Thank you very much.
My name is Christie Young, and I'm the executive director of FarmStart. We are a not-for-profit that was created to support a new generation of farmers.
Over the last five years we've been developing flexible programs in Ontario that provide new farmers from all backgrounds with the resources, tools, and support necessary to not only get their businesses off the ground but to thrive.
We are developing incubator farms and offer small start-up grants. Over the last three years, we've directly helped over 40 new farmers get their businesses started.
We offer a range of training and resources for prospective, planning, start-up, and re-strategizing farmers. Within the last three years, we have had 1,500 people come through our courses and workshops.
We've also developed a FarmLINK program that helps farm seekers connect with farmland owners and retiring farmers. Our website, farmlink.net, has only been operating for two years and currently has 600 profiles. We run consistently packed “Lucky in Land” meet-and-greets for these landowners and farm-seekers and are starting a coaching program for non-traditional farm succession.
We have begun to witness a strong resurgence of interest in healthy food and farming and see increasing numbers of young people from farm and non-farm backgrounds, new immigrants, and second-career farmers who are interested in pursuing a future and a livelihood in agriculture. They are interested in building entrepreneurial, economically viable, and ecologically sustainable farm enterprises. There are many challenges facing these new entrants, and yet there are also many opportunities, and they bring skills, connections, and passion that can lead to innovation and renewal.
What I have just described to you is what we at FarmStart see happening in our aging agricultural sector, where prospective new farmers are coming from, and where they are heading. More specifically in this discussion today, I want to communicate to you the kind of agriculture and food system that they are interested in being part of.
I would like to propose that the topic for today, how to ensure the viability and success of biotechnology in agriculture, is not the question you should be starting with. Any technology should be evaluated, developed, and adopted or discarded based on the purpose it serves or the harm it can do. Before we go down the road of adopting new technologies, we must be much clearer about where we want to be headed. What do we need or want to achieve in our food system today and for successive generations?
Over the last 10,000 years we have been adopting, testing, discarding, and building upon technologies that have helped us to farm better, produce more, work less hard, and so on. Biologically based technologies and techniques have been part of this agricultural development for much of this time. What makes some of the current biotechnologies different—in particular, genetically modified organisms—is that they are actually a means that will ultimately determine the ends, as they can negate other possible options once released into the environment through contamination, interbreeding, genetic mutations, and so on. This is very clear in the GMO alfalfa debate around organic production systems and in the debate around GE salmon with wild salmon populations.
So far, looking back on the past 15 years, it seems that the use of genetic modification in agriculture is predicated on and arguably is dictating a system of chemically dependent, mono-crop, energy-intensive, and land-extensive agriculture that is largely controlled by agribusiness interests. And while production has increased, it does not seem that farm viability has.
In considering deterministic, far-reaching, and unpredictable technological means, we must take a precautionary approach to regulation and release, by investing in public sector research and peer review, trial replication, and proof of intergenerational “lack of harm” that takes into account environmental, economic, and human health impacts.
That said, what I think is more important for the discussion today is how we are deciding on what ends we hope to achieve. A means should not determine the end, and we cannot continue to let the mere existence or possibility of a specific technology dictate the kind of agriculture we will end up with. In this context, those driving the creation of and profiting from biotechnologies should not be determining this end.
What kind of food system do we, as a growing, innovative, and creative human society, want and need to survive on this finite planet? We all want sustainable agriculture that will be equally, if not more, productive in the future; healthy and safe food; and viable farmers around the world.
I have seen some of the so-called New Vision for Agriculture initiative that has been prepared for the Davos economic development forum by McKinsey & Company. This report is funded and prepared by the same corporations that promote GMOs, along with junk foods—the very ones that now proclaim their interest in solving the global food crisis with their technology and know-how. The 17 global companies that championed this initiative include Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto, Unilever, Syngenta, Walmart, DuPont, and so on.
I would suggest strongly that their claims need to be met with a careful scrutiny of their track record, and especially their concentration of power, the increasing use of agriculture chemicals—in particular, herbicide use—and the loss of farmer sovereignty over seed.
But this handful of companies are not the only ones that have ideas about where we need to head. There are many other peer-reviewed and comprehensive sources for road maps to a sustainable and productive agricultural future that can help us decide what technologies we use.
The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development's global report is one source, with over 2000 scientists and almost every international agricultural organization in the world involved. It is supported by every country except, notably, Canada, the U.S., and Australia. This report clearly articulates the growing consensus on the need for production and distribution systems that are equitable, ecological, resilient, biodiverse, localized, and that allow sovereignty over genetic resources.
I would be happy to talk about the specific recommendations further. I will mention that one key recommendation is to build healthier, more productive, and resilient agricultural systems; that is, to start with our soils. The farmers I work with and farmers around the world understand that investing in soil structure, organic matter, and biological life is critical to the health of their crops and to their bottom line.
For example, the Rodale Institute has been running comparative farming system trials for over 27 years in the United States, comparing organic farming systems with what we now term “conventional agriculture”. The trial shows an increase of over 30% in soil organic matter and 15% in soil nitrogen under organic management over 27 years. The production or yield of the organic farming systems consistently matched conventional management in good years, but in drought years, organic corn and soybean yields exceeded those of conventional management by 28% to 75%.
In addition to the increased resilience of these farming systems, the trial demonstrates several other critical benefits. Concerning energy use, this trial showed that diversified organic agriculture, with cover crops, reduces the use of fossil fuel energy by 33% to 50% when compared with a conventional agriculture system.
For carbon sequestration, the side-by-side comparison of ecological and conventional corn and soybean production showed that organic fields consistently sequester more than 1,000 kilograms per hectare per year of carbon, which is equivalent to capturing more than 3,500 kilograms per hectare per year of carbon dioxide.
Importantly in terms of the economic viability of these farming systems, an economic analysis at the University of Maryland has shown comparable returns in organic systems even without calculating the organic price premium, which currently ranges between 35% and 240%.
There are also many examples of useful technologies. The front-mounted crimper crop roller is a roller that sits on the front of a tractor; it can improve nutrition and reduce the need for tillage. It enables farmers to flatten and kill a rye cover crop while seeding out their seeds or seedlings in one pass, without the need for GM seed varieties or herbicides.
Precision technologies such as flame-weeding have allowed organic farmers to grow very successfully to large scales. Innoculants to help nitrogen-fixing cover crops take nitrogen from the atmosphere and make it available to plants have been very significant. We need to continue to better understand the role of rhizobia bacteria that attach to roots in our crops to fix nitrogen for us and the use of biological pest control in greenhouse management.
Those are just a few examples of very useful technologies. This brings me to my recommendation for your consideration.
The federal government needs to fund appropriate research and extension. This research and extension needs to be responsive to farmers' needs and new opportunities, as well as to ensure the long-term protection of our critical resources: our soil, our air, our water, and our ecosystems.