several possibilities. Perhaps the most exciting is a methane inhibitor called 3-nitrooxypropanol. It was developed by the private sector. We have conducted a number of studies, in collaboration with industry, to assess this compound because we realized early on that the Canadian cattle producers would benefit from access to such a product if it were shown to be effective and safe.
As I show you in slide 7, we’ve observed that, when fed to dairy and beef cattle, the inhibitor reduces methane emissions by 30 to 50 per cent, depending on the dose and the diet. The reduction is maintained over many months, with no negative impacts on animal health, welfare or performance. Studies have shown the compound to be low risk for humans consuming the meat and milk. It’s fully degraded in the gastrointestinal tract of the animal to metabolites that don’t pose any threat to human health. In feedlot cattle, we have observed about a 3 to 8 per cent improvement in feed conversion efficiency when fed the inhibitor.
Based on both research findings, our research consortium has just received funding from Emissions Reduction Alberta, which manages a large fund that greenhouse gas emitters pay into if they’re unable to meet their emission-reduction targets. So we’re just starting a large-scale study at a large commercial feedlot in Alberta, with 15,000 head of cattle, to evaluate the inhibitor in various diets. The results will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the product for commercial use. Approval of this inhibitor in Canada would then give our beef and dairy industries another means of reducing methane production while potentially improving animal performance.
That’s just one example of a science-based approach where research conducted by the Canadian government plays a pivotal role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from Canadian agriculture and, in particular, livestock production.
In my final slide, slide 8, I wanted to make the point that there’s a continuing need to invest in research to discover, develop and disseminate science-based solutions. In particular, a concentrated effort is needed to find solutions to reduce methane emissions from grazing cattle because that’s more challenging.
I think it’s also important to mention that the research we conduct in Canada has tremendous potential for adoption in other countries. While Canada’s cattle industry makes only a very minor contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions — I calculate this to be less than 0.1 per cent of global emissions — the research we do in Canada often gets adopted in other countries, many of those countries with less efficient production systems, so the knowledge transfer could have a significant impact on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions from livestock.
In closing, I thank you for your time. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today. I would certainly be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Beauchemin. That’s an excellent presentation.
We will move to our next presenter, Dr. Bittman.
Shabtai Bittman, Research Scientist, Environmental Health, Agassiz Research and Development Centre, Science and Technology Branch, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada: Good evening, Madam Chair and honourable senators. My name is Dr. Shabtai Bittman, and I’m an Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada scientist working out of the Agassiz Research and Development Centre, Environmental Division. I specialize in research on the environmental impacts of agriculture.
I’m pleased to discuss our team’s research on the areas of management, soil fertility, animal manure and waste management.
I understand your mission is to address the three aspects of climate change as they relate to agriculture; adaptation, mitigation, and opportunities for clean technologies. I will focus my presentation on our team’s research activities as they pertain to these three topics. I will show some interconnections and add some additional context.
If you look at the next page, which has the leaky pipe model at the top, I would like to start with a simple slide that shows nutrient flows in agriculture. The pipe could represent a farm field, a whole farm or even Canada as a whole. The arrow going into the pipe represents nutrients, the most important of which is nitrogen. Nitrogen is needed for the production of all protein, but it is also a large greenhouse gas component. Nitrogen inputs for a livestock farm are mainly as fertilizer and feedstuffs. The outputs are crop and animal products.
Simply, inputs exceeding outputs will inevitably leak through the holes in the pipe. Nitrogen easily transforms into nitrate that leaches into groundwater and into nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas that is then released into the atmosphere.
There are beneficial management practices and technologies which can stem these leaks, but one must be careful because plugging one leak may increase a leak somewhere else, which is called pollution swapping.
If you turn to the next page, it says “Relay cropping system” at the top. For climate mitigation, we attempt to enhance sequestering by deliberately tying up atmospheric carbon dioxide into soil as organic matter. In particular, bigger crops will leave more crop residue, contributing to more soil organic matter.
We can enhance yields with more nutrient inputs, but the law of diminishing returns means we reduce the overall efficiency and cause more leaks.
But there are other ways to increase crop production. I will present three examples dealing with these climate change technologies.
My first mitigation example is about growing winter cover crops instead of leaving the fields bare after harvest. This is not a new idea, but it is difficult to execute in some parts of the country because of our cool falls and winters. Our team has helped to develop an enhanced cover crop system by inter-seeding the cover crop right into the juvenile summer crop — in this case, corn, as you see in the picture — so that the field is rapidly handed over to the cover crop when the summer crop is harvested, a kind of relay cropping.
If you look at the next slide, it shows commercial production of relay cropping on the left. Our system was widely adopted by a major dairy-producing area in Washington State. Whether farmers feed the cover crops to cows or plow it into the soil, this adaptive technology has a mitigation advantage. The adoption has somewhat lagged in Canada but will likely increase as winters become warmer.
The next slide says “Manure Deconstruction.” My second mitigation example relates to manure, the great carbon and nutrient source which is also a troublesome pollution source. What is manure, actually? It’s mainly feces and urine that are stored together, along with some straw bedding, bits of feed and rainwater. Importantly, the urine contains fast nitrogen that is rapidly used by plants, while the feces are rich in carbon and phosphorous.
Our research strategy was to deconstruct the cattle slurry manure by separating it back into its liquid urine-based and solid feces-based fractions. The deconstruction occurs effortlessly in storage when the solids settle to form sludge at the bottom. We have shown that the liquid fraction remaining on top in the upper layer is a potent nitrogen source. Used correctly, there is more crop and fewer emissions.
If you look at the next page, it shows manure application in action. There is reduced contact with the atmosphere because of rapid infiltration into the soil. It also means less odour.
If you turn to the next page, it says “Precision injection of sludge.” We then developed a novel strategy to use the problematic sludgy fraction. By precision injecting near the corn seed, the emerging corn can obtain all of its phosphorous needs from the sludge. This way farmers have a free replacement for phosphorous otherwise obtained from mines, which is a depleting resource that has to be shipped long distances, often from other countries.
There are also co-benefits such as reduced emissions and better sequestration of the carbon from the sludge. Our precision injection technology is being used in Northern Germany, has been validated in the Netherlands and Denmark, and we are now testing the system on Canadian farms.
If you turn to the next page, which is a depiction of the Lower Fraser Valley, my final example relates to clean technology. The Lower Fraser Valley is an area with dense agricultural production on the fringes of a large urban centre.
The next page shows a double circular nutrient cycling. Here we are investigating a regional strategy to create a double circular clean tech solution. In collaboration with the BC Ministry of Agriculture, Metro Vancouver and Fortis Gas, we are exploring how to join up city waste, farm waste and new biofuel crops to produce biogas.
The next slide shows the system conceptually. The crops would fix new carbon on underutilized farmland, including marginal land, and would use the waste nutrients as fertilizer. This carbon would augment soil organic matter and produce renewable energy. Hence the double circular solution; carbon and nutrients.
The last slide shows cranberry farming near the city of Vancouver.
I hope this gives you a window into some of the research at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to adapt agriculture to produce more food for an increasingly hungry world and to coax production methods toward ecosystem services, notably climate change mitigation. With its vast agricultural land base, Canada is an important player on both counts.
I would be happy to try and answer any of your questions. I thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today.
The Chair: Thank you.
We’re going to open up the floor to questions. This could be to either of our panellists.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Mr. Bittman, you talked about pollution swapping. Can you give us concrete examples to help us understand that pollution swapping? Can you anticipate it?
[English]
Mr. Bittman: Thank you for the question. The reason I presented the slide with the leaky pipe is to try to illustrate in a very simple way the interconnection between the various processes that take place. In this case, I discussed only nitrogen, and there are many components of the system, as you can imagine.
A classical case where mitigating one pollution source could exacerbate another would be, for example, with manure application and trying to reduce the ammonia emissions into the atmosphere.
Ammonia is classified as a toxic gas in Canada because it contributes to fine particulates. So there are lots of reasons to try to mitigate the emission.
If you mitigate the emission of ammonia in a surplus situation because there are too many nutrients coming into the system, that nitrogen must go somewhere else, and all but certainly it will wind up in the groundwater. Methods taken to mitigate the ammonia emission could exacerbate nitrate leaching into groundwater if you don’t manage the system as a whole. It can also lead to more nitrous oxide emission, which is, as I mentioned, a greenhouse gas.
These are just a couple of examples of why it’s important to understand the whole system.
By the way, this really has been the focus of government research, which has made a greater effort in doing system research as opposed to some other institutions, industry, for example, or even sometimes universities that have a faster turnover. There is a longer-term commitment in the government to do these types of complex studies on entire systems.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: I have a question for Ms. Beauchemin. When it’s time to turn the results of your research into concrete action by cattle producers, where is the resistance to changes? Is there resistance to those changes on the ground or in the government support?
[English]
Ms. Beauchemin: Thank you very much for that very interesting question.
I suppose in terms of mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions at the farm level and making changes at the farm level, to a large extent it comes down to the cost because, today, cattle producers are not paid or they don’t receive any remuneration directly for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To adopt a practice that will add a financial burden or additional work, they need to see some kind of revenue return in terms of productivity. That’s why, to a large extent, our research has been trying to look at whether there is a way of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, methane production, and improving animal performance. Improved animal performance will benefit the producer in terms of earning more money, and that will offset the additional costs.
I think at the farm level, producers are very quick to adopt change when there is a financial benefit to the producer, but to adopt change for the sake of change is financially very difficult for a producer.
I think that is the first impediment to change.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Are producers aware of the information you have given us this evening?
[English]
Ms. Beauchemin: Was that a question to me?
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Yes, the question was for you.
[English]
Ms. Beauchemin: That’s another great question. We work very closely with cattle producers, both the dairy and beef cattle industries, and they are very aware and involved. They are very interested in this kind of work. Getting the message to them is not difficult because we work very closely with the industry.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Thank you very much, Ms. Beauchemin.
[English]
Senator Doyle: On the issue of enteric emissions, I believe you called them, from dairy and beef herds, you said there were foods and food additives that can reduce the volume of these emissions. Are these additives in widespread use in Canada today? How long have these additives been in place or in use in Canada in the beef industry? I would imagine it all pretty well passes through Agriculture Canada, but tell me what these additives are and how they are used.
Ms. Beauchemin: In terms of feeds, we know certain feeds result in more emissions than other feeds — so the feeds, forage, what have you.
In terms of additives, there are no commercially available additives registered in Canada at the present time that are recognized for their methane-reducing ability. Feed additives are used for other purposes to improve ruminant function and health, but at the present time in Canada, there are no feed additives registered for use in cattle production that would reduce methane emission.
The additive that I talked about, the 3-nitrooxypropanol, is a new additive being tested in Canada with the hope of the company registering it in Canada. It would be the first in Canada if that was to happen.
Senator Doyle: We are told that Canada is cooperating with other countries on research into farming practices and their GHG emissions. How does Canada fare in terms of other countries? Are we leading? Are we in the middle? Are we behind the pack and trying to catch up in our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? How do we compare with the rest of the world, especially the United States, our nearest neighbour? Are we doing as well or better in your opinion?
Ms. Beauchemin: Well, as far as where Canada stands in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that’s really outside my area of expertise.
I do want to say that Agriculture Canada scientists are involved through the Global Research Alliance, which is an alliance of many countries around the world. The scientists are involved with other scientists in countries around the world to share information. In terms of some of the science that we develop in Canada, we share that information and vice versa. There is easy transfer of information and knowledge globally in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We participate in that network.
In terms of how Canada stands up to the other countries, I feel that’s really outside my ability to comment.
Mr. Bittman: May I jump in there? Turning to the cropping side of things, one of important areas in terms of mitigation is carbon sequestration, and Canada is unquestionably a leader internationally in carbon sequestration. We have been active at this for 20 years.
A good example, of course, is reduced tillage as a method, and Canada is leader in that area. Some of our carbon scientists are the best in the world, and there is no question about it.
We are also very active in nitrous oxide emissions from the application of fertilizer and manure, mitigating ammonia, which contributes in a secondary way to greenhouse gases.
There are always places where we could improve, but in a lot of respects, in this way Canada has really been active early in the game and has been very successful in what we have accomplished.
Senator Doyle: You mentioned fertilizer. Are the major fertilizer and farm equipment firms doing significant research right now on the reduction of GHGs? How do we stand up in the research area on fertilizers?
Mr. Bittman: That’s a very fine question. There are two aspects to that. There is the equipment for the application of fertilizer, and there are the fertilizer products themselves.
In terms of the products, the main source of greenhouse gas is nitrogen as a fertilizer. Canada has one of the largest nitrogen fertilizer companies in the world in Agrium, which has been very active in developing products that control the release rate. They are either inhibitors or rate controllers that release the control of the nitrogen so it’s not in the soil all at once. It’s not available to the soil microbes all at once, and this has the effect of reducing emissions of ammonia and nitrous oxide and making the fertilizers eventually more efficient. That’s one thing.
The other one is on equipment. Canada has been an absolute leader in the development of side banding technology. This is where the fertilizer is placed close to the seed. I mentioned it with respect to manure in my presentation, but the original technology for this was for fertilizer. Fertilizer injection within five centimetres of the seed increases its efficiency for phosphorus and nitrogen. It means less fertilizer for more crop, and therefore total fewer emissions in total.
Senator Doyle: Very good. Thank you.
Senator Mercer: Colleagues, I continue to be impressed with the quality of the researchers that Agriculture Canada employs. I think we all should be very proud of the quality of the scientists we have working for us. I want to pause and say that, because it’s always impressive when we have people from the research sciences at Agriculture Canada.
Dr. Bittman, in your presentation on page 4 you talk about a relay crop in November and compared it to a conventional cover crop in November. How does a relay crop work in a no-till situation?
Mr. Bittman: There is no reason for it not to be used in a no-till situation in terms of planting the crop, but you would need a way to terminate the crop. There are ways. Traditionally, tillage has been used to terminate, but there are alternatives now that involve spraying.
The organic farmers have now developed methods of terminating crops that don’t involve chemicals, which is a system of crimping the material. We have never tested that with the relay crop, but we know that to minimize the amount of tillage, which we are always attempting to do, then spraying with light tillage would prepare a sufficient seed bed to plant corn. And the corn equipment available through companies like John Deere is very effective in tilling into quite a bit of crop residue, but you still have to suppress the crops to prevent them from growing back too rapidly to compete with the corn. That’s a very good question.
Senator Mercer: Thank you.
Dr. Beauchemin, in your presentation I was impressed with the numbers. You have just started a large-scale study at a commercial feedlot with 15,000 cattle fed with a variety of diets and without a methane inhibitor. When will you start to have results that we will be able to look at?
Ms. Beauchemin: We just started that study in December 2017. It will run over the next year, so we hope to have the results in the later part of 2018.
What we’re measuring is animal performance, so cattle growth, intake and efficiency, and we are also measuring methane emissions at the large scale. So we’ll be able to document the inhibitor reduced methane emissions and what impact that has on cattle performance as well as carcass quality.
Senator Mercer: You also mentioned in your presentation that the research you conduct in Canada has tremendous potential for adaptation in other countries. Do you have any hard examples of how we have been able to export some of this great research that has helped production around the world?
Ms. Beauchemin: As I mentioned, Canada participates in the Global Research Alliance, which allows scientist-to-scientist contact to disseminate information.
For example, at the Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, we have been working on methane mitigation since about 2000. That was really before a lot of other research groups worldwide got involved, so we spent a lot of years developing the methodologies for measuring methane emissions. When other countries started getting interested in this topic, we spent a lot of time helping scientists in other countries to just develop the methodology to measure greenhouse gas emissions as well as some of the technologies; the feeding strategies, for example, that we had identified as reducing methane emissions.
Yes, there have been a number of cases where we have had scientist-to-scientist discussions back and forth to assist other groups worldwide. This is especially important for developing countries because they don’t have the resources we do. We have really helped them in terms of developing methodologies for testing things in their own countries.
Senator Mercer: Thank you.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you very much for your presentations and your answers.
I’m trying to understand a bit more about how research, access to research or the structure of research is done in this country and, in fact, how happy you are as scientists. I see what you are doing and how the research is really focused, solution-oriented, applicable and obviously valuable. I’m trying to get a bit of background in terms of how it works in Canada when it comes to that kind of research. For example, do you come up with the idea of what you want to achieve, maybe a climate change impact target? Do you feel as a scientist that you have enough support? Are we doing enough?
It’s a bit of a general question, but I’m interested to know about the structure or the skeleton.
Mr. Bittman: I’ll take the first stab at it. Thank you for the question. It’s a huge question.
I have been doing this work for a long time, so I’ve seen the way research has been funded, and the focus has changed quite a lot over the years.
By its very nature, regardless of what field you’re in, there is always a kind of tension because you are always competing for funds either within your own field and also with other fields because there are all kinds of things going on out there.
Research funding often comes through grant applications, which take a lot of time and a lot of effort. But at the same time they have the benefit of providing managers an opportunity to prioritize what work needs to be done.
Especially in government research, the tension partly is that we have to meet a domestic mandate. We need to help Canadian farmers and the Canadian environment, but at the same time, you are no good as a researcher if your research doesn’t stand up to international scientific scrutiny. You have to be able to publish it in major scientific journals, where it gets further evaluated anonymously, and that adds to the tension of trying to do all these things. That’s the world we live in.
Over the number of decades I have been working, it does work. It’s not without problems and it’s not something that couldn’t be theoretically improved, but it’s also a changing landscape.
As it happens, both Karen and I work on production systems, but there are other people in our organization and at universities who work in high-tech areas like genomics, for example. There is also a tension between trying to do the fancy science versus the traditional science work. They are both valid and neither contain all the answers, so there is a tension, probably a healthy tension, to optimize and find some way to navigate through this. No one knows what the ideal path is.
That’s my general answer to your general question.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you. I appreciate it.
The Chair: Do you have any more questions, senator?
Senator Petitclerc: I don’t know if Ms. Beauchemin had something to add or if it has been pretty well covered.
Ms. Beauchemin: I think the only thing I would add to what Shabtai said is we also have the challenge of working in teams. You might have a great idea, but to get that idea realized you really need to work in teams. It’s also about working with people and managing groups and long-term projects.
There are a lot of dynamics that go on so we spend a lot of time on non-science issues like managing teams and proposal writing, and then it has to be within the core mandate of Agriculture Canada. We may have a great idea, but if it’s not a high priority for the government, it’s not something that we would be funded for. So it is really challenging. That’s the way it is.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you.
The Chair: I’d like to thank our panellists, Dr. Bittman and Dr. Beauchemin. It has been very interesting having you and great to have a chance to chat with you about these issues. I look forward to your information informing our study as we get to the recommendation stage.
(The committee adjourned.)