THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, May 11, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 9 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada; and, in camera, for the consideration of a draft agenda (future business).
Senator Robert Black (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning, everyone. I would like to begin by welcoming each of you, members of the committee, as well as those watching this meeting on the web and our witness today. My name is Robert Black, senator from Ontario and I am the chair of this committee.
Today, the committee is meeting to continue its study on the status of soil health in Canada.
Before we hear from our witness, I would like to start by asking my colleague senators around the table to introduce themselves, starting with the deputy chair.
Senator Simons: Hello. I’m Paula Simons, senator from Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Burey: Good morning. I’m Sharon Burey, a senator from Ontario.
Senator Duncan: Good morning. Senator Pat Duncan, from Yukon.
Senator Klyne: Good morning and welcome to our guest. Marty Klyne, senator from Saskatchewan, Treaty 4 territory.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Senator Chantal Petitclerc from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Jaffer: Welcome. Mobina Jaffer from British Columbia.
Senator Oh: Good morning. Senator Oh, Ontario.
Senator C. Deacon: Good morning. Colin Deacon, Nova Scotia.
The Chair: Colleagues, as I’ve noted in the past, should you have technical difficulties, particularly in relation to interpretation, please signal to the clerk or myself and we will work to resolve the issue. We may have to suspend to do that but we have been pretty lucky to date.
Today, we welcome Donald Killorn, Executive Director, Prince Edward Island Federation of Agriculture. Mr. Killorn, I invite you make your presentation to the committee. I will signal with one hand when you have about a minute left, and when both hands go up, it’s time to start thinking about wrapping it up. With that, I will turn it over to you for your presentation.
Donald Killorn, Executive Director, Prince Edward Island Federation of Agriculture: Thank you, chair. On behalf of our members, I want to thank you for the invitation to appear here today.
The Prince Edward Island Federation of Agriculture, or PEIFA, represents 500 Island farm families and 17 commodity groups. Our mission is to improve the sustainability of Island farms and farm families and to promote the sustainable production of food on Prince Edward Island.
I understand that this committee is studying the status of soil health in Canada with the purpose of identifying ways to improve soil health and enable Canadian producers to become sustainability leaders.
We know that to design a sustainable system we need to manage economic, environmental and social capital, and evaluate how that system is governed. We need to understand the drivers and constraints to the adoption of new practices and ensure that positive change is incentivized.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada — AAFC — publishes a Soil Organic Carbon Change Indicator that characterizes soil carbon on Prince Edward Island as decreasing, and, in some areas, dramatically. This is valuable capital that we have to be able to measure and manage. The matter of soil carbon and reversing our loss of that capital is critical to our industry’s sustainability.
Agriculture is our way of life on Prince Edward Island, as many of you know. Many of our farms have been in the same family for seven generations. The industry accounts for 40% of the land, 33% of the GDP and 25% of the emissions, at around 315,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. These percentages are all significantly higher than the national average, so our industry plays an outsized role in our province.
I believe the questions of soil carbon and climate change have rightfully become intertwined to our members and to agriculture across Canada. In Prince Edward Island, our industry has suffered a series of serious climate impacts including Hurricane Dorian in 2019, a significant drought in 2020 and Hurricane Fiona in 2022 that we’re still recovering from. These increasingly severe impacts have generated a will to action amongst P.E.I. farmers to both mitigate and adapt to climate change.
The Government of Prince Edward Island has established a net-zero emissions target for our province, the Canada’s first. They want to make us a net-zero province by 2040 and to do so, they’ve asked agriculture to decrease their emissions by at least 35%, which is equal to almost 105,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
Last year, the PEIFA began implementing the On-Farm Climate Action Fund, or OFCAF, which I know this group is familiar with. We were successful in supporting farmers to begin the adoption of best management practices to reduce emissions. We have seen significant uptake and a high calibre of projects this year. We’ve already allocated the funding for this year. It has been well received on Prince Edward Island and we’re pleased with it. However, as you know, it does not support the continued adoption of these practices. It only supports the initial adoption.
Our farmers, like so many across Canada, sell their products to some of the biggest businesses in the world. These buyers are facing increasing pressure to manage their emissions. This pressure is making its way upstream and farmers are beginning to encounter different approaches and pricing mechanisms to incentivize carbon reductions in their operations.
As an organization of farmers, the PEIFA is working on behalf of our members to make sense of this agricultural carbon landscape. We have pressure from government and the marketplace and we are facing the urgency of mitigating and adapting to climate change. In response, we recently published a report titled Pathway to 2040. This document combines provincial data sets on production and land use with AAFC’s Holos modelling tool to generate greenhouse gas emissions calculations at the farm scale that were then modelled to understand the impact of implementing best management practices on our industry’s emissions.
This work was completed by an Island farmer. It’s exceptional and has unlocked our understanding of what is possible on P.E.I. when managing emissions, including soil carbon. We know now that we have the potential to reduce emissions by 140,000 tonnes — exceeding the provincial target for emissions reduction — if we can effectively incentivize a suite of best management practices for our industry, many of which are already supported by the OFCAF but all of which are eligible for credit in the world’s largest voluntary credit markets, including our tremendous opportunity on Prince Edward Island to increase our soil carbon.
We modelled our average annual GHG — greenhouse gas — emissions per hectare for our primary cropping systems and broke down that performance into energy, nitrous oxide and soil carbon. We found that we can simultaneously adopt practices that reduce nitrogen, sequester carbon and tailor our crop rotations to reduce emissions from cropping by more than 40,000 tonnes. Farmers on P.E.I. now have strong data to support decision making about soil carbon management.
We also learned that through changes to housing, manure management and feeding habits, we can reduce emissions from livestock by 100,000 tonnes. We see that as a major opportunity. Integrating cattle back into our crop production is one way to achieve our carbon goals, but we must be able to incentivize farmers to adopt this practice and provide the benefit to society. While OFCAF can de-risk the adoption of best management practices initially, we must facilitate access to carbon markets to ensure these practices will pay real ongoing dividends to the farmers.
We have begun working with farmers to develop projects for the voluntary carbon market to incentivize these changes of practice beyond the eligibility of OFCAF. We do so in partnership with our forestry stakeholders on Prince Edward Island, many of whom are farmers. We do so knowing that Environment and Climate Change Canada is working to develop the enhanced soil organic carbon protocol for Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Offset Credit System. This will provide opportunities for producers to receive a higher value for their soil carbon than the voluntary market will pay. However, we cannot wait for the release of this protocol to begin the work of developing soil carbon as a saleable commodity on Prince Edward Island.
I request that you help ensure that early adopters are not punished and that credits developed for the voluntary market have a clear pathway to be sold into Canada’s regulated market when it opens to soil carbon. We know that voluntary markets will accept changes of practice up to five years old and we need that same approach from our national marketplace. The design of the market is critical to ensure farmers will accelerate the adoption of the activities we need to build soil carbon and mitigate climate change. This allows us to continue working today knowing that the credits we produce will be eligible for the more lucrative regulated market when it opens to soil carbon.
Thank you for your time today. I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Wow, thank you very much, Mr. Killorn. We really appreciate your attendance here today. I know from the list that’s been started here that everyone wants to engage with you through questions.
With that in mind, colleagues, before asking and answers questions, I would like to remind you and our witness not to lean into the mic or take your earpiece and put it too close to the mic so that we avoid any sound feedback that might negatively impact our colleagues managing the sound and interpretation systems.
As has been our previous practice, we will give you seven minutes for your questions and answers and I will let you know when you are getting close to the end. We will start with our deputy chair, Senator Simons.
Senator Simons: I wanted to ask a silly question about what makes the soil red. Instead, we have not yet begun a really targeted discussion of carbon markets on this committee. I have been pushing for us to make that a big part of our study because I think you’re right: Unless you can provide a regulated, reliable backing of carbon markets, it’s difficult. You don’t want to just give people certificates for good conduct and not know how to do the necessary carbon mapping and soil testing to know if you actually did sequester the carbon.
You’re kicking off a very important chapter in our study. Tell us about how the voluntary carbon markets work for your farmers and what you think we need to do to create a backstopped, authentic carbon market that can provide an ongoing fiscal incentive for farmers to adopt these strategies.
Mr. Killorn: That’s a great question. It’s the iron, and it helps to make the best potatoes in the world.
The voluntary market has come under fire around forestry because they do basically pay for people not to cut down trees, and there are questions about whether that’s effective. When it comes to soil carbon, our experience so far with the voluntary credit market is that we do need support to do exactly what you said — to get into the soil and show that the carbon is actually being sequestered. We’re trying to do that in partnership with Living Laboratories, which is an AAFC initiative. It’s our hope we can ground-truth the Holos model outputs so we can trust, when the change of practice is implemented, that the market will trust that’s a high-value, reputable credit. That voluntary market does lean on reputation. Marketing is a big part of it, knowing it’s a quality product. We have to start thinking of it like our other agricultural products. It’s a $15-million-a-year industry if we can get all 150,000 tonnes at $100 a tonne, which is hopefully where we get to.
It’s a commodity — that’s how I’ve started to discuss it with our farmers. Like any commodity, we want to have a good reputation for putting out a great product, and that means being able to show the carbon is being sequestered and held. The nature of it is that if we can prove with good data at the farm scale that the change of practice took place, there will always be some estimation and modelling of the numbers because that’s the nature of soil carbon over 10 or 20 years. There is a balance there where we have to prove today that our numbers are accurate. Once we prove that, we can lean on that ground-truthing and create a number of projects based on those credible outputs. We need support for doing that work at the farm scale. It’s something that government and academia can help us with in partnership. You are absolutely right that there needs to be that backstop and that work is ongoing on Prince Edward Island.
Senator Simons: Prince Edward Island is such a small population and economy. Do you need to have access to a national or even international market? I’ve met with ranchers in Alberta who are taking part in carbon markets based in Texas. I don’t know how we do this. You’re right, otherwise the early adopters — we keep comparing it to the parable of the prodigal son: The johnny-come-latelies get all the incentives and pats on the back, and the people who pioneered the tech don’t get recognition of their early courage.
Mr. Killorn: I was pleased to see the committee’s discussion around that with regard to OFCAF because, as an administrator of that program, it is a real issue on the ground. We do see in the voluntary markets that, like I said, if we have data that goes back five years, we can generate credits going back five years. We’re currently working to develop projects for the Verra marketplace, which is an international marketplace. It’s not out of the question that our provincial government might become a buyer of credits. Right now they’re asking us to reduce emissions by 35%, but what we’re trying to do at the federation is to empower our farmers to make informed decisions about who they will sell their carbon to. Are you going to give it to the provincial government for free? Are you going to ask them to pay for it? Are you going to sell it to Cavendish Farms or McCain as part of some type of enhanced pricing scheme? Or are you going to take it to market and see what you can get on the open market?
That’s the sort of decision making we’re trying to build capacity for, and we do have access to those international markets once we get over 10,000 tonnes. It is a model that requires collaboration, which is why it speaks to the federation with our membership. It’s a great natural use of the federation to create shared effort and bring one project to market likely for soil carbon, one project to market for livestock and one project to market for forestry, and brand that all as one made-in-P.E.I. landscape approach and build that brand as a trusted source of carbon credits.
Senator Simons: Thank you for a very inspirational kick-off to our morning.
Mr. Killorn: My pleasure.
Senator Oh: Thank you, Mr. Killorn, for being here and for the extensive information. I have a few questions for you. How have farmers and ranchers adopted to soil-first farming in P.E.I.? Maybe I can give you one more. What types of support do the federal and provincial governments offer farmers and ranchers to improve their level of soil organic matter?
Mr. Killorn: On Prince Edward Island, it was in the news on the local CBC this morning that last year over 50% of potato land was covered in cover crop this year, which is a very strong number. We supported 27,000 acres through OFCAF, so that was helpful. Anecdotally, people are seeing more cover cropping on Prince Edward Island, which everyone likes. As a society, we don’t like to see the red soil blown across the snow. We have made tremendous gains and I would say we are leaders across the country in the implementation of cover crops, and that builds soil organic matter and sequesters carbon once the crop comes out of the ground. That is our biggest success so far.
Even with a cover crop, we will have to tailor our rotations. You can’t grow a no-till potato, and sustainability is about economic, environmental and social, so we have to tailor our potato rotations if we want to build soil carbon. What we’ve seen when we did this modelling is it’s a fine line between degrading soil carbon when you’re growing potatoes because you are held to this necessary tillage, which releases carbon. We will keep growing potatoes because of the iron in the soil, but the cover cropping is very helpful. Also, researchers with Living Labs have shown that the adoption of slow-release and enhanced-efficiency fertilizers can reduce fertilizer usage by up to 30%, so that alleviates pressure on the environment as well. When it comes to soil-first farming, there is no question that the adoption of cover crops is where we have had the most success.
With regard to support to build soil organic matter, again OFCAF’s support of cover cropping is a significant financial incentive for people who have never done it before. Other than that, currently, there are small amounts of funding available from the provincial government to install a cover crop even if you have done it before, but it doesn’t meet the actual cost of doing the work and doesn’t reward the farmer for the benefit that it provides to society as a whole. That’s where the marketplace comes in; we have to generate these credits and bring them to market so the farmers can be incentivized and paid properly for what it costs to sequester the carbon.
Senator Oh: You have 500 family farms there, some have gone up to seven generations and 70% of your GDP is from agriculture products — that’s incredible.
Mr. Killorn: My apologies. A third of our GDP on Prince Edward Island — 33%, approximately $600 million — comes from the products and then the processing in Prince Edward Island.
Senator Oh: That’s still a big sum.
Mr. Killorn: That’s a lot. I think it’s 6% nationally.
Senator Oh: You say you export all over the world and, of course, the U.S. is probably number one, right?
Mr. Killorn: Yes.
Senator Oh: Where else do you export to in the world?
Mr. Killorn: Puerto Rico — well, I suppose that’s the United States. I guess this is where I mention that we still can’t ship seed potatoes off Prince Edward Island. I think that’s important to note today. We’re there to grow seed potatoes and we have the best seed potatoes in the world and they can’t go anywhere right now.
That’s an interesting question. Where are our products going? The United States is the largest. We have markets in the Caribbean and in Eastern Europe. I would be interested in the investment in the area of the Pacific, in Indonesia. I understand why it’s being made. I hope it benefits our farmers even though we are on the other side of the country. We have good, strong markets in Eastern Europe, but potato farmers out there come up with those contracts themselves. We’re not as familiar with where they are going. Canada and the United States are our biggest markets. When we lost access to the United States for fresh potatoes, that was a catastrophe.
Senator Oh: Yes. I was told that northeastern China is a big market for potatoes.
Mr. Killorn: I believe that.
Senator Oh: I heard that McCain set up a factory there to make potato chips in China.
Mr. Killorn: Is that a fact?
Senator Oh: Maybe P.E.I. should go there.
Mr. Killorn: Yes. As I said, we have to keep growing potatoes and you can’t grow a no-till potato. That makes these soil carbon conversations delicate because I can’t be going to Boyd Rose’s potato farm to them they can’t grow potatoes anymore because you want to build soil carbon. We have to find a way to help the potato farmers, to do the research and design the rotations in a way that allows everyone to do what they have to do to balance the environmental and the economic. We can do that. Our work shows that we can do that.
Senator Oh: Thank you.
Mr. Killorn: My pleasure.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Klyne: Again, welcome. Thank you for your remarks.
Your membership is a substantial representation of what’s going on in agricultural P.E.I., with over 80% of all registered producers drawn from all commodities. That is quite a breadth of area of interest. The unique thing about this organization is that it speaks to issues that are not commodity-specific but affect all Island farmers.
According to your website, the Prince Edward Island Federation of Agriculture’s Environmental Farm Plans, or EFP, program:
. . . assists farmers and landowners to identify and incorporate best environmental practices in their farming activities by developing a practical plan for operating their farm in a way that is environmentally sustainable, socially acceptable, and economically viable.
A plan would be developed to help farmers operate their farm in a way that is environmentally sustainable, socially acceptable and economically viable. What is the uptake among farmers? Do you have any late adopters and outliers? If so, what might be behind that as a barrier? Do you have a plan to try to approach all producers in your EFP? Could you give the committee an overview about the EFP that can be completed in less than two hours so it goes with one of your environmental planning officers? What does the assessment look like? Also, what is the uptake of the EFP? Is there a cost for non-members versus members? If so, what are they? Just give us a general assessment and overview of this EFP. I find it very interesting.
Mr. Killorn: That’s a great question.
The Environmental Farm Plan is a program that we implement in partnership with the provincial government. It’s funded by the provincial government with what were Canadian Agricultural Partnership dollars, so it’s a cost-shared program between the federal and provincial governments. Uptake has been steady. We do about 80 a year and they last for about five years. There are about 400 farms with EFPs.
A few small sticks are being used — carrots versus sticks. If you want access to funding programs with the provincial government, you have to have an EFP on file. We had a boom in EFPs last year because the national organization proAction that monitors dairy farms started to make EFPs mandatory. We now think all of the dairy farms have completed their EFPs because they have to have one to accommodate proAction.
There is no cost to the farmer whether they are a member or not. It’s funded by the provincial government fully with those sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership dollars.
The procedure is there’s an interview with the producer and then there’s a farm visit, and then there’s a series of risk categories looking at everything from the state of the infrastructure to how products are being handled, and then any obvious areas for improvement around how the environmental impact of the farm is being managed. That can be quite different depending on what type of farm it is. Then a report is produced that is provided to the farmer. There are random audits.
I know that is not a terribly in-depth answer, but it’s a great question. I want to expand upon that to say that the Environmental Farm Plan has huge potential to grow in addressing some of these issues. We know that this is a place where we can get accurate measurements for greenhouse gas emissions and soil carbon. We can come along with the EFP program because it’s being done on farms across Prince Edward Island already. When we discuss it with the provincial government, there is an opportunity to expand it. Also, in consideration of watershed-based impacts, we can do more there with environmental farm planning. There is already a comfort with the program.
I believe our provincial government is going to increase the need for it. I think producers will be pressured to do more of it. For those that still don’t have one, there will be new incentives to complete the Environmental Farm Plan. We will have discussions this year to talk about what we want the EFP to be moving forward. Those discussions can take place at a national level, too, and best practices across the country could be a key in finding a mechanism to manage soil carbon. It’s definitely there. It’s expensive. We have a proposal that we’re prepared to share with the provincial government to add greenhouse gas emissions monitoring as part of the EFP. Today, that’s estimated to cost approximately $2,500 per farm. That’s about a 200% increase in the cost of the EFP. What’s it worth? I don’t know. That’s a question for the stakeholders.
Senator Klyne: Do the final EFP report recommendations or observations also include expected outcomes and ROI for the farmer to answer, “What’s in it for me; there it is?”
Mr. Killorn: Not the way it should. It lacks that carrot. As we get better at developing incentives to improve environmental performance around marketplaces, I think that we will be able to perhaps incorporate that into the EFP and improve that carrot piece.
I expect that EFPs will become more popular in the coming years amongst all stakeholders as a way to on-ramp people into best management practices.
Senator Klyne: Thank you.
Senator Cotter: Thank you, Mr. Killorn, for the presentation and the motivation that you provided to us around the table. I have one large question about the model that you have described for Prince Edward Island. Is it scalable to other parts of the country with larger agricultural production and, sometimes, on a grander scale per farm? That’s the ultimate question.
However, I have two other questions embedded in this. Senator Black and I had a chance to hear some presentations about some of the approaches of some of the Western European countries to try to address farming, agriculture and climate change. One of the things we heard from some jurisdictions — Northern Ireland comes to mind — is a model not dissimilar to yours on P.E.I. in terms of the kind of incentivization but sometimes the constraints on what programs you can access if you don’t engage as a farmer in the process. The model that you’re describing seems to have that sort of a flavour.
Prince Edward Island has a specialty with respect to its beauty. There is a certain romantic dimension to it that I think all Prince Edward Islanders, and most of us who go there, buy into. Is this kind of commitment the culture of Prince Edward Island and the fact of you being able to work with almost every single producer on the Island through this process? That might be harder to do in Saskatchewan or in Alberta. Is the approach that you have described capable of being something that could be thought of as a national approach?
Embedded in this, if you could, please answer these other two questions: Why have you lost carbon over the years? A lot of other jurisdictions in the West have not, whether it is farming practices or the crops. I don’t know the answer to that.
Finally, are there barriers to achieving effective carbon markets that you could identify that a national government might have a role in addressing? I should say that, while you prepare your answer, I am comforted by the fact that the three people at this end of the table are all left-handed. That gives me some inspiration.
Mr. Killorn: Yes, they couldn’t get rid of us.
P.E.I. is a beautiful place. Being born there is one of the best things that ever happened to me. We hope that will help with the marketing of our credits. We know that there is a romanticism there and we are preserving the landscapes that feed into that with this work.
Is it scalable to the nation? I believe so. Our farms are small by regulation because the Island is small. We do not have the size of farm that you see elsewhere in Canada. I am not an expert, but you may not need the number of farms to generate carbon credit projects for the marketplace that you will need on Prince Edward Island because you will be dealing with larger farms and bigger operations that, perhaps, can secure gains with them and a few neighbours that they can then take to market.
Again, this is the voluntary market. We have the opportunity and we have already established a regulated market in Canada. Now it is just a matter of having protocols in place to allow farmers to access it.
I do believe it is scalable. AAFC’s Holos tool is not well known yet because we have this marketplace that is ahead of its time. The person who did our work had the opportunity to engage directly with AAFC on the tool, how it works and identify things that it perhaps could do better. It became a mutualistic relationship.
Nonetheless, our government has a tool in place that is very useful in designing these types of projects and seeing where the opportunities are in the adoption of best management practices. I do believe it is scalable. You won’t need the number of farms that we need on Prince Edward Island, so it may be easier.
That may answer your question about barriers. How are we going to manage these projects? Is a farmer going to be able to put 50 tonnes on the market? Probably not; that is probably not reasonable. Do we need to have a 10,000-tonne minimum threshold to put a project on our national market?
Will there be means for the government to help facilitate that, if necessary? I’m not here to advocate for that. I represent industry, and industry on Prince Edward Island is doing this by and for industry. Governance is a critical part of sustainability. It is the fourth pillar that often gets overlooked. If your government can be a positive contributor to getting tonnes of carbon on the regulated market, you certainly have the capacity to do that in AAFC. Does that mean making it as easy as possible for one farmer to make a decision that they are going to do better? That is the key to having the marketplace work and being effective in Canada.
Senator Cotter: What about lost carbon?
Mr. Killorn: There are different factors that I am not terribly familiar with — our soil type, the climate — but we grow potatoes on Prince Edward Island, so 67% of our cropland has potatoes as part of the rotation. That brings in $252 million of our $600 million. Tilling the soil is very hard on soil carbon.
If you are not considering soil carbon, which we haven’t been through no fault of our own — we’re not behind the times — you will degenerate your soil carbon over time. The nature of how we grow potatoes and the nature by which anyone grows potatoes is hard on soil carbon. Even the introduction of a mandatory crop rotation helps, but tailoring the rotation will be critical in rebuilding it.
I have an Inclusive Wealth study that I keep in my drawer that I had done when I immediately got there. I don’t know if everyone is familiar with United Nations Inclusive Wealth Index, but we have doubled our wealth in the world in the last 20 years but at the cost of 80% of our natural capital. When you see an industry like P.E.I. potatoes, we are not outside the bounds of industry as a whole. As a community and as a country we have to figure out how to reinvest some of that wealth we generated back into natural capital so that we can have a sustainable economy for the next 100 years.
Senator Duncan: Thank you very much. I appreciated your presentation this morning. I am the non-farmer in the group, from Yukon so, yes, not traditionally associated with agriculture. This might be one of those “Why is the soil red?” questions, so please forgive me. I had the opportunity to visit a dairy farm with our chair and also witness a biodigester under construction. I’m very interested in whether or not this sort of technology has made its way to the Island and is being considered or where you might be in that.
The other question that we have been provided is on the production of more manure and the use of the manure to rebuild soil organics. Is that more the focus?
Mr. Killorn: Great questions. We have one biodigester on Prince Edward Island. It was installed by our major potato processing facility, Cavendish Farms, and it reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 50%. It was extremely effective. They don’t get any credit for that because they are an early adopter. That runs mostly on potato and some manure.
At the dairy farm scale, again, we’re limited in size on Prince Edward Island. We have provincial regulations that limit the size of our farms. To make a biodigester economically feasible on Prince Edward Island, which is a unique case, we have to identify where there are enough resources to make it economically feasible. Where are the clusters of dairy farms?
We have talked to the national organization, and if we ever do produce it, we know where we can take the gas and sell it. We would have to ship it off-Island, but not far. There is a port just off Nova Scotia on the other side of the Confederation Bridge. We have thought about biodigesters.
Just a few weeks ago I was in talks with a consultant who could, perhaps, do a study to show us where those critical points are that we could have enough resources to make a biodigester economically feasible. We think about it. We have one that works really well. We will have to have cooperation. But what do we do with the gas? We don’t use that type of gas on Prince Edward Island. In some places, I believe in Alberta, perhaps, there is a gas pipe at the end of the driveway. For us, we either have to figure out a way to use it on-farm to heat and cool the barns or run the gear or we have to take it to Nova Scotia and sell it to the utility there. It is definitely on our radar. It is the right call. It is something that can be very useful. Again, when you get to larger farms, you won’t need that collaboration. It is a thing that could be financially supported and a really good case made for having an impact on greenhouse gas emissions.
When it comes to the use of manure, some of our largest potato farmers have forgone other parts of their rotation and simply do potato and forages. That is really good for soil carbon. What that does is allow cattle to be brought onto the field. That reintegration of cattle and cropland is perhaps our best opportunity on Prince Edward Island to have widespread improvements to soil carbon, but we need to incentivize that practice for both the farmer raising the livestock and the farmer growing the crops.
There was a time when that was how all of our farms worked; we had small, mixed farms. But we are an exporter of food. We are an economic force on Prince Edward Island. We can’t do that with mixed farms. We have to take a mixed-farm approach to the whole province and incentivize our livestock farmers and our potato farmers to work together to bring that connection back between those two production systems, and then we’ll have environmental benefits and, hopefully, economic benefits as well to improve yields and reduce costs in raising the livestock. It’s one of the things that we have to be serious about considering, namely how to incentivize, if we are going to flip the soil carbon story on Prince Edward Island.
Senator Duncan: Thank you so much for a very clear, excellent presentation.
Mr. Killorn: My pleasure.
Senator C. Deacon: Mr. Killorn, we have been waiting for you to get here for a long time. I have been on this issue for three years and I am finally starting to hear someone clearly articulating a plan.
Mr. Killorn: Yes.
Senator C. Deacon: We have struggled with AAFC officials here in Ottawa to get any sort of understanding at the level that you have provided us, so thank you.
Mr. Killorn: My pleasure.
Senator C. Deacon: You know right now we’re dealing with Bill C-234 to expand the exemption for carbon tax on-farm.
Mr. Killorn: Yes.
Senator C. Deacon: I have always believed I have a different approach in my mind that it is needed, but if we cannot get that different approach, which we have been trying to do, then Bill C-234 is important for farmers. How do we use carbon as a commodity on farms and give farmers the benefit for the carbon they sequester? How do we improve farm-gate incomes by doing that?
I want to get into the detail of the economic modelling that you have been touching on. What are the inputs of time and money that farmers need to put in to really start to catalyze the sequestration of carbon on their farm and reduce the carbon outputs? What is the potential benefit to the farm in terms of potential incentives from government, incentives from markets and carbon credits from selling that commodity? What are the productivity gains?
Have you been working on the modelling? From what I see, if we don’t get the farm-gate income benefit in place for farmers, we’ll not get the rapid scale of this solution that I think can buy us time in fighting climate change. We could export the technologies and lessons from that around the world. We could be leading a whole industry.
We are seeing great leadership from you, so help us with the economics at the farm gate, because if we get that right, a lot of other stuff flows.
Mr. Killorn: Yes. Margins are a huge issue. We have a grocery store code of conduct that we hope will filter upstream and improve margins. I wish I had as clear an idea on how to improve margins for primary producers as I did about how to reduce their carbon emissions.
We’re dealing with businesspeople who are operating with a tremendous amount of uncertainty compared to your average businessperson and a razor-thin margin.
It is heartening that our best management practices that we need to incentivize also hit the bottom line for the farmer. Cover crops can increase the yield of potatoes after the following crop. We can see up to a 10% improvement on the farm. It does cost $60 to $70 an acre to get that cover crop in the ground, but there is a net economic benefit that can be improved upon if we have access to particularly regulated carbon markets. I could probably get them $20 to $25 a tonne in a voluntary market. I am expecting the federal government’s supply and demand to pay $70 to $80 a tonne. That is what we’re hoping to see out of the gate. By getting access to that regulated market, which the federal government is working on — Environment and Climate Change Canada is working on the protocol — it will have a real impact on the adoption.
Regarding reducing nitrogen usage — nitrous oxide is 300 times as powerful as carbon dioxide; I’m sure that you have heard that — is a huge opportunity. With the cost of fertilizer being what it is, there’s already an economic incentive to reduce nitrogen. It is easy when you are on the doorstep or around the kitchen table saying, “Cover cropping and nitrogen management can work for you.” That’s why they are in the OFCAF program. To AAFC’s credit — Lord help me — I have seen how they came to the decision of these best management practices that they are supporting with OFCAF. It’s a $700-million investment, which is serious business. They did a good job of selecting ones that can be helpful across the country.
Regarding grazing — that is, getting cattle out of feedlots and onto pasture — livestock in Canada doesn’t look like livestock on Prince Edward Island, so I don’t want to speak to it too much. But even on Prince Edward Island, we have to get our cattle back onto pasture. It’s good for soil carbon. I think those who are engaged in advanced grazing are seeing an economic benefit as well. They have a stronger herd. In the long term, their costs are less in terms of vet costs; they have healthier cattle, so there is an economic benefit there as well.
We can get our foot in the door, between OFCAF and some of this research, to get people started but there is a time horizon here of 18 months to a few years. Most potato farmers are on a three-year rotation. Once they exhaust OFCAF and they are in their next rotation, if I am not there with $75 an acre and the regulated market is not there with $75 a tonne, it may not make sense. We have a window here that we have opened with OFCAF and we have to be sure that there is a connectedness to a marketplace afterwards, which you are working towards. You cannot let Environment and Climate Change Canada drag their feet on it. We have to be able to iterate on it and make sure that it works when we’ll need it.
Senator C. Deacon: We need to hear from an economist who can help pull those data points and timelines together to help us understand how we can recommend something to catalyze this market in a more formal way.
Mr. Killorn: Yes.
Senator C. Deacon: What you have affirmed for us today is all of the pieces are there but there is no plan.
Mr. Killorn: Yes.
Senator C. Deacon: And there isn’t a map for that plan just yet. Is there any advice that you can give us to help get the economic plan in place which benefits farm-gate income? To me, that is the key to the door. We would love that help.
Mr. Killorn: Absolutely. As has been pointed out, we have a good little laboratory on Prince Edward Island. It is a real opportunity. You don’t here AAFC talk about the soil carbon protocol a whole lot, and you do not hear Environment Climate Change Canada talk about the Holos model a lot. There is a bit of siloing there. They are both in the game together. We have the same issue with the provincial government. We have a climate department asking us to reduce emissions and an agriculture department supporting best management practices. They are only separated by a floor but it is tough to get them on the same page.
Senator Jaffer: You can see have all heard you and could have you here again, so thank you for being here.
I come from British Columbia. Climate change and extreme climate events are very concerning. For example, I am a chicken farmer and we are really worried about a heatwave. We are going to have to do all kinds of things this weekend to keep the chickens healthy.
Climate change is a big event and a big thing in our province, and I am sure it is in your province as well. What is the impact of climate change on your soils in your province and in Atlantic Canada?
Mr. Killorn: Well, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have different soils than us.
Senator Jaffer: So just concentrate on P.E.I.
Mr. Killorn: I cannot speak to their soils. Our major impacts from climate change are an increase in frequency and severity of storm events. We are seeing more hurricanes and changes to our precipitation. We have had serious drought conditions and that is harmful to our soil. We are prone to desiccation if we do not get the water we need. We don’t have the access to irrigation that you would see in Alberta. We are dependent on our climate and we are dependent on what was a stable climate to build this economic impact. I think the biggest risk to the soil from climate change and variability is that, in any given year, we can’t predict as well as we once could how much rain we are going to receive.
Senator Jaffer: That is difficult to do for a lot of us.
Mr. Killorn: Yes.
Senator Jaffer: As you’re from the PEIFA, what kind of research is being done — you mentioned some — to understand the impacts to build resilience in the agriculture sector? As you said, we do not know how much rain there will be. Nobody does.
Mr. Killorn: Yes.
Senator Jaffer: We may be able to predict it, but that is very difficult. Our climate has its own mind on these things. What are you doing to build resilience?
Mr. Killorn: At the federation, in addition to this work, we have begun developing an adaptation plan to build resilience. We are in the initial stages of that. We are already learning that it is very difficult at the farm scale to envision challenges and opportunities beyond 10 years. We are hoping for 15 years, but I have done climate change adaptation planning for municipalities where you are planning for 40, 60 or 80 years. The nature of agriculture is such that I cannot be asking farmers, “What do you think the challenges will be in 40 years?” because of where we’ve come from.
If we want to put our best thinkers on adaptation, which is what we’re talking about — building resilience and building adaptive capacity — what keeps me up is I know how to measure carbon. How am I going to measure resilience? What are the metrics that we can use to show that ROI? Adaptation is a privilege of a wealthy nation. We have the privilege that we can adapt to climate change. However, climate change is a risk to capital. The investments that we make today have to pay dividends in terms of the amount of capital that they protect from the impacts.
What are those measurements when it comes to agriculture? How do we show our stakeholders in five years that we are making progress? What we do today has to pay dividends for the next 40, 60 or 80 years because on the current trajectory this thing isn’t going away. The thing that doesn’t get talked about enough about climate change is that it is accelerating. It is not a linear impact. What we see today we would be thrilled to have in 20 years in terms of impact. It is critical that we have the right metrics. That is something that we need smart people thinking about to develop for different provinces and different commodities.
Senator Jaffer: We just had floods; now we have heatwaves. You are with the Federation of Agriculture, so I have a question for you. Most people we hear from — not so much from you but from everyone else — say they want farmers to do this, they want farmers to do that. At some point you want to ask, “Is this worth it? Let’s move on,” because there is such a burden from all the things that a farmer has to do with sometimes very little support.
Mr. Killorn: Yes.
Senator Jaffer: What are your members saying, especially around carbon?
Mr. Killorn: Our members have been hammered by two hurricanes the likes of which they have never seen before in a matter of three years, and in one of the intermediate years, they got hit with a drought that severely impacted the crops.
Right now, our farmers are getting the crop in the ground. That’s all that they are focused on. There is an inertia in the industry, as you know, where things need to be done. That’s why we’re trying to support them to make progress.
I am thinking about your question. The sequestering of carbon is not a thing that farmers are doing for farmers. The sequestering of carbon in our soils is a thing that farmers are doing for all of us. That is why we have to support them in doing so, whether it be with taxpayer funds or with access to marketplaces.
It is a societal benefit. The quantity of carbon that we can sequester is still up for debate in the literature, but there is no question that it is a tremendous opportunity. How much of an opportunity? Can it reverse all of climate change? Well, maybe not, but it is certainly going to help. We have to incentivize them to do it.
When it comes to adaptation, there is no giving up because — on Prince Edward Island, anyway — their farms are on the line. We have dairy farmers who lost their barns and just had to rebuild. If we get hit with another hurricane and they lose their barns again, they are done.
We have to protect that capital. That comes from providing leadership on how to build back better. We have not seen any funds yet come from the federal government out of our $300 million that went to ACOA, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. There hasn’t been a dollar for agriculture that has come out of that yet.
We are vulnerable to climate change across the whole country. The impacts are not the same but we are all vulnerable. Our industry needs resilience, and that requires investment. I do not think that there is a farmer in Canada that is not willing to continue to work on adapting to climate change if they have the capital they need to do so.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Burey: Good morning. Thank you so much for coming here.
Not known to this committee, I have three nephews who are from P.E.I. I went to Dalhousie, so the Maritimes are very near and dear to my heart.
Your presentation was exciting; I just have to echo what my colleagues have said.
I am going to home in on measurement. Let me first make this statement. I was interested last night to read the RBC Fertile ground report. You may or may not be familiar with it. It recommended developing a national soil strategy to define how Canada and the provinces and territories can best value manage and improve the soil in the next 15 years through clearly defined soil health targets and systems to measure, report and verify the soil carbon.
I am getting now to the reliability of the measurement. You spoke about some of the foundational components, one being the Environmental Farm Plan. You also alluded to some of the issues with trust. What are the measurements? I see that this is at the crux of the offsetting and measuring of the carbon.
Is there enough research? What is going on regarding these — I think the term for it is measurement, reporting and verification, or MRV, systems — which take in to vary the soil carbon. I heard you say, “I know how to measure soil carbon.” From what I have been reading, it has been said that these techniques are not really well developed, and then there is their cost.
Tell us a bit more about that. This is very foundational.
Mr. Killorn: Yes, it is. You have $175 million in Living Labs funding across the country. We do not know what happens in other ones, but my hope is that there are partnerships among government researchers, academia and farmers taking place all across the country to answer this question about how we are going to do this effectively and efficiently. That is an important use of those dollars for cropping systems.
The equipment to do this work is incredibly expensive. There is perhaps an opportunity for research and development. How do we become the leaders of measuring soil carbon? Can we take the cost of what you need to measure soil carbon from $120,000 and get it down to $200? You want to talk about an exportable technology, but where are those research and development dollars? Is Canada working towards that as part of a green economy? That is a technology that the world needs.
We put in an application to Living Labs for $400,000 because we needed a LI-COR device, the name of the gear that you have to put in the field to capture what is coming off the field.
Living Labs works well because then they connect us with the federal government and ask where that equipment is. We do not need to buy our own. There is a sharing of equipment happening in Atlantic Canada to facilitate it. You have to be taking soil samples constantly. It is sort of a one-acre grid, then getting those to the lab and getting those measurements of what is actually in the soil and what it is giving off in terms of what’s off-gassing. That’s what we need to do.
The labour and the equipment required to verify some of the modelling results is prohibitive. If we have to pay out of our own pockets to verify this work, we won’t be able to do it. Through Living Labs, hopefully through the provincial government with support, we’ll be able to verify it. Without support, it’s not reasonable yet to be able to verify these numbers. It does need to be part of a national strategy, how we’re going to lower the bar for verifying our measurements, because that verification is a barrier and goes back to Senator Cotter’s question that deserves addition to what the barriers are. Verification is a huge barrier and all stakeholders need to work together to try to lower it.
Senator Burey: What would be one of your recommendations to this committee?
Mr. Killorn: I think this committee should have a strong understanding of what it takes to verify soil carbon measurements and explore potential investments of public funds to bring that number down.
Senator Burey: Thank you very much.
Mr. Killorn: My pleasure.
Senator Petitclerc: We are very appreciative of your opening remarks.
I wanted to speak on the mixed-farm approach that you talked about answering the question of Senator Duncan. In the context of economic benefits, I was reading earlier this morning this very interesting article that resonated with me because it was explaining the interaction and the link and the connectivity on everything that you also explained. This article that I have in front of me was talking about how a decline in livestock has an impact on manure and compost and it also has an impact on the need for barley — that is my understanding — which sometimes is then changed for corn and soybeans. Then if you decrease the perennial crops, that has an impact on the soil.
That got me thinking in relation to economic benefits, which you also talked about, in the context of encouraging the reduction of nitrogen. My question is: Do we have enough information to quantify all those different economic benefits? If we quantify them, do we share that information well enough with the farmers? If we do, do we have enough incentive to encourage change and what could these incentives be? Because you talked about that as well. And my final question is: We want to have positive programs and encourage information sharing, but is there a place for more prescriptive measures, such as regulation or in the fertilizers or others? That’s my multi-part question.
Mr. Killorn: Good questions. We are no longer dealing with individual farms, we’re dealing with multiple farms, so that’s a system-wide approach and it’s difficult to make that case. I removed that from my remarks today about how important it is for us to reintegrate livestock to our cropland because I know that I need more forages and we lost a lot of livestock on P.E.I. and access to manure and we don’t value manure the way we need to on Prince Edward Island. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but we need more livestock.
To your question, I think it is a wonderful idea to try and model that. Today we’re talking about cover cropping and the benefits of that and that’s straightforward. You can measure the yield before, put in the cover crop and measure the yield after that. So we’re just getting that data on Prince Edward Island. We have been trumpeting cover crops because it holds the soil together, but now we have this carbon question which is a new question. We are trying to make economic incentives and we need the same for the reintegration of crops and livestock. We can’t yet make the case to invest in livestock.
If we knew that the gold standard was to have livestock on every acre of potato farms the year after they grew potatoes, then we can start to incentivize that appropriately. Today, we can’t do that. We can say, “Yes, that makes a lot of sense, and we know it works and historically that’s how the system has worked,” but we can’t give them the hard numbers we need to incentivize that approach.
I bet that we will make it there, though. It’s too important. You read that article. It’s clear that’s a solution that we need to explore fully — how to get the livestock back in the pasture and do it in a way that really helps the growing of the crops. That question of manure is critical to the reduction of nitrogen.
People put manure on their land in Prince Edward Island. They don’t reduce their nitrogen at all. They just put it on because that’s what’s done. We’re not quantifying the nitrogen value.
Is there room for regulation? You have a carbon price. That’s a significant piece of regulation. You’re sending a very significant signal to the farmers. It’s maybe hard for them always to discern and you had a big day yesterday with trying to modify that signal a little so it’s a little bit fairer. You have already got a signal. The regulated marketplace will be another strong signal. You do not want to regulate how much fertilizer the farmers can use. I assure you, you do not want to do that. You have reduction targets that are reasonable. Your industry associations like Fertilizer Canada are telling you that they’re reasonable, this 35% reduction from emissions. Technology is getting us there with protected nitrogen. The nitrogen is not available to the plant until the plant needs it.
You have a stick for a price signal in the carbon price. You’re developing a carrot, which is the marketplace, and I think that has to be the focus for now. Those two both need to work and it’s only fair to have one if you are going to have the other, and you don’t. You just have one right now.
Senator Simons: It’s a powerful illustration of the fact that what works in one part of Canada is not necessarily going to work in the other. We have very diverse farm ecologies; no-till works great in the Prairie West, but it’s not so great for growing potatoes. Cover crops won’t grow in my part of Canada but they are essential for where you are. I had a really interesting meeting yesterday with a group of people from Sask Crops, who talked about what they felt was a need for the government to invest more in the research of new hybrids, new varietals that are more drought- and heat-resistant, require less fertilizer and are not something we talked about here.
You’re such a great witness; I want to ask you that question. Do you think there is enough research being done on new varieties in Prince Edward Island especially, where you have had the issue of blight affecting the kind of potato that is most commonly grown? Should there be more work done to figure out different varieties and different hybrids that could be a form of crop rotation in and of themselves and better adapted to these new conditions?
Mr. Killorn: Well, I wouldn’t want to advocate for less. I will give you the state of the nation on P.E.I. right now. As of a few years ago, private corporations can now own varieties, and that has spurred innovation in the private sector. So we have a potato breeding program; our biggest processor, Cavendish Farms, now has a pretty substantial breeding program and they are breeding potatoes that will align with some of these goals. They have to do it the old-fashioned way. That’s how we discovered genetics. It takes them 10 years to bring something to market because their customers do not want a gene spliced in there.
Your government has taken steps to make it more straightforward on how we will get gene splicing technology into the food system, which is good governance, but when it comes to potatoes and the marketplace, it’s a hard line if we are selling french fries.
I met with an AAFC potato researcher last week to learn more about what they were doing, and they are doing a good job developing germplasm for what the industry needs. That’s good. We want that industry, government and academia collaboration.
The researcher talked about sustainability at the genomic level like I talk about it with ecosystems, and that was so cool, because they have the same mindset as I have but they’re dealing with what the genetic material is; they still think about sustainability in the same way, and that was really cool.
So that’s heartening. That’s where we are with P.E.I. It’s definitely a tool in the tool box. We’re not today going to be using spliced genes. That’s what the market demands. We will be developing varieties over 10 years and trying to make it so they don’t need as much water or fertilizer and work with our soils better.
Senator Simons: I want to thank you again.
Mr. Killorn: My pleasure.
Senator Klyne: The P.E.I. Soil Quality Monitoring Project has been in operation since 1998 to “. . . routinely assess and monitor fluctuations in soil quality and soil nutrient levels within agricultural land on PEI.”
The 2020 report stated that of the 796 sampling points in 1998, only 611 points existed by the end of 2018. That amounts to a loss of almost 200 points. Sites were lost due to a variety of factors, including land use and residential development or urban sprawl.
I want to add that during the election debate organized by your organization on March 28, Progressive Conservative leader Dennis King stated that balancing P.E.I. population growth and preservation of agricultural land is an important priority. The PC election platform included a commitment to develop and establish a land use plan that can guide the province for the next 30 or 40 years.
What role do you think this will play for farmland protection specifically on P.E.I., and is that transferable to other jurisdictions?
Mr. Killorn: This week, they revised our population growth; we expect to hit 200,000 maybe 10 years sooner than we had anticipated. I never thought that parking lots would be such a big part of my job, but I have to advocate for good municipal planning. I have to advocate for taller buildings in the downtown core. I have to advocate for the elimination of parking minimums as a matter of industry sustainability.
I am encouraging our organization and our members to keep an open mind to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities because they have a vision for larger municipalities in Prince Edward Island in the rural areas with a focus on development in those municipalities so we don’t have this ribbon development, which is when you take the roads off the map and just show where the houses are and you see these ribbons taking away from farmland.
We need a provincial land use plan. We had a really good report that was chaired by a great farmer named Lori Robinson. It brought interim regulations that the provincial government could adopt that day to help stem the tide. Those were not adopted. We recently put out an RFP provincially to do a study of the current state of land use, which could take from 6 to 18 months. The feet continue to get dragged on this, and meanwhile we are losing farmland at an alarming rate, as the last census showed — a significant increase.
I’m identifying other stakeholders we can work with, like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. I’m trying to understand the issue as best I can because we’re losing it. Again, our land is our only natural resource on Prince Edward Island. We’re not going to have minerals. This land is all we have to generate economic impact. We’ve made great strides in diversifying our economy, but we still need agricultural land. I don’t know what else to say.
Senator Klyne: You talked about a carrot earlier. What’s the stick here? Pain is a great leverage on the mind, and if you paint a picture for them of what this will look like in 10 years from now, that might be a call to action. Has anybody taken that approach to foot dragging yet?
Mr. Killorn: There is a critical number. I don’t have it in front of me, but if we lose our processing capacity on Prince Edward Island, whether it be for beef or potatoes, that will chop our economic output from agriculture in half. That’s a serious threshold. We have to increase the size of our municipalities so that homeowners and developers are no longer incentivized to cut up land on the edge of town so they can avoid municipal property tax. We have these beautiful areas so that people will move to Prince Edward Island and we want them to live there. We want them to live in Montague. We want them to live in O’Leary. We want them to live in Surrey.
So those municipalities have to grow and then those plans for those municipalities have to clearly delineate where the agricultural land is and protect it and then push the population where the services are. Then we don’t have to be paying so much money to take care of our roads and we don’t have to be paying so much money to have eight rinks where we only need three, and it helps with health care. Housing and health care are huge problems for agriculture on P.E.I. Labour is our economic bottleneck right now and we can’t solve that because we don’t have any housing or health care in the rural communities.
So land use goes all sorts of different places. It is critical and that’s why it was our signature issue around the provincial election recently.
Senator Klyne: [Technical difficulties]
Mr. Killorn: When it comes time to fundraise I will look you up.
Senator C. Deacon: You have had a tough job today shutting this one down, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, again, for being with us, Mr. Killorn. I’ve had a challenge and I think we’ve had a challenge. When I speak to researchers at the agricultural research centres, they are all on board. I hear similar things to what you’re telling us. When we get to the AAFC officials, it’s like we’re speaking a different language. There is just no connection on the issue.
It reminds me of a Prince Edward Islander I used to work for a number of years ago, Don McDougall, famous for bringing the Blue Jays to Canada. I don’t think he said it to me a lot, but he used to say, “Your reasons are starting to sound like excuses.” It’s a good sentiment when we’re trying to dig through and find out what’s really going on.
What advice can you give to us to try to encourage AAFC to create more carrots and a coordinated plan that puts in place the carrots that help to cause action at the scale at which you have seen it is possible?
Mr. Killorn: Okay, that’s —
Senator C. Deacon: This is the key to the door.
Mr. Killorn: Is Don McDougall still with us?
Senator C. Deacon: I believe so.
Mr. Killorn: I think he bought a golf course recently, or maybe a second one.
Senator C. Deacon: I hope it wasn’t farmland.
Mr. Killorn: No, it wasn’t. Agriculture is incredibly important to Canada and, as such, AAFC is a massive organization with a tremendous amount of resources. They have a lot of good stuff happening.
I want to mention the farmer who did this work for us on the Holos tool before I run out of time. Matt Ramsay, who is a farmer in Hamilton, P.E.I. outside Indian River, is a seventh-generation farmer at Oyster Cove Farms. He took this Holos tool — he didn’t know it existed — and found the people who were building it at AAFC. I’m at the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, or CFA, receiving a presentation about a sustainable plan for agriculture, and they are not that familiar with what they have in their own department. I don’t know if you solve too much bureaucracy with more bureaucracy.
Senator C. Deacon: That statement didn’t help our concern, that within AAFC they didn’t have a clue; that’s a lack of a coordinated strategy.
Mr. Killorn: Not a lot of my colleagues at CFA knew about the tool. When I present this work at the CFA’s annual general meeting with people coming in from across the country, how do I get this in my industry group or my province? Because they don’t it exists yet either. They have done good work with OFCAF, and giving it to grassroots organizations and allowing them to distribute the money is an inspired approach. They may need some way to pull it all together. I don’t know what that looks like. You have important things happening outside their department as well within Environment and Climate Change Canada, and again, we see that at the provincial level as well.
I can’t tell you how to improve the performance of a government organization of that size. I have 10 staff, our operating budget is $1 million and I have my hands full trying to make sure it runs okay. I don’t envy you, but I will echo that it’s a conversation that needs to be had and wish you the best of luck with it.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Deacon.
Mr. Killorn, I want to thank you very much for your participation today. Your assistance with this study is very much appreciated, and I expect some of my colleagues will reach out again to chat with you off-line, so stay tuned.
Mr. Killorn: I look forward to it. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Colleagues, I want to say thanks to you for your active participation and thoughtful questions. Is it agreed we suspend briefly to continue in camera for the consideration of a draft report?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: With that, I will declare the motion carried.
(The committee continued in camera.)
(The committee resumed in public.)
The Chair: Colleagues, now that we are back in public, I would like to move that the budget application for $134,764 under the committee’s order of reference to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada be approved for submission to the Standing Senate Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024.
Colleagues, is it approved?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Carried.
With that, we are unlikely to need a meeting next Tuesday night, given that Tuesdays are up in the air anyway. I think we can determine right now that we will not hold a meeting on Tuesday evening.
With that, I would like to take a moment to thank the staff who support us around the table and behind us. We cannot do this job without them, and so to everyone, thank you very much.
Our next meeting will be Thursday, May 18.
(The committee adjourned.)