THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, October 25, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 6:30 p.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 evening, everyone. It’s nice to see you here this evening.
I’d like to begin by welcoming members of the committee and our witnesses, as well as those watching this meeting on the web. My name is Robert Black, senator from Ontario, and I am the chair of this committee.
Today the committee is holding its public meeting to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada. Before we hear from the witnesses, I would like to start by asking the senators around the table to introduce themselves.
Senator Simons: I’m Paula Simons, senator from Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Marwah: Sabi Marwah, senator from Ontario.
Senator Wells: David Wells, senator from Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Mockler: Percy Mockler, senator from New Brunswick. Thank you.
Senator Klyne: Good evening. Marty Klyne from Saskatchewan, Treaty 4 territory.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Chantal Petitclerc, from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Cotter: Brent Cotter, senator from Saskatchewan.
Senator Duncan: Pat Duncan, senator from the Yukon.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues.
Our witnesses today are joining us via video conference, and today for our first panel, I’d like to welcome Dr. Cindy Prescott, Professor, Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, University of British Columbia, and Dr. Sean Thomas, Research Professor at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Prescott and Dr. Thomas, I apologize on behalf of the committee for having to put you off last week. Thank you for your patience. I’m glad we were able to have you join us this evening.
I would like to invite you to make your presentations. We will begin with Dr. Prescott, followed by Dr. Thomas. You each have five minutes for your opening remarks.
I will signal by raising my left hand when you have one minute left, and when we get down to the last few seconds, I will raise two hands. That really means, if you see it — and I hope you do — that it’s time to wrap up.
Dr. Prescott, please proceed.
Cindy Prescott, Professor, Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Thank you. Good evening, everyone.
My research area is the interactions between trees and soil, specifically the factors that control the supply of nutrients in forest soils and the influence of forestry practices on soil processes.
Although forestry has smaller impacts on soil than does agriculture, forestry lags behind agriculture in transitioning to thinking about soil as a living ecosystem. In forestry, soil is still viewed as a physical substrate, so policies are limited to “don’t lose it, don’t squish it and leave a few logs.” That is prevent erosion and compaction and leave some woody debris on the surface.
Having a soil function to its potential requires a vibrant below-ground ecosystem, especially the diverse organisms responsible for many processes, including carbon sequestration that the forest and people depend on. The below-ground ecosystem depends on a continuous supply of the fuel that these organisms require: plant carbon delivered in the form of plant residues and also in simple forms exuded from living roots and from their associated mycorrhizal fungi.
The importance of soil biota and carbon inputs from living roots in building healthy soils has been recognized in agriculture and has spurred the rapid development of regenerative agriculture. No such recognition has happened in forestry, despite evidence that carbon inputs from living roots are just as important for soil health in forest ecosystems.
We know that up to half of the carbon that trees fix via photosynthesis ends up below ground and that much of this is released into the soil, either directly from the roots or from the mycorrhizal fungi. Much of this is surplus carbon that trees fix under conditions of mild to moderate deficiencies of nutrients or water, which is the situation found in most of our forests in Canada. We know that these carbon inputs from living roots support much of the below-ground food web, which is vastly more biodiverse than the above-ground biota.
We know that these carbon inputs increase the abundance of soil micro-organisms — that is fungi, bacteria and archaea — whose residues and secretions generate soil organic matter. Soil organic matter is a critical component of soil health and is the principal form in which soil carbon is stored.
This new understanding of the importance of living roots for sustaining soil health in forests prompts a rethink of how we manage forests. We know that beyond the root zone of living trees — that is beyond about five metres of the stem — the soil biota is greatly depleted after forest harvesting and takes years or decades to recover. During this time, soil carbon replenishment slows, and soil carbon stocks decline. The impact is greatest when old-growth or primary forests are cut, and managed forests never regain the original soil biodiversity or carbon stocks.
Harvesting practices that retain living trees can prevent this decline in soil health if they are designed so that trees or patches of trees are no more than 15 metres from one another and if they retain at least one quarter of the original number of live trees. Current practices, such as the clearcut-with-reserves system favoured in British Columbia and other types of retention forestry that leave very few living trees — often in one clump in a corner of the cutblock — are not sufficient to sustain soil health in managed forests. Forestry policies need to be updated to reflect that forest soils are living ecosystems that require living trees to sustain them.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Prescott.
Moving on to Dr. Thomas. Your presentation.
Sean Thomas, Research Professor, University of Toronto, as an individual: I’m a research professor of forestry and Associate Dean of Research at the Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto, and my expertise is on forest carbon processes and forest restoration on degraded sites. Thanks for the opportunity to speak today.
I’ll start by noting that the concept of soil health is not universally accepted in the literature. It’s a concept that I think is generally more applicable to agricultural soils than to forest soils.
Soil is not an individual organism and it does not have health in the same sense that you or I have health. Much of the recent literature refers to soil ecosystem processes or soil ecosystem services, and this is important because these ecosystem services don’t always work in concert.
For example, there are large areas of peat soils in Northern Canada that characteristically have very high organic matter and carbon content, but they are not at all productive in terms of timber yield. So from a forest soil perspective, I suggest, humbly, that the committee might want to reconsider the title of the report.
My additional points are the following: Among the ecosystem services, forest soils in Canada are of global importance as a carbon stock. Just within the top metre of soil, they have about 86% of the carbon within soils rather than live trees. Large-scale soil disturbance has the potential to release this carbon, so Canada has a kind of grave responsibility not to release what conservation groups have referred to as a “carbon bomb” that can have potentially large adverse effects on global climate.
Second, changes in forest hydrology, such as those associated with damming or diversion of northern rivers, are, perhaps, the greatest concern for forest soils. Local drainage of peat soils has been widely used outside of Canada to enhance forest productivity, but this practice is now recognized to release large amounts of carbon and to have other very serious environmental impacts, such as release of methylmercury. So don’t drain peat soils.
Climate change is expected to warm forest soils, resulting in the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Measures are needed to mitigate this.
What percentage of forest soils is highly degraded?
Some recent NGO reports suggest a figure of up to 10–15% of severe degradation in managed boreal forests. We’ve conducted some surveys in my lab in central Ontario and we found a figure of only 1% or 2%, but rigorous quantitative data on forest degradation in managed forests is surprisingly sparse.
In addition to acting as a sink for CO2, natural forest soils directly take up atmospheric methane, and methane is the second most important greenhouse goes and contributes about 30% of net anthropogenic climate forcing. Recent studies suggest that very high methane emissions can occur from degraded forest soils, such as those on log processing sites, such that just the 1-2% of stand areas that have highly disturbed soils can completely offset the methane uptake that would occur from the rest of the forest.
Most forests in Canada are managed by companies that operate on provincial Crown land under licence agreements. Unlike family farms, for example, it’s likely that the transient nature of tender licences and transient ownership of these companies is a significant disincentive to investment and long‑term site productivity. My sense is that this leads systematically to a neglect of forest soils.
Carbon has come up a lot in your hearings as a main measure of soil health. As I mentioned, peat soils have very high soil carbon but show very low productivity. In forest soils, increasing soil carbon doesn’t always enhance fertility. The type of organic matter and the chemical forms of organic matter are critical, and there is a lot of recent and increased understanding of that.
In that respect and in a lot of other respects, important new knowledge and new innovations in soil monitoring and soil management have emerged in the last 40 years.
In the question period, I’d be very happy to talk at further length of my own research looking at pyrolized waste material, also called biochar, as a means to enhance carbon sequestration and restore degraded soils. But I think there is a broader question, which is whether all of the new knowledge and innovation regarding soils are actually being applied on the ground. My sense is that, compared to peer countries, Canada has minimal capacity for research extension. This is true in agriculture, but in forestry, Canada has almost no capacity for research extension. This, I believe, is a major limitation to implementing new innovations related to soil monitoring, conservation and management in both sectors.
Thank you, meegwetch.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Thomas.
We’ll proceed now with questions from senators. Before asking and answering questions, I’d like to ask members in the room to please refrain from leaning in too close to the microphone or remove your earpiece when doing so. This will avoid any sound feedback that could negatively impact the committee staff in the room. Please keep that in mind.
As has been our previous practice, I would like to remind each senator that you have five minutes for your question or questions, and that includes the answer. Again, I will hold up my hand at one minute and both hands when we get down to the crunch at five minutes.
I’ll begin with Senator Simons as our deputy chair.
Senator Simons: My first question is for Dr. Prescott. I’m from Alberta; you’re from British Columbia. Both our provinces have been beset by mountain pine beetles and by mass burning and wildfires. Could you talk a little bit about how those two factors are affecting forest health and soil health?
Ms. Prescott: Yes. I’ve actually spent part of my career in Alberta, so I know the similarities as well.
What we lose in these situations is a lot of the organic matter on the forest floor, and then we often lose a lot of the inputs as well. By killing the trees, we’re losing also these simple compounds that would come out the bottom.
All of those types of disturbances will disrupt the flow of carbon that sustains the soil. Especially with what’s going on now, where we’re losing so much of our forests and so much of their function to these natural disturbances, I think it behooves us to work that into our decisions about how much of the forest we are going to cut in addition to what we are now losing through this. We’re seeing the outcome of all of that in British Columbia now, for example, in floods. We may be past the capacity of the ecosystems to sustain all of these disturbances.
Senator Simons: Yes, because, of course, when you lose the trees, it creates more erosion, and then you lose soil into the waterways.
Ms. Prescott: Yes.
Senator Simons: Talking about waterways, it’s a good segue to Dr. Thomas. Your remarks about the impact of drainage and flooding were very dark and disturbing. You took issue with our decision to sort of characterize this as a study of soil health. But it strikes me that you’re saying that soil that is very healthy for a peat bog is not healthy for growing trees. But isn’t it healthy on its own terms? Surely, commercial productivity is not the measure of whether a soil is healthy.
Mr. Thomas: Well, I did take the opportunity to view some of your earlier proceedings. In an agricultural perspective, agricultural productivity is generally the main service that they want from soils. Right? That might be broadening, but certainly in modern forest management in Canada there is a whole set of services that we want from soils. We don’t just want fast‑growing trees. We want clean water. We want carbon sequestration. We want pest and disease regulation. We want all these different things. The point is that they don’t all necessarily work in parallel.
For that reason, especially thinking of these much more diverse ecosystems that forests represent, it’s important to unpack that idea of forest health. It works pretty well in most agricultural systems and maybe in intensively managed forests where those things — either the soil is very degraded and all of those things kind of degrade — but in extensively managed forests, as we have mostly in Canada, those things don’t all work together. So it’s not throwing out the soil health but adding in a broader perspective of ecosystem services.
Senator Wells: Thank you very much to both our witnesses. I don’t think about soil too much, but I appreciate that you do and you think about forests.
I have a question about managed forests. I didn’t know, other than woodcutters’ lots and access roads, that Canada’s forests were managed. Can you tell me a little bit about the best practices for forest management given that Canada is such a massive country with a lot of different forest ecosystem types? I’d like you to address maybe the regular — I’ll call it waste, but it’s really just the process of generation and regeneration in forests, like the shedding of leaves and needles, the deadfall, the effect of canopy cover. What are the best practices for forest management that perhaps are things that a senator from a bald rock of Newfoundland doesn’t think about?
Ms. Prescott: Well, Newfoundland doesn’t need to be a bald rock, of course. With careful management, those forests could be back as well.
I would say the best management is one that’s suited to the site, that is well grounded in the capacity of that site and also well grounded in what is needed from that forest. We’ve emphasized the production of timber above all these other needs, and we’re now at that point where we need to consider all the needs. Mr. Thomas was mentioning this as well. Maybe I’ll leave it there.
Mr. Thomas: This is why you get a forestry degree if you’re really interested. As Dr. Prescott mentioned, it has to be suited to the site. The forests in Newfoundland will have a different management regime than those super-productive Douglas fir forests in southern B.C.
There is a lot of attention, as I think you brought up, to ensuring that there is nutrient cycling and carbon cycling — not stripping forests of everything — the sort of new things that foresters consider now that they would not have 20 or 30 years ago. Coarse woody debris and maintenance of carbon on the sites are probably first and foremost. There have been widespread changes in practice so that there is less removal of all trees and maintenance of some tree cover, as Dr. Prescott mentioned, for regenerating soil micro-organisms to have those processes do what we’d like them to do.
Ms. Prescott: I think an important thing now is that we recognize that our previous practices have involved simplification. We think we can control the ecosystem and then we have to move away from that simplification — simplify the ecosystem so that we think we can control it and get it to do what we want. We need to work toward working with more complex ecosystems.
Senator Wells: Thank you. I have no follow-up.
Senator Marwah: Thank you to the witnesses.
I’m going to touch on a point that I think both witnesses made. Professor Prescott, I think you noted that the way forests are harvested has a very detrimental impact on soil health. Professor Thomas, you noted that who does the harvesting — such as corporations under licences — is also detrimental because they have no incentives to worry about soil health.
The question I have is this: Has anyone ever tried to do an economic analysis along the lines that the revenues from harvesting and the way we have been doing it and the costs to soil health versus revenues from harvesting in a more responsible way and the benefits to soil health? Surely, if we put this in some quantifiable terms, we could have some strategy to have the harvesting done in a more responsible way.
Ms. Prescott: Certainly not in Canada. In other places they have been looking into that.
Another factor we have to weigh in these economic considerations now is carbon trading, which is becoming a very major player here in the economic considerations. I was just hearing today about other areas where the community forests, especially, have been able to stop the harvesting of the forest because they can show that there is better money in carbon sequestration than there is in the timber.
Senator Marwah: Professor Thomas, do you have any comments or suggestions of where one can go to look at any numbers behind the strategies?
Mr. Thomas: Without that broader framework for environmental protection — however the policy framework for that works — the economic analyses tend to always lead to neglect of soils because the processes are so slow. If you have a discount rate of 5% or whatever, that doesn’t really correspond to the rate at which soils regenerate.
A policy framework that looks to generations in the future is probably necessary, especially when we’re thinking of systems of relatively low productivity like Canada’s forests.
Ms. Prescott: That’s an issue with both organic matter and carbon, which are really critical and valuable properties, but they are so spatially variable and change so slowly over time that it’s hard to get those sorts of data.
Senator Marwah: Professor, you mentioned some preliminary analysis was done around carbon and the fact that it might make more sense to use carbon trading and then economic analysis rather than harvesting. Do you have any studies on that that you could send us?
Ms. Prescott: Yes. I have two colleagues working very actively on that who very much want more information about how to quantify changes in soil carbon. We’re trying to develop those methods.
Senator Marwah: Okay. Thank you.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you to our witnesses. My question will be for both witnesses if we have the time.
From hearing you and previous witnesses, I am getting some sense that when it comes to academics, research, data and the science, we do have this expertise. That’s what I hear, anyway, when I’m listening to you. So I’m trying to understand and figure out how good we are in having this expertise and in transferring it on the ground into actions, best practices and decisions. If we’re not good at it, what are the obstacles?
Ms. Prescott: Maybe I’ll start.
In British Columbia, we are terrible at it. It is astonishing how bad it is now compared to how it was 30 years ago. We have slid so far in so many aspects of forest management, forest policy making and the involvement of scientists in that. It sort of stopped mattering 15 to 20 years ago because forest management wasn’t really big on the agenda of the governments and it slid down to “we’ll just have the foresters working for the companies do whatever they think is best.”
So when you’re in that sort of milieu, there is no need for research. I talk with colleagues from countries that have such a fraction of the number of forests we have, even just in British Columbia, and they can’t believe that we seem to have no questions about our forests and no need for research. We haven’t had a forest research funding program here in about 15 years. It just ended. So we don’t talk to our colleagues the way we used to.
I stayed in British Columbia because it was so active; academics, government researchers, industry researchers and forest managers all talked to each other at all these venues, and then it was just silence.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you. Do we have time for Dr. Thomas?
The Chair: Dr. Thomas, did you have a comment?
Mr. Thomas: I could just briefly add that there’s been a similar disinvestment in forestry research and monitoring in Ontario and Eastern Canada. It’s comparable — maybe a bit better in Quebec — but yes, there is pretty strong academic expertise, but that translation from the academic expertise to practice is weak.
There’s a legacy of forests being under the provinces. The Canadian Forest Service, the CFS, doesn’t have the mandate that, say, the forest service in the U.S. would, or comparable systems in Europe or Asia for that matter. So that’s maybe part of the issue.
But with processes of global concern like carbon sequestration, I think there really is an overarching national interest in what is going on in forests. Some of those bigger policy divisions should be rethought.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you.
Senator Cotter: Thank you to the witnesses for continuing this expansion of our knowledge about soil health in Canada.
I get the impression from your testimony that, in some ways, there is a multi-dimensional way of thinking about the value of forests — the standard productivity and revenue they might generate, the issues around their value as a carbon sequestration vehicle and the like.
That leads me to this point. While in Scotland this summer, Senator Black and I learned that although most of the peat is in private hands, Scotland has intervened to require landowners to revert peat fields, or whatever they would be called, back to their natural state. Notwithstanding the fact that it might have some economic consequences, it has rich benefits on the carbon sequestration side of the equation. We were told that would address 25% of Scotland’s challenge to move toward net-zero emissions, which leads me to this. Talking with agriculture producers and representatives and so on, we learned that most of the agricultural land is privately owned. If I understood the evidence here today, however, most of the forestry land is actually owned by the Crown, and, in a sense, the people who are using it are tenants. I get the point about that meaning that people are not so focused on long-term initiatives as the owners ought to be, and the owner is, in this context, the Crown.
Does it become more possible for knowledgeable governments to establish criteria related to this multi-dimensional value of forests so that we can have higher expectations that the forests can do more than just earn money for those who are extracting the trees?
Ms. Prescott: Yes, it would be difficult to turn industry around because they have their goals. That’s not going to change, but we should have better leadership around forest management from our government, which is supposed to be managing it for the people and not just collecting stumpage and using it for good purposes.
We need our forests for other things as well. That realization, if it does exist in government, needs to be quickly turned into action.
Senator Cotter: Mr. Thomas?
Mr. Thomas: I absolutely agree with those sentiments. You cannot have spent a lot of time working in forests in Canada without seeing that kind of degradation and loss. In Ontario, we had the Ontario forest seed lab that was closed down within the last five years. Those kinds of facilities that took decades to build have been cast aside. Solving these broader environmental problems requires reinvestment.
Senator Cotter: If the forests are properly managed, and perhaps with oversight by the landowners of the forests that are productive, is there meaningful space for additional carbon sequestration as a value to be achieved in better management from where we are now to 10 or 20 years from now?
Ms. Prescott: Absolutely. First, by stopping the cutting down of the big carbon stores and, secondly, by being more creative about how we regenerate forests. Instead of going for simplification, choose the species and allow enough natural regeneration to come up that will quickly start storing carbon in soils.
The way we deal with broad leaves now is the exact opposite of what we should. We are still getting rid of broad leaf species, and they’ve been shown to sequester carbon in soil at a much faster rate as well as in tree biomass.
Senator Cotter: In one hand’s worth, Dr. Thomas, any thoughts?
Mr. Thomas: A recent U.S. National Academy of Sciences report dated, I think, 2018 looked at negative emissions technologies. There are five of them. They are all basically in forestry and agriculture and all have to do with soils.
Senator Cotter: Thank you.
Senator Klyne: Welcome to the witnesses. Thank you for your contributions. Thank you, Senator Cotter, for being the warm-up act here. I will follow up on that.
I have two questions. The first is for Dr. Prescott, and the second is for Dr. Thomas.
Dr. Prescott, I think it is important for us to remember that soil is not just on farms. Logging is a huge industry in this country. The impact of forestry practices such as select cutting, clearcutting and deforestation is intensely debated. My question concerns the impact that logging has on soil erosion. Are there techniques that loggers should consider or use that can help prevent or at least lessen the degradation and erosion of soil in forests?
Ms. Prescott: Deciding where to harvest is a big one. Also taking a landscape view of that area, including the hydrological situation and things like the phenology of whether you are going to end up with all of the water coming down at once if you harvest coniferous forests and the snow melts at the same time, as it does in the aspen or deciduous forests. A lot of those considerations can help with retaining the soil. Also, getting going with restoration in terms of prescribed burning to reduce the impact of wildfire on soils, which makes them much more susceptible to erosion and leads to the loss of the soil as well as the nutrients in the ash.
Senator Klyne: Thank you. My question to Dr. Thomas relates to old-growth forests. There are forests in Canada where there are trees that are over 250 years old, some significantly older than that. Given the rate of industrialization and the effects of climate change, the fact that these trees are still standing is a testament to their durability.
Could you share with this committee what impact soil conditions play in contributing to the longevity of old-growth trees? Can I assume soil degradation has a significant impact on the lifespan of these trees?
Mr. Thomas: Yes. It is a bit complicated. The oldest trees that you will find in Ontario tend to be on rocky outcrops, where the soil is not necessarily very productive. On the Niagara Escarpment, you can find 800- to 1,000-year-old cedar trees that are not very large. There is not necessarily a tight relationship between how long the trees last and how productive the soil is.
Probably the largest tree in the world was almost certainly in North Vancouver. It was a Douglas fir that was lost. Canada would have had the largest tree, but it was cut. It was within a sheltered site of moderated climate and deep soils. That would be the kind of environment where you would get the highest productivity as well as trees living for a long time.
We do not have a lot of old-growth forests. They are kind of this precious thing now. That’s one of the findings in that National Academy of Sciences report that I mentioned on negative emissions technologies: conserving forests that have high rates of both carbon uptake and carbon stocks. A recent part of the science that’s come out in the last couple of decades is that old-growth forests continue to take up large amounts of carbon. It would have been thought, say, 20 years ago, that they were basically carbon neutral, but it has been shown definitively that these ancient forests continue to be important carbon sinks.
Ms. Prescott: And mostly in the soil.
Senator Klyne: Thank you.
Senator Duncan: Thank you very much to our witnesses who are here today and thank you, Ms. Prescott. You raised the issue that I would like to raise, namely, wildland fire.
I was heartened to hear of your work and experience in Alberta and the situation of the spruce beetle. Clearly, situations have occurred throughout Western Canada where we have had some notable forest fires.
Could you elaborate on the impact on soil health of these natural events, particularly along the lines of forest management? How we manage and fight, or not fight, wildland fire is the source of very good and strong interprovincial agreements in Western and Northern Canada. I cannot speak for the East, but how do we deal with that element of forestry management and its impact on soil health?
Ms. Prescott: The fact that fires happen naturally doesn’t mean that they are good for the ecosystem. We got that into our heads that it’s natural, so it’s good. For soil, it is not. Like the jack pine-lichen woodlands in northern Alberta — the reason that they are so impoverished and so poorly productive is that they have always repeatedly burned. Every time you have a wildfire, the hotter it is, the more the nutrients go off. So you are losing not just that organic matter that is full of nutrients but also all of the nitrogen, especially into the atmosphere. It does deplete soils of what would be their fertility, and they only have the span between then and the next disturbance to regrow and replenish those stocks. Each time there is a fire, we lose a whole lot of carbon and we lose a lot of the nutrients as well. Then, if it is followed by erosion, we lose nutrients other than nitrogen. It has a negative impact.
Whether or not it is natural, whether it is attributed to climate change, or whether somebody drops a cigarette and it burns, the soil doesn’t know. It has the same effect, and it is a negative effect. It is a negative effect on the soil biodiversity as well for the most part. They are greatly depleted. All of these disturbances have negative effects on the soil.
Senator Duncan: What I hear you saying, if I have understood you correctly, is that our efforts to fight wildland wildfires should continue — and I know that if there is no threat to human or property values, some of the fires are allowed to burn. What I’m hearing you say is that this is too much damage to the soil and we should absolutely be spending these resources to fight the fires.
Ms. Prescott: Yes. We should not use the argument that it is a natural disturbance, so it is okay. It has a negative effect on the ecosystem. A bit of it will increase diversity across the landscape, but it does have a negative effect.
We should not be fighting them, we should be preventing them. It can be done with techniques that are known to reduce the intensity and severity of fires, which is largely a result of our simplification and homogenization of our forest land base, as well as the firefighting that we’ve done. So we have changed the landscape and made it more flammable through our management.
Senator Duncan: I live in the middle of a boreal forest, and there is a concerted forest management program to ensure that we are protected in cutting down the lower branches. They are left to decompose. If you can comment, perhaps in writing, on the different forest management practices in the country to prevent wildfire, please.
Ms. Prescott: A lot of it has to do with the small trees as well as the lower branches, the ladder fuels. Those do have to be dealt with, especially if it is in places where people are. We have to put that back in our landscapes. Forests that have the structure that they would have had, had they burned naturally, but which we prevented and are now paying the price for.
Senator Mockler: Thank you to the witnesses. The land base in Canada is basically divided into three “parcels.” One third of the land is Crown land, one third is private woodlot owners — and they play an important role — and one third is industrial land.
When I heard the comments you made, it precipitates me to ask this: If you look at Canada as Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, Western Canada, B.C. and the North, can you tell me which has the best management practices and forestry? Where is it in Canada?
Ms. Prescott: Do you want that one, Sean?
Mr. Thomas: It is heterogeneous. It is such a big area, everywhere, that you can think of counter-examples.
As I mentioned, of the provinces, Quebec has at least made the strongest investments in forest research provincially and has put real attention into trying to implement advances in forest research on the ground. It might be debatable how successful that’s really been on the ground. It is hard to compare to other provinces if there are not those kinds of sustained investments in other provinces. But off the top, I would say Quebec is paying the most attention.
Senator Mockler: Who would be second, third and fourth?
Mr. Thomas: I have an impression that Nova Scotia is doing pretty well. It has a pretty long legacy of degradation, but they have put in some real investments given the smaller forest area. I have spent some time in the Yukon and I was quite impressed. It is the furthest north operational forestry in Canada, and it’s all co-managed by First Nations, so there is social sustainability. There has been a lot of attention, too. For the small area that is managed, they are doing impressively progressive things.
Senator Mockler: I do not want to make an argument. That would not be proper.
I would also like to have your opinions on the 2 billion trees from the government program that they are planting across Canada. I know that in the agricultural industry and even in the forestry industry, depending on the seedlings that you plant, depending on the variety, whether it’s potatoes in Atlantic Canada — and I will not mention the names of companies — or the climate in Quebec, Ontario, Western Canada and mainly in Manitoba, where they are known to produce high-quality potatoes, do you feel that this 2 billion trees that the government has embarked upon for the next 10 years across Canada — that there is sufficient — or have you been consulted, your university or yourselves as professionals?
Also, looking at the land base, are there areas in Canada, when we talk about sequestration in forestry, that would have a higher value? And in other places, a lower value?
Ms. Prescott: The trees concept is, I think, really good in a lot of places. I think it is less good in Canada than most places because the only place where planting trees will improve soil carbon is if you are planting them on former agricultural land, and that is cropland. Where it should be grassland, trees will not improve it as fast as well-managed grassland. So there is limited land to put it on because it will only have a beneficial effect on degraded cropland, and I do not see that being a help.
The other thing is that you have to be sure that you have the right soil to put that tree in. You have to have enough trees of a good quality.
Senator Mockler: That’s right.
Ms. Prescott: And you have to foster them through decades of growth, not just shove them in the ground.
Mr. Thomas: Yes. I could chime in here. Politicians like to plant trees. You’ve all seen them with their shovels. I have a slide show of politicians planting trees from the 1850s on, so it’s a symbolic act. If you plant trees in the right place, that can make a difference to carbon, but that’s ignoring really important parts. As Dr. Prescott mentioned, this taking care of the trees — the maintenance of stands and forest protection and so forth — is terrifically important, but the other critical thing is the waste stream. That’s my own real interest.
The problem of CO2 in the atmosphere and greenhouse gases is a waste stream problem. Dealing appropriately with the waste that comes out of mills and out of agriculture is one of the most important things that we can do for carbon sequestration.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I plant between 500 and 1,000 trees each year, so I guess I am your politician. You will want a picture, I’m sure, Dr. Thomas.
I’m hearing then that planting trees on marginal land, if it’s already in grassland, isn’t necessarily the thing to do. If it were being farmed or worked up, then it might be the better of the two things. Am I correct there?
Ms. Prescott: For soil carbon sequestration, a well-managed grassland is better at producing and storing carbon than is, especially, a conifer plantation.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Thomas: Yes. Some of those former forest lands are these NSR lands — not sufficiently restocked lands within large areas in Ontario I know. Targeting those kinds of areas where there’s been degradation of soil for reforestation is certainly something that could pay off. Or targeting industrial development, say, mine land restoration. There is an important role for tree planting, so thank you for your 1,000 trees, but that planting process, that can’t just be everywhere. There are places where you should not plant trees.
The Chair: Thank you. Dr. Thomas, what should the title of the report be?
Mr. Thomas: Something about forest health, soil health and ecosystem services would be my recommendation.
The Chair: Thank you. What other aspects should we be looking at with respect to soil health and forest health and carbon sequestration? What other aspects around the issue should we be considering over the course of our study on this issue?
Ms. Prescott: I would suggest soil biodiversity. Much attention is given to above-ground biodiversity, and we know there is certainly a biodiversity crisis above ground. I’m almost certain there’s a biodiversity crisis below ground, which is important for all of these functions that happen through these soil organisms, but we don’t know anything about them or nearly what we need to know to even assess the size and the impacts of this crisis.
The Chair: Thank you. Dr. Thomas, anything?
Mr. Thomas: Erosion control; hydrological function, so flood mitigation; water purification — there is a bunch of really important things that we rely on soils for, which don’t necessarily really fit into the soil health bucket.
There are some really helpful recent reviews. This has kind of been a hot topic in that interface between the science and policy. I could send you a more comprehensive list of things, but we rely on soils for a surprisingly large number of really important functions.
The Chair: Thank you. This is my last question and one which I ask of most of our witnesses: If you had the opportunity to write our report, what would be your number-one recommendation within our report?
Mr. Thomas: I had that in my comments, and that is that Canada has a responsibility to protect its peat soils.
The Chair: Thank you.
Ms. Prescott: Trees are worth more than timber.
The Chair: Thank you for that.
Senator Simons: I have a quick question for Dr. Prescott about invasive species. Only recently did I realize that earthworms, which I always thought were good friends to the earth, are an invasive species here. How big a concern are invasive species in the health of our forest floor?
Ms. Prescott: Wow. What earthworms will do is change the system. That can be good or it can be bad, depending on what sort of system we want. If we want the system to stay exactly as it is, then it’s a bad thing. What they will do is move it toward a different system, which may be conducive to other sorts of plant communities. I would say it’s not a crisis. We just have to be able to accept that the system will change. This actually happened in the forest on which I did my PhD research. It changed the forest floor, but it hasn’t been a big change in the forests themselves. We have to accept that there will be change, which is something all humans, I think, have issues with.
Senator Simons: Are there other invasive species that we should be thinking about?
Ms. Prescott: Yes. A lot of plants react very strongly to our harvesting. The more open it is, the more of these invasive plants can get in and perhaps make it less possible for our native species to be in there, species which are important for our ungulates and such.
Senator Simons: I was thinking about bugs, but plants also?
Ms. Prescott: Everything.
Senator Duncan: Dr. Thomas, I’d like to ask if you were making a reference to the Gunnar Nilsson and Mickey Lammers Research Forest project. Was that the forestry research project you were referring to in the Yukon?
My second question is, Dr. Prescott and Dr. Thomas, are you aware of any soil research north of 60? Thank you.
Mr. Thomas: Yes. That’s one of the projects. There is a set of things. I worked in the Yukon going back more than a decade now, but there’s a history of work there. There has been a little bit of soils work. There is some mapped forest plot in the Northwest Territories that has a comprehensive set of soil inventories, looking at the spatial distributions of natural variability in the soils. So there is some work north of 60.
Senator Duncan: And where is that research document housed? Is it with the federal government or the territorial government?
Mr. Thomas: In N.W.T., I know that’s a study through the University of Waterloo and a couple of other collaborators. I’m not sure where they have all their documentation, but there is some work.
Senator Duncan: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Prescott and Dr. Thomas, for your participation today. We do appreciate it and we can see the passion that you bring to the table.
Our second panel includes, from the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, also known as CAPI, we have Al Mussell, director of research; from Équiterre, we have Marc-André Viau, director of government relations, and Carole-Anne Lapierre, analyst with Équiterre’s Agriculture and Food Systems. I would invite you to make your presentations.
We will start with Dr. Mussell, followed by Mr. Viau and Ms. Lapierre, who will deliver a joint presentation.
Dr. Mussell, you have five minutes, as does the joint presentation. As in the past, I will signal when you are down to one minute, and this means that it is time to wrap it up. With that, Dr. Mussell, please go ahead.
Al Mussell, Director, Research, Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute:
Mr. Chair and honourable senators, I am pleased to appear before you this evening to provide my insights as an independent researcher, drawing upon the work of my colleagues at the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute.
Canada has embarked on an ambitious climate change agenda, one in which agriculture is a vital component. Like other industries, Canadian agriculture has an opportunity to explore how its greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced, but unlike other industries, agriculture has the capacity to sequester carbon from the atmosphere into soils for long-term storage. As such, an aspect of soil health is climate change mitigation, among others, such as moisture retention capacity.
As well as playing an active role in addressing climate change, Canadian agriculture concurrently produces high-quality foodstuffs for export around the world to help meet much-needed food security demands.
Agriculture contributes about 8% of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, split about evenly between cropping and animal agriculture systems, which both occur on soils — living, dynamic environments consisting of mineral fractions, degrading biomass and microbes. Agricultural plants are about 40% to 50% carbon, typically with equal growth above and below the soil surface.
At the end of a plant’s life cycle, microbes aid in biomass decay and release carbon back to the atmosphere from surface residue and incorporate subsurface residue into the pool of soil organic carbon. This soil organic carbon is stable unless it is disturbed, such as through tillage. Stable pools of carbon, combined with proven farm management practices, are consistent with the global “4 per 1000” target enhancement of soil organic carbon.
But there are important challenges. Globally, we are experiencing a period of food scarcity that could pressure trade‑offs between soil conservation and immediate needs driven by hunger. In order for soil health practices to be sustainable, the incomes and investments made by farmers must also be sustainable. The principal source of output growth needs to be through sustainable intensification, which is producing more sustainably from the same agricultural footprint.
On the other hand, extensification of the agricultural land base will generate episodic greenhouse gas emissions from land conversion to agriculture and exacerbate biodiversity concerns. A related worry is that high crop prices will stimulate conversion of grassland used for grazing animals to annual crops.
New research is improving the understanding that farm animals, especially ruminants such as cattle, sheep and goats, are essential to the long-term health of soils. Methane emissions from livestock sources have been a concern. However, recent research from Oxford and the University of California, Davis has shown that the methane emissions from ruminant animals are fundamentally different from the methane emissions due to the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. In fact, a stable ruminant population actually leads to a stable level of methane in the atmosphere.
This is an important finding, as grasslands are a critical carbon sink, are critical to biodiversity, and the economic retention of grasslands depends upon grazing animals.
Existing practices, notably no-till practices in Western Canada, have already sequestered vast quantities of carbon. Additional sequestration will be more difficult. More potential exists for uptake of such practices and sequestration in Eastern Canada, but the cropping mix and soil types make adoption more difficult, and the acreage base is much smaller.
Other potential beneficial management practices, or BMPs, have variable impacts. For example, tillage is one of the few means available to control certain weeds. Moving to a reduced or no-till system commonly requires greater dependence upon chemical herbicides, so gaps in access to herbicides and/or a lack of innovation in new herbicide products can serve as a barrier to adoption of no-till practices and exacerbate existing problems of weed resistance.
While the effects of pesticides must be appropriately contained to target sites and species, we must recognize that they remain an essential tool in soil health and conservation.
Fertilizer also presents a critical consideration with respect to soil health and fertility. Absent the use of chemical nitrogen fertilizers, the alternatives for soil amendments to augment crop yields are limited to livestock manure, human waste and crop rotations containing legumes.
However, Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba has found that dietary protein production is constrained without supplemental chemical nitrogen. Professor Smil has estimated that today about 40% of humanity depends on chemical nitrogen fertilizer for sustenance. This is not to suggest that regenerative alternatives to chemical fertilizers are not beneficial, and that the handling and application of chemical fertilizers cannot be improved. Rather, it cautions against reductionist, simplistic or sudden shifts in how we use chemical nitrogen fertilizer.
I’ll conclude with some comments on how government can play a critical role in guiding soil health. Federal and provincial governments need to coordinate, as much of the field resources to assist with the implementation are in provincial governments.
Carbon markets — more specifically offset credits for carbon sequestration in agricultural soils — require further development with respect to permanence, the cost of validation and verification and the acknowledged credibility of trading systems. Assistance with the capital and operating costs of soil health BMPs will facilitate adoption by producers.
Farmers must have access to the infrastructure that supports the adoption of soil health practices; for example, developing and registering safe and efficacious pesticide products in Canada will be important in both increasing and maintaining land in no-till management.
Comprehensive research to improve understanding of soil health is needed. That includes research on agronomics, emissions science and resilience, economic research and policy research that highlights how we can work together better to achieve important soil health outcomes.
This is a pivotal time in the world as we engage the evidence of climate change and its implications, an energy crisis, a food crisis and geopolitical upheaval and conflict. Canada has much to offer the world from its diverse and extensive agricultural resource base and as an exemplary steward of those resources.
Thank you. It’s my pleasure to respond to questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Mussell. From Équiterre, we have Mr. Viau and Ms. Lapierre. The floor is yours.
[Translation]
Marc-André Viau, Director, Government Relations, Équiterre: Chair, honourable Senators and members of the Committee, thank you for having us here today for your study of soil health in Canada.
My name is Marc-André Viau, and I am the director of government relations for Équiterre. I will be sharing my time with Ms. Lapierre.
Before delving into the recommendations, I would like to thank all senators, and especially the chair, for taking the initiative to conduct this study.
I will start by saying a few words about our organization. We are an environmental non-governmental organization with more than 150,000 members and supporters. For almost 30 years, we have been involved in the areas of food and agriculture, transportation and mobility, and climate and energy policies in Quebec and the rest of Canada. Those are the core areas of our environmental action.
Twenty-five years ago, we created the Family Farmers Network, the largest network of community-supported agriculture in the world. We are members of several coalitions, including Farmers for Climate Solutions and the Green Budget Coalition.
Last year, in collaboration with Ontario’s Greenbelt Foundation, we published a report on soil health entitled The Power of Soil: An Agenda for Change to Benefit Farmers and Climate Resilience.
I would be pleased to officially table this report, which is available in both official languages, with the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry so that all committee members can read it.
We will be referring to this report throughout our testimony, and we believe that you may find it helpful going forward.
I will pass it over to my colleague, Carole-Anne Lapierre.
Carole-Anne Lapierre, Analyst, Agriculture and Food Systems, Équiterre: Thank you, Marc-André.
Good evening everyone.
I am an agronomist and agriculture and food systems analyst at Équiterre. Thank you for having us today.
In our work during recent years, we have seen much greater interest in soil health on the part of the agricultural industry, the federal government, as attested to by the Guelph Statement, and corporations such as McCain, Weston and others.
In a context where everyone is being seized of this issue, we must ensure that we have a clear guidelines of what constitutes healthy soil. In our opinion, we must also ensure that we have a systemic vision for every farm. Why?
Every cropping practice that benefits soil health has different effects, such as increasing organic matter and soil biodiversity. It is the sum of the effects of these practices that allows us to capture all the possible benefits for soil health: less erosion, better water management, and adequate functioning of the ecological nutrient cycles leading to a reduced need for pesticides and fertilizers. The combined effect is more productive soil at a lower cost and, therefore, more resilient farms that contribute to climate action and adapt to climate change.
Therefore, a set of practices adapted to each farm must be considered, and that is demonstrated in our report The Power of Soil.
A successful systems approach on farms must be supported by federal and provincial programs that consistently focus on soil health and are adequately funded for the ambitious objectives that must be achieved. For example, the United States and the European Union spend between 15 to 73 more than Canada on agri-environmental programs.
Ultimately, the diversity of practices and the systemic vision are synonymous with resilience. The good news is that we have concrete measures that can be quickly put in place to have an impact in the short term.
First, we are proposing a new risk management program called AgriResilience, which would reward innovation and the adoption of more resilient agricultural practices that help reduce the climate risk.
In addition, soil health must be a priority in all strategies and policies, including the next strategic framework.
We would be pleased to share our brief on this subject with you, which explains the potential of cross-compliance measures and the importance of the environmental plan to farms as a tool for monitoring soil health in Canada.
The next step is to improve knowledge of soil health. Adopting new practices on farms requires that effective learning tools be available and that the information developed by and for farmers, such as peer training, is shared. It is also of vital importance to reinvest in research and advisory services not related to the input sales industry, for example by subsidizing agri-environmental advisory groups. Finally, it is crucial to conserve and preserve farmland and natural environments, which are vast natural carbon sequestration sinks that provide many organic goods and services.
With respect to the third objective of your study, we are conducting a literature review on the connection between soil health and human health. The preliminary data shows that soil health has a positive influence on physical health, in particular as a result of the availability of micronutrients and beneficial bacteria. The direct link between soil health and mental health requires further investigation, but studies underscore the issue of farmers’ well-being.
Moreover, the pandemic revealed the limits of global supply chains. The increase in climate hazards destabilizes agricultural production and these phenomena undermine our food security. These realities and human and environmental health issues suggest that we take another look at our agricultural system in order to increase healthy and sustainable food autonomy in Canada. This is achieved by agricultural production that is beneficial to health, both in the selection of crops and cropping methods, and by avoiding the loss of nutrients as a result of overprocessing of food from field to fork.
Finally, there must be support for the diversification of crops on farms due to the many agricultural and resiliency benefits, while ensuring that different regions have different infrastructure available for bringing products to market, especially local grain centres and slaughterhouses.
Thank you for your time. I will be happy to answer your questions.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentations.
Mr. Viau, we have your report in both French and English on our sharing site, so we have received it already. Thank you very much.
Senator Simons: I want to start with Mr. Mussell.
This issue of how we set up a carbon trading market that is verifiable is one that is, I think, a very complicated one, but you obviously can’t attach value to any certificates or have any kind of trading if you can’t verify that there is actually a certain amount of carbon represented by such certificates.
I wonder, how do you suggest we set up a market? Does it have to be national or federal? Can they be provincial? How do we set up something so that you actually have trades that are not notional?
Mr. Mussell: I think the first step in responding to your question is that this is an issue of credibility and understanding that agricultural soils can sequester carbon; however, the manner in which that occurs will differ according to soil type, crop rotation, drainage, the general warmth of the growing season and the microbial activity in the soil, which is generally positively related with temperature and negatively related with water contained in the soil.
So it seems to me the first step is a set of parameters — probably a fairly complex set of parameters — that we can say that if a farmer undertakes the following practices, we have reasonable assurance that a particular amount of carbon actually was fixed. This is going to be complicated, and it’s complicated as a matter of science and agronomy, as I’m sure my colleagues on the panel will attest to, but somebody also needs to be able to step in and give that credibility, and that’s a role that government can take.
With regard to the scope of the market across jurisdictions, in general, the broader the range of jurisdictions that you can get markets to work, the more liquidity, more interest and more efficiency in the operation. If you can get provinces to agree on particular standards, I think that will become quite important because much of what we’re talking about here, I suspect, falls under provincial jurisdiction, perhaps, as well as federal.
I’ll leave it at that. The bigger you can get it, the better, but everybody has to agree.
[Translation]
Senator Simons: I could ask my question in French, but it is easier for me to do so in English.
[English]
Ms. Lapierre, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about the connection between soil health and human physical and mental health.
[Translation]
Ms. Lapierre: Concerning soil health, the connection to mental health has not been studied very much to date. I have little additional information for you. Concerning the connection between soil health and the physical health of humans, we know that plants grown in healthy soil have higher nutrient density. The same volume of plants yields more nutrients, especially micronutrients.
Global data indicates that malnutrition and food insecurity are attributable to the fact that we are starting to have micronutrient deficiencies, but healthy soils can help mitigate that effect. Furthermore, animals that feed on plants grown in healthy soils also have a better fat profile, and they inturn are consumed by humans. Alongside nutrients, plants have more organic compounds such as antioxidants, which have benefits for human health.
Those are the most obvious connections that we have found to date.
Senator Simons: Thank you.
[English]
Senator Klyne: My question is for Mr. Mussell.
Mr. Mussell, given that you have what I would see as some great breadth and depth on the subject of agriculture in many facets, and so does CAPI, and also given that CAPI is helping to ensure growth and prosperity in the agri-food industry for generations to come, I want to relate one theme to you and then ask you for some advice.
One theme that has emerged in our committee meetings has been that there are numerous techniques that farmers can implement to improve soil health, but the uptake of these techniques has many laggards or really late adopters.
Could you advise the committee on what methods the federal government could use to help encourage more farmers to adopt soil-friendly agricultural practices?
Mr. Mussell: Yes, thanks. What a great question.
We have some good beneficial management practices that help us fix carbon, and getting the uptake is probably a function of awareness to some extent. I wouldn’t want to underestimate the fact that there are real costs associated with it.
As I mentioned in my remarks, in order to get sustainability with respect to climate change measures that we undertake, it has to be financially and economically sustainable for people. That’s an aspect of it.
I think we sometimes underestimate — I don’t know if you want to call it “moral suasion” or what the right term is for it — just asking people. In my understanding of the topic, I think most farmers would really like to be part of a solution. I think they feel strongly about that, and there are probably some things that they can do that are not particularly difficult. They maybe just need to be asked to do it or need to understand what it is and what it involves.
Senator Klyne: Thank you for that. I think you’re a pretty reasonable man.
Senator Wells: I want to thank our panel for helping us on this. I have a question on carbon sequestration. Is this something that is done by effort? Is this something that’s done by good forest and soil management practices? With carbon sequestration, assuming it’s in the soil, tell me why that’s good. Is that good for the soil, and what’s the measure of good soil with respect to the amount of carbon in it?
Mr. Mussell: I wonder if I could start and then perhaps allow my colleagues to interject on this.
With carbon sequestration, you have the plant material that exists below the soil surface that is subject to the action of bacteria and other kinds of microbes that break that down. If it remains in the soil undisturbed, then it stays there. It doesn’t go up into the atmosphere.
Conventional farming practices going back many generations — you look at tillage. If you drive around in the spring, you will find these very finely cultivated fields sometimes. The reason that you want to do that is that you want the soil to warm up. You want to have a very fine-textured soil that will retain moisture, facilitate germination of the seed and so on. Unfortunately, over time — and I don’t think there is any academic disagreement on this — tillage destroys soil structure. I don’t think that’s in dispute.
Why did we do this for generations and why do we still? Well, farming is difficult. There are a lot of considerations that go into it. For example, if you have some perennial forage crops, we don’t have a good way to rotate crops, actually, without some sort of tillage that would cut the roots so that we can work that into a different crop. Of course, crop rotation by itself is beneficial.
I hope I’m helping your understanding in that if you don’t do anything, sequestration will occur. The difficulty is how we farm and how we grow crops after the fact and keep that carbon sequestered. We have some very good tools to do that extensively adopted in Western Canada for a number of good reasons. We have had more difficulty adopting those in Eastern Canada. I can explain further on that, but I wonder if I should allow my colleagues on the panel — if there’s something I missed that they’d like to add.
[Translation]
Ms. Lapierre: That’s quite comprehensive, but I would like to add one or two things. Considerable emphasis is placed on carbon sequestration in soil, an important measure that increases organic matter. As my colleague stated, when it has more organic matter soil has a better structure. Aggregates will form and result in improved porosity and better air penetration for roots and microorganisms as well as better water penetration.
That is really helpful. When talking about carbon sequestration, we focus a great deal on fighting climate change. However, healthy soil with a better structure will also help us adapt to climate change. That is very important to the work of farmers and their resiliency. If there is too much water, a soil that has good structure will let the water percolate so there is enough air for the crops to continue providing a maximum yield. If, on the contrary, there is a lack of water, the soil is can retain a sufficient reserve of water. In the event of droughts or heat waves, we can benefit from more resilient crops.
With respect to labour, it is also important for controlling weeds. Zero tillage often leads to the use of more herbicides, which have other impacts. A different combination will be required for each farm to strike the best balance between advantages and disadvantages.
In our northern climate, tilling the soil exposes the lighter soil. This results in drier soil in spring when the soil is cold. Therefore, we must discontinue this practice.
Senator Petitclerc: My question is for Ms. Lapierre. I have been looking at the document The Power of Soil.
My question is about the section entitled “Spotlight on nitrogen: the ‘elephant in the room.’” It starts by stating that despite much attention to carbon dioxide even by agriculture — and even today our questions focus on this — nevertheless:
. . . in climate change, when it comes to crop agriculture, nitrous oxide is the elephant in the room. 70% of agricultural GHG emissions are associated with the manufacture and use of nitrogen fertilizers . . . .
Why is this still the case and what are the solutions? What do we need? More education, more regulations and constraints? I’d like you to comment on that.
Ms. Lapierre: Yes, of course CO2 is the “star” of greenhouse gases, but it is not the most important element in agriculture. Since World War II there has been a push to greatly increase productivity. Organic amendments or animal manure may be used, but they are often complemented by chemical fertilizers. When applied to agricultural soil under certain conditions, as in the presence of waterlogged soil, this results in anoxia, or a lack of oxygen. This leads to the emission of nitrous oxide. We can try to rely less on these fertilizers, but in a northern and humid climate, which is the case for some provinces, even healthy soil that sequesters carbon in certain contexts will still emit nitrous oxide. The soil’s biological cycle has that effect.
I know that Canada has a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen fertilizers. Quebec’s sustainable agriculture plan goes a step further by setting a target to reduce nitrogen fertilizer use, not just emissions. This is an achievable goal if we change farming practices to those that are beneficial to soil health. We will manage to have better availability of nutrients and for the same productivity, to have less need for chemical fertilizers.
When using chemical fertilizers, you can modulate, but you have to think about the four Rs: the right fertilizer, the right dose, at the right time and in the right place. This is the basis of good agronomic practices, to which we will try to add diversified rotations, cover crops, reduced tillage, et cetera. So these are other practices. If these practices were more widely disseminated and transmitted by advisers, if there were more people in the field, they would require minor changes that would pay off in the very short term for the farmers, because they would use less fertilizer. They would realize this quickly. This helps to pave the way and open the discussion. It is a first practice and then you can test others. The benefits are gradual.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you very much.
[English]
Senator Cotter: Thanks again to the witnesses for helping us in this study. My question is primarily for Mr. Mussell. As you have been speaking, I had a look at the sequestration work that your institute did. It confirmed some information and evidence that we heard earlier about the degree to which, particularly on the Prairies, there has been a significant achievement in soil sequestration over the last 20 to 30 years, maybe at a lower rate in recent years, which generates two questions for me.
As I understand it, some of the movement that has declined or caused the rate of success in carbon sequestration to decline is the move to annual crops, which presumably have been higher‑value crops for farmers. So in some respects, sometimes the market — at least, based on the sale price of a bushel of wheat or whatever the crop might be — can be a driving force against success in this net-zero project in carbon sequestration. So my first question concerns the degree to which market forces help or sometimes hinder success in carbon sequestration.
Let me mention my second question before you answer. As we try to think about the ways in which we might reward agricultural producers for contributing to this national agenda, in this part of the country we have had early movers. Perhaps they weren’t motivated by particular public policy goals, but certainly they have — I don’t want to say “saturated” their soil with carbon — but have moved some distance down that road. To the degree that we put in motivational reward mechanisms, will we actually reward those who have been late movers and, in a certain way, punish those who have already taken major steps?
Mr. Mussell: Yes. Thank you.
On your first question, I think that you are exactly right. It is a concern. In my opening remarks, I made reference to the concern that high crop prices could result in land conversion away from grasslands, particularly in Western Canada. That concern is very real. If you get $1,000-a-tonne canola, that can tear up a lot of grassland. It is a difficult problem. I do not think it’s particularly anyone’s fault.
We ask farmers to respond to market signals. The challenge is what we effectively price into those market signals. How does it work in instances like this? In any event, you are right. I would go further and say that there will be more of that as we get further into a food and energy crisis. There could be further concerns about that.
The second question you raised brings up a perennial public policy problem, namely, that you have the people who, of their own volition, got in and did this initially although nobody asked them to do so. Now, to complete compliance, we are rewarding the others, the laggards, so to speak.
I do not have a good answer for that. It would be nice if we could treat people equitably through policy to get these big collective action problems advanced, but I don’t have a clear solution to that problem.
Senator Marwah: My question is for Mr. Mussell. I’m referring to the report issued by CAPI in March of this year which focuses on agri-food and trade. One of the key takeaways in your study says:
Canada’s Agri-Food policy priorities appear to be a combination of largely the status quo and a shift to a strong emphasis on climate change and labour in agri-food.
Do you agree with that public policy standpoint? Do you think that the emphasis should be more or less in one particular area? Because your recommendations focused more on trade rather than climate change or balancing other elements of food policy. Although I must admit that your recommendations on trade are very insightful, and I hope that somebody acts on them.
Mr. Mussell: Thank you for the question.
The dilemma we have is that we have to deal with the context that is in front of us. Without making things overly dramatic, we are in some stage of — I don’t think we know what yet — a global food crisis as well as a global energy crisis. The two intersect closely together.
If your point of departure in agricultural policy is — as the report you reference mentioned — to talk about climate change, labour and some of last year’s or the previous decades’ problems without addressing what I see today as a problem of scarcity and the worry that countries are quite prepared to use trade policy and other kinds of geopolitical actions to secure a food supply for their own populations, as they are concerned about scarcity, then that needs to be another dimension that is included within our agricultural policy.
I’m going to keep it short in the interest of time, but a lot of our agricultural policy that we have today stems from the period following the Second World War in which the great policy concern was that productivity in agriculture would move faster than demand would. You would have low farm prices, low farm incomes and you would not get efficiency investment and you would have poor people who lived in the country. That situation is changing in real time. It is not just food inflation; it is energy inflation. We’re simply going to have starving people in the world, sadly, which attests to that.
Senator Marwah: Thank you.
The Chair: I have a couple of questions on which I would like to hear from both Dr. Mussell and Équiterre.
I have heard it said that the issues around soil health and this report maybe should be directed to another department of the government rather than agriculture because if it is with agriculture, when push comes to shove, economics will always win out. As you said, Dr. Mussell, we will rip up grassland to put in more canola or whatever other crop. What are your thoughts on that?
We will start with Mr. Viau.
[Translation]
Mr. Viau: I think Agri-Food Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada need to work together. Soil health has its place in agriculture, but it must also have its place in the environment. So the question is not where soil health is located, in which department the responsibility for soil health lies, but how each department takes responsibility for protecting this resource. Soil health can be dealt with by the Department of the Environment as well as by the Department of Agriculture. The important thing is that the two departments talk to each other and have common goals.
I think that within plans, like the 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan, where you have strategies that are implemented collaboratively between different departments, but under the umbrella of Environment and Climate Change Canada, you get a potential that is beneficial.
Now, the whole thing has to materialize, as I say, whether it’s soil health or other environmental matters; it’s a whole-of-government and all-department effort, it’s not the responsibility of one department.
[English]
Mr. Mussell: My response to your question is there will always be people who will say that there are particular conservation actions that we cannot afford. In some cases, that may be correct. We also have to think about the fact that we cannot afford not to do this. We have to create the space for ourselves.
Again, I do not want to overdramatize our current situation, but I see this as a difficult time for the world right now. There is a lot of pressure. When you have conflict, starvation and gaps in the energy supply, this is likely to stem over multiple years. We are in a tough spot here.
There are a lot of pressures on the system to simply produce as much as possible. We need to produce; there’s no question about that, but we need to do that in such a way that we don’t sacrifice our capacity going forward in the future. To do that, we’re going to have to make public policy choices. We can’t afford not to do this, but we have to make good decisions in context.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Simons: As we heard from our last panel, and I think you were all listening, Dr. Prescott said to us, and this was news to me, that a well-managed grassland can sequester more carbon than a forest. So often the emphasis is on planting trees to sequester carbon.
I wonder if you could speak to something that you touched on in your opening remarks — a well-managed grassland. How does one bring together the goals of a well-managed grassland and grazing livestock? Or is a well-managed grassland one which is not grazed?
Mr. Mussell: First, I agree with Dr. Prescott’s assessment. She is more of an expert on that than I am, but that would be my understanding as well.
Sorry, I am coming back to the second part of your question.
Senator Simons: You were mentioning cattle, sheep and livestock grazing. If you have good grazing technique, it is my understanding that that can actually be healthy for the grassland.
Mr. Mussell: Oh, certainly.
Senator Simons: The problem is that you don’t want to overgraze. You also do not want to see grasslands polluted by coal effluent if, say, hypothetically, the government wanted coal mines upriver in your province. How do we protect grasslands to get the best from them?
Mr. Mussell: Efficient management of grasslands can make a very big difference. I remember a famous study — it must be 10 years ago now — done in New Zealand in which they were able to demonstrate that New Zealand’s spring lamb marketed in the U.K. had a lower carbon footprint than U.K. lamb did in the U.K. You ask how on earth that is possible. Well, New Zealand is not a very big place, and they have to manage their resources very intensively, and they do, and they were able to demonstrate that. That gives you a little bit of a sense that management makes a great deal of difference.
I’m remembering the second part of your question now, which is what if there were grassland and no grazing. First, that is actually very difficult to manage because you have wildlife, right? We have to remember that in Western Canada, historically, we had bison that grazed. In fact, in some of the work done at the University of California, Davis, they tried to compare the contemporary U.S. cow herd with the bison herd that existed historically in the U.S. high plains. The argument is that they may not be exactly the same, but they are somewhat proportional with one another. So you will have grazing animals there.
I would also point you to some work done at the University of Alberta in long-term trials where they attempted to measure emissions from parts of a pasture fenced off from grazing. To my understanding of it, the grasses in the pasture will get to a point where they lodge. After the lodging occurs — and I think Ms. Lapierre mentioned this earlier — you can get nitrous oxides and other greenhouse gases emitted from that lodging. Attempting to have grassland in place without grazing animals, whether they are farmed animals or wild — and I don’t know how you can prevent the wildlife — yes, you need grazing animals with grasslands.
Senator Simons: Yes, whether that’s cattle, bison, elk or whatever. Yes.
Mr. Mussell: Yes. Of course, if we do it with farm animals, in terms of the conversion of grass and other nutrients into amino acids and digestible proteins for people, it’s easiest to do that with farm animals as compared with wildlife.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: My question is for Mr. Viau and potentially Ms. Lapierre. I was looking at the transition to practices that would be more conducive to soil health and the various obstacles that are in the way.
We often talk about the barriers that can be addressed through education and attitudinal and behavioural changes, in some cases, but I also see a number of barriers related to economic considerations, such as changing equipment, making new acquisitions, taking into account purchase or transition costs. There can be productivity losses in relation to agriculture.
What do we do to manage this? What can it mean? Earlier, someone mentioned certain countries that invest 13 to 60 times more than we do. What are the possible solutions from an economic point of view?
Mr. Viau: Thank you very much for your question. There are indeed many obstacles to transition. This is why, in our possible solution, we have put forward a lot of economic tools that can help.
As my colleague mentioned earlier, this transition can often be perceived as risky, when we have the same ways of operating and we have a certain predictability, even if the vagaries of the climate mean that we won’t always have the same yields. Our studies show that when we make the transition to the best practices, we obtain results that are similar or even higher. However, there is a risk: you plant and harvest once a year, so you want to make sure you get a yield.
One of the barriers is equipment costs. Also, if you want to decarbonize the machinery, you need access to an electrical network. Sometimes, in the agricultural sectors, we are not connected to the hydroelectric network, for example in Quebec, because we don’t have access to a three-phase network that allows us to have electricity powerful enough to make the investments work. It takes government investment to get access to that.
In addition, some changes in practices mean that there are losses of area. These losses must be compensated for, because losses in area are equivalent to losses in yield. If we compensate for these losses of area in terms of cultivation for the time needed to ensure income stability — because there will be buffer zones, because we will be moving towards agroforestry, for example — we will then be able to begin a realistic transition.
Maybe Ms. Lapierre has some things to add to complete my answer.
Ms. Lapierre: I can give concrete examples. As far as practices are concerned, it is a question of studying the profitability of practices in different contexts, and then extending the knowledge to farmers, but that is not enough. You need investment to start the wheel turning, and that’s where the role of governments comes in. There are different interventions that can help facilitate this transition, because apart from environmental stewardship practices, there are several practices that generate a return on investment. The investments will eventually pay off, either by lowering production costs or by increasing productivity.
However, well-targeted subsidies, either to allow a farmer to do a simple test or to start to get their feet wet, will remove this barrier.
There is a program in Quebec called Prime-Vert, which helps finance the purchase of equipment and provides agronomic support to be able to test methods before extending them to all fields. This reduces the risk.
On-farm risk management programs also need to be adapted. One can offer discounts to crop insurance, if one implements new practices, or on the contrary a program that will support the risk of adopting new practices or new crops without penalizing the farmer for wanting to make changes.
Senator Mockler: I also want to talk about your vision. Équiterre has a very good reputation and is undoubtedly a leader on many issues across Canada.
My question is about the role of governments, industry and the environmental sector in finding best practice solutions for our soil quality.
Do you believe that planting two billion trees across the country is a solution for climate change and carbon sequestration?
Mr. Viau: I’ll give a preliminary answer. We are not specialists in the field of tree planting. We are more specialized in the agricultural field; we are beginning to take a greater interest in agroforestry. Of all the things we see and study, and work on with our partners, yes, tree planting has an impact. There was some discussion in this panel and the previous one about the capture power of grasslands versus the capture of forests.
The country and the soils are so diverse that you can’t decide to plant trees or maples all over the country, in every province and every region of Canada, and expect it to have the same impact. No, because the impacts will be different for different tree species and for different regions of the country.
Yes, tree planting is a useful tool that should be used, but make sure you do it in the right place. You also have to make sure you use the right species. It takes a lot of planning to achieve the best possible results. There is a combination of trees and soils that can maximise carbon capture in Canada.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you very much. Seeing no further questions, Dr. Mussell, Mr. Viau and Ms. Lapierre, I would like to thank you for your participation this evening. We really do appreciate your time and your comments as we continue to study this issue.
I would also like to thank my colleagues around the table for your active participation and thoughtful questions. As I always do, I also want to thank those who support us around the table and the Senate folks as well: interpreters, the transcription team, the room attendant, the multimedia services folks, the broadcasting team, the recording centre, the Information Services Directorate and our page.
Colleagues, our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, October 27, at 9 a.m., when we will continue to hear from expert conservation witnesses for this study.
(The committee adjourned.)