THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, October 27, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 8:59 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada.
Senator Robert Black (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning, honourable senators. I would like to begin by welcoming members of the committee as well as our witnesses and those watching this meeting on the web. My name is Rob Black and I’m a senator from Ontario and chair of this committee.
This morning, the committee is meeting on its study to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada. Before we hear from our witnesses, I would like to start by asking senators around the table to introduce themselves, starting with our deputy chair.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, senator from Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator M. Deacon: Marty Deacon, Ontario.
Senator Mockler: Percy Mockler, New Brunswick.
Senator Klyne: Good morning and welcome to our guests. I’m Marty Klyne, senator from Saskatchewan, Treaty 4 territory.
Senator Marwah: Good morning. I’m Sabi Marwah, senator from Ontario.
Senator Cotter: Good morning. I’m Brent Cotter, senator from Saskatchewan.
The Chair: Thank you. Our witnesses are joining us via video conference. Today we welcome Bryan Gilvesy, Chief Executive Officer, ALUS; and Antonious Petro, Executive Director, Regeneration Canada. I invite you to make your presentations, witnesses. You each have five minutes for your opening remarks.
Bryan Gilvesy, Chief Executive Officer, ALUS: Good morning. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today. I am a veteran farmer from Norfolk County, Ontario, where I also serve as an executive-in-residence at the Ivey Business School and the CEO of ALUS. I have had the privilege of being involved with ALUS for nearly 17 years, starting out as one of the first farmer participants enrolled in the program in 2006. I am proud to say that I have both farmed and ranched beef cattle throughout my career.
The organization that I represent is the only farmer-led and community-based entity in Canada that was created explicitly to harness the knowledge, energy skills and land base of farmers and ranchers to produce ecosystem services like water regulation, carbon storage, pollination and biodiversity support, all of which relate to and are incumbent upon soil health.
ALUS stands for Alternative Land Use Services. The ALUS concept was born in 2004 in Manitoba and was piloted in Norfolk County as The Farmer’s Conservation Plan. The ALUS acronym implies that a farmer shall use his or her land in an alternative way and produce a service — an ecosystem service. ALUS has since launched in six provinces, and 36 communities have partnered with us to deliver our program. Currently, over 1,500 farmers and ranchers are enrolled collectively, and we have positively improved soil health on over 200 square kilometres of project sites across Canada.
Our mission is to help farmers and ranchers build nature-based solutions on their land to sustain agriculture and biodiversity for the benefit of communities and future generations. Soil health is a shared responsibility, and its benefits accrue to all Canadians. Canada’s farmers and ranchers have the knowledge and the land to deliver these benefits. Farmers and ranchers across Canada are delivering solutions right now to improve soil health, and new markets are emerging to support their work. Scaling this effort requires the commitment and support of policy-makers. It also requires that the farmers who are rolling up their sleeves — these carbon sequestration practitioners, as I call them — are able to support the development of policy in Canada with practical, creative solutions.
ALUS is a Canadian charity that works with and through rural partners like municipalities, conservation authorities, watershed associations, conservation districts, local non-profits and, in the case in P.E.I., a province to empower farmers and ranchers across Canada to restore and enhance nature on their farmland. ALUS provides the programmatic tools, scientific guidance and data management infrastructure communities need to establish and manage their own program, as well as access to market funds to support their work. The result is a truly grassroots effort to support solutions to complex environmental, economic and human health problems.
Canada’s farmers are on the front lines of climate change. This is changing the way we farm, as well as the way we think about the role that farms and farmers play in addressing climate change. We believe that farmers produce not only food and fibre but also ecosystem services. We see farming as a multi-functional activity that can address many priorities important to Canadians. We also believe that any conversation about soil health has implications for human health, food security, economic prosperity and ecosystem function. Soil health in agriculture, in our view, should be inclusive of the whole farm, from edge to edge, including the intersections with nature, to maximize our impacts and create genuine, functional solutions.
The ALUS program regards the farm as a diverse place. It can include wetlands, grasslands, rotational grazing, rotational cropping and tree projects, which all lower greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon. They also provide a host of other benefits, like the creation of new wildlife habitat and improved water quality for downstream communities — all while building soil organic matter. For example, on the steeply sloped farmlands in P.E.I., ALUS has rewarded farmers for terracing their lands to prevent soil erosion. Providing grassed buffers next to watercourses also serves to keep topsoil and nutrients out of the waterway in Quebec. In Ontario, farmers restoring grasslands have seen well-researched evidence that biodiversity loss can be reversed, in some cases instantaneously, through their efforts in an almost invisible way. Increasing soil microbial activity also results in rebounding populations of AM fungi in these soils. These fungi help plants better access soil resources, which is important to farmland health and productivity.
Our partners in Manitoba and Saskatchewan are participating in Growing Roots, a pilot program supported by General Mills, and in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, ALUS community partners are delivering the Grazing Forward program funded by Cargill and ALUS. Corporations are important to our support.
Collectively, we have seen that there are many drivers for a market energy that can provide significant revenue for farmers working toward improving soil health and producing ecosystem services. ALUS is developing this marketplace with a corporate vehicle called New Acre Project. It is unique because it pays farmers for the full suite of benefits. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Gilvesy. We hope to hear anything else you wish to share with us during questions.
Antonious Petro, Executive Director, Regeneration Canada: Senator Black and members of the Agriculture Committee, thank you very much for the invitation. Senators, soil health isn’t only about the capacity to produce healthy food for a growing population; it is also about the most important pillar of any civilization. I am a living example of how a nation loses its identity when its soil is degraded. I fled Egypt, a country that once was the breadbasket of the old world, when farming became a burden and when land became scarce and degraded. I am now in one of the world’s grain baskets, and today, we have the responsibility to collectively learn from the past. We must keep our soils healthy. Our government should consider soil as a national treasure and a heritage we ought to protect.
I am the executive director of Regeneration Canada, a non-profit national organization dedicated to promoting soil regeneration and regenerative agriculture for more viable farms, adapting to and mitigating climate change and ensuring a healthy and just food system.
When implemented on a whole-farm scale, regenerative agriculture offers the opportunity for the Canadian agricultural sector to thrive and for our farmers and ranchers to do what they excel at, which is feeding us and the world. Regenerative agriculture goes beyond implementing no-till and cover crops; it is about implementing the principles and the context-based practices on three levels: the soil, the farm and our food system in general.
It is clear to us that a national soil health study should be done by and for producers. There is a need for more farmer-led research on the strategies, the barriers to adoption and the social, economic and cultural considerations governments and institutions should keep in mind when designing programs and initiatives. Pioneer farmers and ranchers are moving faster than the programs and research available. Our job today is to listen to what they have to say and provide more resources to help them in their transition.
[Translation]
Studying the state of soil health also needs to take us out of the sometimes narrow focus on carbon. We need to improve protocols for quantifying greenhouse gases, while turning our attention to more easily measured and observed ecosystem services in the field, such as a soil’s ability to hold water and, therefore, its ability to adapt to extreme weather events. This is an approach that our member Ryan Boyd of South Glanton Farm in Manitoba advocates and shares with his peers in the region.
Other producers believe that government needs to invest in quantifying biodiversity as a universal language and indicator of the state of the soil ecosystem. The link between soil health and human health is another often overlooked aspect. Canadians have a right to know that they are what they eat and that their health comes from what their food has eaten, in the words of Dr. David Montgomery and Anne Biklé’s recent book.
There is growing evidence of the link between regeneratively grown and produced foods and the health of the animals and humans who consume them. The government must ensure that our fellow consumers realize the critical role that soil plays in public health, economic development, food, adaptation and climate change mitigation. This would be achieved with the support of organizations like Regeneration Canada and ALUS, which work tirelessly to bring together and connect producers and consumers on a national scale.
It is also important that government efforts to study the state of Canada’s soils include thorough and heartfelt work to understand the realities of Indigenous communities, their needs and their visions for managing their lands. Academic researchers and other institutions and organizations are attempting to map soils on Indigenous territories, and we believe the federal government has an important role to play in supporting these efforts.
[English]
Regenerating soil health has proven and well-documented positive economic outcomes, but the transition route is long and costly. Not only should the government improve farmer-designed programs and incentives but also take the responsibility to create markets for regeneratively produced food through increasing domestic buy-in from Canadian consumers and developing international markets for regenerative commodities.
To do all this, Canada needs a national effort to coordinate, consolidate and to map regenerative agriculture and soil health across the country. We need to present and define a holistic approach to regenerate our land by integrating a diverse set of principles such as soil cover, minimal physical disturbance, enhancing biodiversity below and above ground, bringing animals — and not only livestock — back to the field, integrating perennial crops and cover and, above all, providing farmers and land managers with adequate and culturally relevant resources to help in their transition.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you witnesses, and thank you very much for your helping us to stay on time.
Before asking and answering questions, I would like to remind colleagues of the best practices document that is at your desks with respect to microphones and earpieces. Please refrain from leaning in too close to the microphone or removing your earpiece when doing so. This will help to avoid sound feedback that could negatively impact the committee staff in the room.
As has been our previous practice, we will give five minutes of questions and answers.
Senator Simons: I’m going to start with a question for Mr. Gilvesy. I’m an Alberta senator and I noticed with interest that ALUS has two new Alberta projects, one at Two Hills and one at Big Lakes. Could you tell me more about those projects and what they hope to accomplish?
Mr. Gilvesy: Concerning ALUS, those two communities in Alberta, we’re proud to say, are part of the 18 that exist there now in Alberta. In every circumstance, ALUS is the umbrella organization, as it were, that provides the operational systems, the databases, the principles and the guidelines for operating an ALUS program at the community level.
We think that community-level programming is the best way to do things because those communities are able to target their own local priorities and do what is best for their own communities. It truly winds up being a grassroots program. While those programs are newly minted, we will wait to hear what their partnership advisory committees decide is best to fund within their communities because ALUS truly empowers them in a grassroots way to develop programming that fits their landscape and their agricultural community. We are proud to add them to the rotation of municipal partners in Alberta.
Senator Simons: From what I have been able to see online, it looks as though — at least in Two Hills — it involves rewilding of lands that were under cultivation and returning them to wetlands. Could you talk to me about how that helps soil health?
Mr. Gilvesy: A long time ago, ALUS identified some 37 million acres of land that might be considered marginal or uneconomic in the way we farm today. Farmers respond to market signals — the only market signals that they can receive when they are considering what to do on their lands. In some circumstances, even on my farm, there are some lands that were not providing me returns. I’m able to restore those lands back to a natural state and get a market reward from ALUS.
We put those farmers and ranchers in a position to produce something different on their lands — lands that aren’t working traditionally for their purposes. In some circumstances, it can be put back into native grasslands. It can be planted into trees and shrubs. Effectively, they help build soil on those sites but keep soil on the rest of the farm. Those plants effectively keep topsoil on the land, keep it from getting in the watercourse and help protect the wetlands. This is all integral. It’s all of a piece. The water connects to the soil. The better we are at soil, the better we are at trapping it on the marginal sites, the better we are off environmentally, I would think.
Senator Simons: Mr. Petro, at the end of your comments, you stated an intriguing line about how we need grazing animals who are not just livestock. Can you talk to me about keeping a grassland sustainable by returning grazing animals to it, those that are not necessarily bound for the table?
Mr. Petro: When I was referring to “animals,” I was referring to the animal kingdom as a whole. We say “stock” meaning those that help climate change mitigation or not. What we believe — and what the science is saying — is, yes, originally the grazed grassland, or even a mixed production farm, could really replenish and improve soil health. However, we also need more insects, more biodiversity in the soil, more diverse livestock such as goats, sheep and bison, when it’s adequate. That is what I meant by “all animals” and not only cows, as we always refer to.
Senator Simons: Obviously, those native grasslands evolved to be eaten by bison. Is there something different about the way a bison herd grazes than a beef herd that keeps the land more sustainable?
Mr. Petro: It’s a different context from one farm to another. Bison have their place in a big part of the Canadian prairie. They don’t graze the same way as cows, but I can’t tell you right now how this is different. I’m not a farmer myself.
Senator Simons: Okay. Thank you very much.
Senator Klyne: Mr. Gilvesy, you mentioned that you have over 1,400 farmers across a number of communities. I was going to ask you what catchment area that is. However, based on your answer for Senator Simons, I get the sense that maybe there are no boundaries; it’s whomever you can pull into that network. You can correct me on that.
My question is around the best practices to mitigate or eliminate soil degradation. It sounds like you have some success with the farmers in your catchment area. We have been led to believe that with regard to best practices, nationally, 50% of farmers are probably holdouts or outliers and definitely laggards or deniers. Can you tell us about the success you’re having? That is, what might you offer for the Government of Canada to encourage a higher percentage of farmers than what we have now to adopt best practices with regard to the soil mitigation or elimination of degradation?
Mr. Gilvesy: Our catchment areas are defined by the community partners as they see fit. That can look different.
In Alberta, in every circumstance, they are municipalities. In Saskatchewan, we have two very large watershed associations, for instance. In Quebec, the effort is led by L’Union des producteurs agricoles, or UPA. Those catchment areas are defined by their own community as they define their community, because they define their own agriculture region and how they relate to each other culturally. We allow that to flow in their own way. We work on many, many project types, but we let the farmers, the farm practitioners that know best, follow the science and do those practices that help us the most.
A really great example is the Grazing Forward project we are running that is sponsored by Cargill and A&W. This rewards the ranchers in grassland settings for protecting their wetlands, for getting cattle out of the sloughs and, in fact, doing adaptive multi-paddock grazing. It’s a whole-farm look at improving soil health with relationship to biodiversity and water. Instantaneously, we change the way we sequester carbon in those regimes and we watch biodiversity numbers soar in those circumstances.
In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, we are testing and piloting concepts around working on the working lands, different techniques such as cover cropping, which is the first step on a ladder toward reconsidering how we treat the land, the farmed land, in connection with the marginal land.
With these community partners, what we’re doing is we are harnessing the power and energy of the farmers and ranchers who know their land best, supporting them with a community and then bringing in the appropriate science so that we know what we’re doing will be efficacious.
Senator Klyne: From that I would take it that you probably have great success with those in your network, but are you doing anything to bring in others who are not adopting some of these best practices?
Mr. Gilvesy: We are in a position today where we are scaling our program as rapidly as we can possibly go. This is dependent, always, on money to support our efforts.
But we are in a scaling phase. We feel we have perfected the ALUS model. We connected to a marketplace to support this work, and we scale as quickly as we can go. We’re looking at interesting opportunities to get bigger faster.
Senator Marwah: Thank you, witnesses, for being with us this morning.
Gentlemen, many of the witnesses who have come before you have supported the need for Canada to have a national advocate for soil health. At the same time, I hear you, Mr. Gilvesy, say that community-level programming is the best way to handle soil health.
I would like your thoughts. The concern is that a national advocate would be too far removed from the local knowledge, local considerations and conditions that prevail. Do you think these two organizations, if one is created, could coexist or should coexist, or would you suggest another model?
Mr. Gilvesy: Absolutely. I think coexistence is very important, but first we must acknowledge the creativity, skills and expertise of the people on the land. These people actually know how to sequester carbon, for instance. They know how to build soil organic matter.
To harness the full potential of agriculture as part of the solution, farmers need to be full partners, together with industry and the scientific community, to do this. ALUS can provide a vehicle for that connective link between the research, science, practice and leadership, of course, which would provide us with the optimal solutions.
Senator Marwah: Mr. Petro, your thoughts?
Mr. Petro: Yes. How we see that is, as Mr. Gilvesy said, we need a community-led and farmer-led initiative that is also supported with a national effort. The way we see that is that we should and could design and build those communities around watersheds, around the bioregion, and not necessarily around provincial and political borders.
We need to hear from folks on the ground on what is needed, what the barriers are and what the specific needs are in terms of the geoclimatic condition on their soil and their farm, but also — and equally important — we need to support this with a national effort that brings the support financially and beyond to these communities.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you. It’s nice to be here as a guest.
I have tried to look through some of the last testimony as we were meeting this morning. The words “community,” “community-driven,“ ”community-engaged“ and ”farmers working for farmers with farmers” are critical. It feels like there is a bit of momentum. I could be wrong, but it feels like there is momentum and desire in the communities that are participating.
I’m trying to think about farms and properties that are not engaged, that are not participating, and what those reasons might be — even though I think I heard you address going after the barriers — but those reasons that might prevent this from being seen as obviously appealing for some property owners. If you could comment on that at all, Mr. Gilvesy, that would be great.
Mr. Gilvesy: That’s a wonderful point that you make, and I can reflect upon my reticence in the beginning to enter this field of work back in 2006 on my own lands.
Remember, ALUS is designed as a Farmer’s Conservation Plan. It takes the farmers’ perspective. It brings farmers in with support, extension, technical advice and the cultural support of a community to allow an open door where farmers and ranchers can freely walk in, voluntarily walk in, and discover what is on the other side, for instance. We marry that with some serious market signals and some market support from an emerging marketplace that rewards them for their work.
I understand that it is slow going sometimes — I can reflect on my own progression — but we’re happy to see that we have communities and farmers and ranchers across the country lining up for our programming. We think, as a Farmer’s Conservation Plan, that we have discovered something. We found the right tone; we found the right participatory vehicle, and I’m proud to say that people who participate in our program feel like they own it and they feel a partnership in it.
It’s kind of a social thing, in a way, but it’s important to make sure we break down all those barriers, as you mentioned, and our mechanism helps do all that.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you for that.
Perhaps just to follow up with that, I was listening to my colleague Senator Marwah talk about the national soil strategy and whether it will get to what we need to get to. Will it dilute the work a little bit? And seeing that you have a great invitational, consultative and collaborative project going on coast to coast, I wonder, then, when I look at those two things that probably should work together, what it is that you would like from us. What is it at the government table that — because it’s not always money? I would like to hear what it is that you want to make sure we walk away with so that we understand where you are and your best next-step needs.
Mr. Gilvesy: A couple of points I would like to make: First, Canadians and policy-makers, we all need to understand increasingly that environmental activity is economic activity, especially when we’re rebuilding Canada’s natural capital based on a marketplace supporting the production of ecosystem services. We’re in a new paradigm with the market emerging to support this work, and policy-makers can help us get there. We can get to that paradigm shift more quickly.
Really, what we think we can do to help is that we stand ready to mediate an important dialogue with government and policy-makers to ensure pending carbon markets or a national registry development in Canada that would support soil health consider the expertise of those who can sequester carbon. We need to address the inherent risks in terrestrial carbon and we have to be accessible for those willing to invest in nature-based solutions.
We essentially think that turning the tide on all this requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. We need the farmers putting their hands in the dirt and we need the support of the policy-makers as well to help make this happen.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you.
Senator Cotter: As is often the case, when Senator Deacon attends these meetings, she steals the best questions or, at least, the questions I was going to ask. I want to follow up on that last dimension of things.
I would describe it as incentivization. Here are my concerns and my question, mainly for Mr. Gilvesy, but probably for both of you.
A significant number of things tend to pull against the goals that you and we are trying to identify. One of the things is that market rewards for this can be variable, depending on the change in markets. We heard, for example, that high prices of crops that are primarily annuals, particularly in Western Canada, have caused different farmer choices that work against the absolute best practices in soil conservation, soil health, carbon sequestration and the like. A lot of the land, particularly in big farmed areas, is leased land, so the incentive of the person farming and producing on that land is less because the land belongs to someone else, and the lease could end in the next year or five years from now. There are regulatory demands imposed on farmers in sometimes untimely ways. A lot of the plots are very large and perhaps not as easily susceptible to the kinds of practices that you, gentlemen, have wisely and meaningfully championed. We don’t presently have a market for carbon.
What are the incentives that can enable us to get past some of these impediments so that we can have a big impact? I appreciate and admire the kind of social dimension of it built around communities, but this is a big project, a whole-of-Canada project. Trying to figure out what the federal or national conception of incentives can be would really be valuable for us.
Mr. Gilvesy: Thank you for your question. From our perspective and as a farmer, when I hear the word “incentive,” it is like nails on a chalkboard where we come from. What we’re trying to do is shift the perspective of what a farm can do for Canadians. It is no longer simply about providing food and fibre but about providing ecosystem services for another emerging marketplace. The farm then becomes a multi-functional place; the farmers remain productive and they are accepting market signals to produce something in addition to food and fibre.
This is an exciting turn of the page to think we are harnessing the productivity of these people in a different way for a different marketplace. I know you alluded to the fact that there may not be a marketplace, but we are seeing one emerge before our eyes. We are seeing important partners like Cargill and Bruce Power come to the table because they believe in this project over the long term. They believe in the opportunity to get ecosystem service benefits, soil health and water benefits from the farmers within their own communities. I think it is an exciting time. I think we are on the precipice of a new marketplace and we need to understand that.
Senator Cotter: Thank you very much. I said this before with some other witnesses: My father-in-law was a farmer. He was a grain farmer in Saskatchewan and farmed probably five or eight sections of land; it was a big farm. He used to say, “What we are doing here is mining the land, not farming it.” So he understood. But let me tell you, he kept on mining the land because it was the most economically beneficial thing for him to do for his family and his children who might inherit the land, in his judgment, at least. I appreciate your point about incentives, but what needs to happen to change the fathers-in-law of the future who understand the problem, but the economic incentives often tend to make your work and ours a bit of a challenge?
Mr. Gilvesy: I think we have to be very clear with farmers that we value their contributions in the form of ecosystem services. Those ecosystem services do not occur to the detriment of the crop, but in addition to the crop. It’s a new paradigm. These are the types of farmers we are winning across the country. The exact type of farmer that you just described is making discoveries through our programming and finding a little bit of new revenue to support their work.
Senator Cotter: Thank you very much.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: I thank our witnesses for being here today to help us in our study.
[English]
My question is for both our witnesses, if we have time. I want to ask you about your thoughts on the big companies that are choosing to support regenerative farming practices. Basically, we’re talking PepsiCo, Microsoft, General Mills — those big companies that are choosing to get involved. It is good for their brand, but how does it work, exactly? What is it that they do? Does it have a real impact? Are they allies? Should there be more of them? What are your thoughts on that?
Mr. Gilvesy: I am proud to say that we have a very good relationship with General Mills, Cargill, Bruce Power and Danone, among others. These corporations are responding in a very real way to new drivers that they have not faced before. First, they have climate change and net-zero emission goals that they have set. Increasingly, they are being asked to report on ESG — environmental, social and governance reporting — for their shareholders and to retain social licence to operate. I think they are taking very seriously the opportunity to work with farmers within their supply chains to help mitigate or offset some of the effects of their supply chain.
We are very careful, together with our partners, that what we do is real, rooted in science and truly accountable. We have a world-class database to make sure these things are real, and we are developing the scientific rigour and a new carbon marketplace to support this work through our New Acre Project.
I think this is real as rain. We’re very proud of these relationships because in the same way that we feel that we bring farmers into this new paradigm, we think we are bringing corporations into it in a positive way. We are thrilled with the response that they’ve had and the realness of the activity on the ground.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you for your answer. Are these companies asking the farmers, the suppliers, to provide products that were made through regenerative farming, or are they helping the farmers to make it happen? I’m trying to see how it works on the ground.
Mr. Gilvesy: We would send money from a corporation to a local community. That community would decide how to generate ecosystem services to meet the overall goals of the corporation. What those activities would look like might be adaptive multi-paddock grazing, fencing cattle from wetlands or new watering systems to make sure cattle stay out of sloughs and the wetlands, for instance. It could be cover cropping or grassland restoration. It looks different in every community.
Fundamentally, there is a flow of ecosystem services that were not there before that exists after. These serve to offset the effects of the supply chains, so it is not as direct as you would say it, but it is within the supply chain and within the food system. We all benefit by this work, in my opinion.
[Translation]
Mr. Petro: To add to what Mr. Gilvesy said, it depends on each project and each company. Our goal is to align our mission as a Canadian organization that aims to improve soil health with the vision that these companies may have in their internal relationships. We are making sure that we are in partnership with these companies.
We are proud to work with A&W, General Millsand Oatly to help them guide and support the grower toward more regenerative agriculture. To answer the previous question about markets, these companies are showing us how to create markets for products from regenerative agriculture. Today, we are calling on the Canadian government and provincial governments to help these producers change their practices by establishing domestic markets within Canada and in international markets for these products.
I’ll give you an example. We have a member in Quebec, Sébastien Angers, who started producing pumpkin seeds for the first time in the province. He found his own partners among private companies to sell his pumpkin seeds. He is the only producer in the province who does this. Government can help this producer change his practices and choose more agri-environmental practices by creating these brands in and out of the markets.
Senator Mockler: I would also like to congratulate you, Mr. Petro.
[English]
Our order of reference is unprecedented, and farmers are looking forward to see the recommendations and the pathway for the future. I know that the two witnesses have experience in this.
We’ve heard issues such as erosion, loss of soil carbon, biodiversity and soil compaction continue to affect soil health across Canada. My question to both witnesses is this: What kind of collaboration between and among federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments, academic institutions and farmers is most necessary to promote soil health in Canada and share the data?
Mr. Petro: This multi-stakeholder approach that you are talking about is the only way that we can actually move forward with a national soil health strategy. We should literally put our farmers and ranchers in the centre, surrounded by the science and service providers and consultants. The role of the three government pillars is to share what is available already and what can be done in the long term. We are all talking about the 2030 or 2050 zero-emission strategy. We should start thinking about how we reach this point right now.
I would like a multi-stakeholder approach where farmers and ranchers are in the centre, but truly in the centre. That means listening to what they have, understanding that the barriers to adoption and the challenges that a farmer faces are different not only from one region or county to another but from farm to farm.
Collectively, we have the resources to develop, on one hand, a national strategy that has a multi-stakeholder interdisciplinary approach, but one based on and designed to respond to the specific and individual farm needs in different regions of the country.
Mr. Gilvesy: At ALUS we have launched a market-based system to quantify our carbon in a verifiable way and enter into the marketplace as a vehicle to get part of this market revenue from the farm gate to support this work.
In this work, we all have one arm tied behind our backs because we don’t have a unified set of data to work from to calculate the benefits on soils across Canada. In fact, we are supported by Sustainable Development Technology Canada today to help build some of those data sets so we can help build the modelling techniques that will help certify or verify what is going on as we go forward and improve soil health and, indeed, put carbon in the soil and relate to the marketplace.
It would be a lot easier for all of us who are working in this space if we had a unified effort to give us the data sets that we require for the scientists to help us quantify our work and relate to the marketplace.
Senator Mockler: There is no doubt that you follow the subject matter that I’m going to share with you. We have seen that many farms have consolidated and become increasingly larger in terms of both sales and the number of employees. We see that in Atlantic Canada, especially in the production of potatoes. Conversely, smaller and mid-sized farms are declining in Canada. It’s a challenge.
In your experience, to what extent have Canada’s large farm operators adopted soil management practices such as cover cropping, no-till farming and crop rotation?
Mr. Gilvesy: I don’t know if I can give you a precise answer from my experience, but I can relate to you this experience that we’ve had.
In the beginning, we allowed some morality to creep into our assessment of whether we had a “good farm” or a “bad farm,” and we realized one thing: We need to impact all farmers — big, small; it doesn’t matter how. We realized quickly with an experience in Norfolk County, where the Vermeersch family joined our program. They are the largest farmer in this county. Not only did they turn out to be the greatest advocate and participant in the program but they are very active in leading conversations with other farmers through other organizations like Progressive Farming and doing lots of new soil techniques on their lands.
I think this is an opportunity, not a detriment, to impact farmers.
Mr. Petro: As a young person who wants to have access to land one day, and as an immigrant, we can’t separate soil health and national strategy from access to land for underserved and equity-deserving communities like immigrants, newcomers, women and all other communities in this country. To help small- and medium-sized farms to start to replenish again — with inflation and after the pandemic — the government should also step in to help give access to land to these communities.
The Chair: Thank you. I have a couple of questions, if I may.
The previous Senate study on soil health, completed in 1984, was primarily directed at government, farmers and producers. I was delighted, Mr. Gilvesy, when I heard you say in your opening remarks that “soil health is a shared responsibility” of all Canadians. What do we need to do as a committee here to make sure we hear from the folks we want to hear about along those lines, and what do we need to do in the way of recommendations with respect to making sure that soil health in Canada becomes a shared responsibility? I will ask both of you to respond to that.
Mr. Gilvesy: I am struck tonally by this conversation. Farmers should do soil health because it’s for their own good. I believe the benefits that we’re creating by improving soil accrue to all Canadians, right? Eventually, we will have more sustainable farming, too. We just need to adopt that perspective that there’s an opportunity here. We need to see that opportunity as a pathway forward, especially as the planet warms, and we have greater food security and drought problems and water-related issues. This will be our salvation. It will be the salvation for all Canadians, not just farmers.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Petro: As a nation, we have the responsibility to raise awareness and to share with our consumers, with everybody in this room and everybody in the country, the importance of soil health. That could be done by how the government looks at the soil, as I said, as a national treasure.
I am sad to say that if we go in the street and survey 2,000 people about how they look at soil health and the relationship between soil health and human health, I don’t have numbers, but we can only imagine how much work is needed to raise awareness on the consumer side.
If we want to have a national strategy for soil health, we have to invest massively to share these stories of regeneration, as we call it at Regeneration Canada, and help the consumers understand how they can choose this product, how this is a national issue and how they have an equal right and responsibility to work toward improving soil health.
The Chair: From the previous questions, I’ve gathered that you have project funding from a variety of partners, companies and organizations. What about core funding? How do you keep the lights on?
Mr. Gilvesy: At ALUS, we were grateful from our infancy, from day one, in 2006, in Blanshard, Manitoba, that the W. Garfield Weston Family Foundation contributed $25,000 to that pilot. Since that time and up until today, that family has contributed $13.5 million to the work of our project.
We feel that work has been seminal in helping us develop the systems, the databases, the operations manuals, the connectivity and the communications to be able to operate our program to the point now where — and because they always ask us to do this — we need this to be supported sustainably by a marketplace. Increasingly, we are supported by a marketplace for ecosystem services for soil health, and we’re excited about that, but we’re also grateful that we had these philanthropic foundational pieces from many organizations to help us build the structural path forward.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Petro: I might not be sharing the same vision as Bryan here, but as a young organization that is only five years old, I have to admit in front of you all, senators, that we need help to finance these core operations. As the CEO of the organization, I spend half of my time raising funds. Yes, we have good relations with philanthropic foundations and partnerships as well as the government for some subsidies, but we need massive investment for us to be able to do the work that we do connecting farmers to consumers and helping transitioning farmers to do more regenerative agriculture.
It is not acceptable that, in 2022, a lot of non-profit organizations, especially those without charity status — which is another conversation about changing the law — spend half of their time trying to fund their core operations. That’s a clear request from many organizations for the government to step in to help us do the work that we’re doing.
The Chair: Thank you. Moving on to round two, we have a number of senators who have questions.
Senator Simons: We have heard from many remarkable witnesses — academics, leaders of not-for-profit organizations and farmers — who have all highlighted the same issue for us: a lack of pooled knowledge, a lack of ability to cross-reference that knowledge and a lack of anybody, for lack of a better term, driving the bus on this topic.
You are both involved in not-for-profits that do important work in this area, so this question is for both of you. Soil health is difficult to put under a national umbrella because it is a provincial and regional issue, but how would you recommend that we create some kind of national umbrella that helps us pool our knowledge about what’s happening in this area?
Mr. Petro: Thank you very much, Senator Simons. At Regeneration Canada, we’ve been trying over the last 15 months to coordinate this national dialogue. Between us, we can enumerate at least 100 non-profit organizations, communities and service providers that want to have this conversation.
There are mechanisms out there to have a national dialogue about these different points of views and perspectives about the matter. We might not need an umbrella. We might need to create a ship that has more than shared leadership. It is not an easy thing to say because, as you said, it is very local, provincial, regional. However, we don’t have a choice but to get everybody around the same table to hear what they have to say and trust that there is a common interest to advance this in a way that makes sense to all the different communities.
There is no need to create yet another organization. The organizations are out there and have been championing this work for almost a century in some cases. We need a social-innovation type of dialogue that is able to receive different perspectives and points of view and then put that together for the greater good of the nation.
Mr. Gilvesy: Senator, your question is a very big one. You are almost asking: How do things change? From our experience, change begins with harnessing the power and energy of innovators and real leaders. We see that consistently. We’ve held a door open for these people to walk through and we’ve harvested the benefit of that. Increasingly, we want to connect that work to federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments to make sure we are all cohesive on this and that we all sense the opportunity here.
I’m here to tell that you it begins with leadership and recognizing that leadership has value to all of us. I would love to see the governments unite in one policy effort around this work and move it toward. Let’s recognize that the leaders will lead us somewhere.
Senator Simons: Thank you.
Mr. Petro: If I may give you an example, Senator Simons. In New Zealand, the Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures Program is a good example of how a government can support a multi-stakeholder initiative to enhance soil health. They did what I am suggesting here. They got everybody around the same table and came up with a project, starting in 2020, that has now put in millions by just having a dialogue.
We are in a moment where we need to know what that means for every farmer, including the pioneers, the early adopters, until we reach a critical mass so the other 50% can follow after.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much.
Senator Klyne: I will follow up a bit on Senator Mockler’s questioning and take a different approach to the question from Senator Simons. My question is really for Mr. Petro, but I welcome Mr. Gilvesy to follow in on it.
Regeneration Canada strives to achieve soil generation by creating spaces for a broad range of stakeholders to take action to regenerate soil. As we learned, soil types and conditions differ from region to region and farm to farm. Clearly, soil degeneration is a national issue. In order for organizations like yourselves and all the others that are working on soil health to provide solutions, they need to be able to define the problem. The problem is not just region by region but also farm by farm. We’ve heard from many stakeholders that we lack meaningful and useful research on the different soil types and conditions, region by region and farm by farm.
From your perspectives, where do we stand as a nation on meaningful research? Is it lacking? If so, what does this country need to do to coordinate a whole-of-nation approach to collect this meaningful and useful data?
Mr. Petro: I can give you an example, senator, of what is happening in the United States. The Ecdysis Foundation is a non-profit, not a governmental organization. They got funds from the federal government to carry out research on 1,000 farms across all 52 states of the United States. What they’re trying to do — and I think we should get inspired by it — is exactly what you were saying about how soil and geoclimatic conditions are different from region to region and farm to farm.
To try to have on-the-ground data, led by farmers, supported by researchers, and try to figure out this in a way that, when we have recommendations at the end of the study, that every farm finds the pertinence of their recommendation. This is one example that is happening in our neighbour.
I think, in Canada, with the population and resources that we have, the government has been doing a great job in advancing research around soil health and regenerative agriculture. As I said, sometimes the farmers see the effects of climate change, they see what happens and what works and what doesn’t work on their land, and they want to move faster, but we don’t want to compromise the science. The only way is to design our research projects in consultation with farmers before even submitting a research proposal to vendors. That’s something that could really help design the project in a way that responds to the actual and immediate needs of farmers in certain areas.
Mr. Gilvesy: We sponsor so much research. We host so much research from the University of Guelph doing studies on biodiversity, water quality, soil carbon sequestration, predictive modelling for the IMWEBs model about watershed performance, and we’re doing our own efforts on soil carbon sequestration across the country.
We’re really pleased with the researchers who have come to our table because we’re offering a before-and-after place to study. Farmers are changing literally how they use parcels of their land. What I see is that we’re trying to ask our researchers to research where the puck is going, not where the puck has been, and try to verify these techniques as valid and quantify them further so that we can move to the next step. That’s a simple answer, but it’s my best answer.
Senator Klyne: Thank you.
Senator M. Deacon: Following up on Senator Simons’ question, we have talked about the national perspective. I was in meetings two years ago in Montana, where a lot of different senators and other countries were talking about soil management as it relates to agriculture in one room and then soil management as it relates to forest fires and regeneration in another room.
So as I was listening to both of you speak today, I wondered, as we look outward from our country, what we are learning from other countries, particularly in similar regions that are out there, and if we are, frankly, learning or leading globally in this area. Could you just touch on that? That would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Mr. Gilvesy: I like to think that whatever we have stumbled upon, this Farmer’s Conservation Plan is leading. We have been invited into Iowa and Ohio communities and we are investigating opening our programming technique there — programming that is based on our principles and our community-based leadership, that sort of thing.
The problem in the United States in particular is not that there is a lack of money. There are all kinds of money. There is not the community support structure, the cohesiveness and the data collection that help us get to the next step. That’s why we’re there. That’s why we have been invited into those communities.
Farming is similar everywhere. We have had conversations with communities in Uganda, for instance, that have the same concerns that we all do as farmers. I think we’re leading, but it’s slow. It’s a big country, it’s a big topic, but I’m really glad that we have the momentum that we have got now and that we seem to have struck a nerve of positivity.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you.
Mr. Petro: I agree. There are a lot of areas in which Canada is leading the way, but I also have to say that there is always something else to learn. There are lots of examples in the United Kingdom, in certain states in the United States, in Australia and even in Brazil. I think the difference is around two main topics: how forefronted and centred farmers are in the transition, how much say they have in this program, and also about going beyond the carbon market and having an innovative way to create a market, not only for the ecosystem services like what ALUS has been championing since its inception but also for actual markets for products and goods that are produced in regenerative and healthy soil. We might have something to learn there, but we are definitely leading in different areas.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: My question is for Mr. Petro, but I would like to get an answer from both of our witnesses.
Do you think there is a need for an identification or certification system when it comes to products from regenerative agriculture? I ask because I know that more and more Canadian consumers want to know where what they’re buying and eating comes from — whether it’s local, whether it’s organic, whether it’s free range. I wonder if it may be a good idea for products from regenerative agriculture to be identified or certified.
Mr. Petro: At Regeneration Canada, we started, two or three years ago, to set up an interactive map of regenerative farms in Canada. It is not a certification, but we still do our due diligence by visiting the farms and by having a human approach for the farms transitioning toward regenerative agriculture. On this map, there are now about 120 farms across the country, representing nearly 105,000 acres and including large and small farms.
This was our way of informing the consumer who wants to purchase products of regenerative agriculture. This need is becoming more and more urgent. We believe that there must be a system to enable citizens to know exactly how the products were made. That said, we strongly believe that this cannot be a bilateral system, regenerative or not. The transition to regenerative agriculture is a journey that starts with easy-to-implement practices and needs to get to the level of the overall food system. It requires a system that is able to identify which product and which farm is at which stage in their journey toward regenerative agriculture, without the system being all black or white.
This model only exists on a very small scale elsewhere in the world, but again, it starts with a national dialogue to discuss what regenerative agriculture means for producers, consumers, researchers, and private companies. It’s a word that’s being used more and more — which is a good thing when you want to move a movement forward — but we’re getting to the point where we need to frame it. Minimal tillage is not the equivalent of regenerative agriculture, it’s just one tiny step among many.
There needs to be a dialogue to find the definitions of regenerative agriculture. Then, we need to guide this movement using science. There is a lot of data, especially from the Quebec government, and this data can help us compare certain practices with the economic and agro-environmental benefits of these practices. We need to put this in place across the country and have a transparent scoring system that will not be costly for producers and will enable consumers to know exactly what is being done.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you very much. It’s very interesting.
[English]
The Chair: Mr. Gilvesy, do you have any further comments?
Mr. Gilvesy: I was visiting two weeks ago outside of Regina with one of the best farmers I know, Derek Axten. By all accounts, or by any measure, he is one of the leading farmers in the country, and he was lamenting that it didn’t necessarily translate to more money for his product.
I concur with you completely. Whatever we can do to help identify these good works and help actual consumers reward their work would be wonderful.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you so much. This is helpful.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
I have one final question. Let’s think toward the end of our study, and we’re starting to write the report. I would like you to finish this sentence if you were the authors of that report: We would recommend . . .
What is one recommendation, Mr. Gilvesy?
Mr. Gilvesy: We would recommend that we harness the skills, energies and leadership of the people on the ground that have gone before in a community manner because, in that way, they will bring others with them into this. Their leadership counts, and their thoughts count. We can’t be looking at this from above. We have to do this from the grassroots.
That’s my opinion. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Petro?
Mr. Petro: Yes, and a multi-stakeholder approach around our pioneer farmers that has Indigenous communities, scientists, consumers, businesses and, above all, the government support to define where we are at, where we are going to go, what the barriers are and how they are culturally, socially and economically different and take this into consideration.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Seeing no other questions, Mr. Gilvesy and Mr. Petro, thank you very much for your participation today in our ongoing study. Your assistance as we move forward is very much appreciated.
I also want to thank the committee members, senators, my colleagues, for your active participation and thoughtful questions.
I want to also thank the folks who support us around this table, those who are in the translation booths, those who are in interpretation, the service technicians, broadcasting team, the recording centre, our page, Sam, thanks very much, and, last but not least, our Library of Parliament analyst and our clerk. Thanks very much.
Colleagues, our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, November 1, 2022, at 6:30 p.m. ET, where we will continue to hear from expert witnesses on this study.
(The committee adjourned.)