Environment committee  That's correct, yes.

Environment committee  We know that the government has put the position forth that it's not an application reduction target, just an emission reduction target. For example, Prime Minister Trudeau did show up at the Canadian Federation of Agriculture's AGM this past winter to announce that. However, we did see language around use reduction mentioned in the budget, so it's something that we do put a bit of a note of concern on.

Environment committee  That's correct, yes.

Environment committee  I actually don't have that information off the top of my head, unfortunately. Just to be specific, the 15 million would include acres under both our certification and our designation programming, the certification having that component largely run within Ontario, which does have that auditing component for [Inaudible—Editor].

Environment committee  Yes, it has funding for support for precision agricultural technology. That's one of the sources of support available.

Environment committee  Unfortunately, I don't know what the uptake of the program has been, off the top of my head. I know it's definitely been used as a key resource for a lot of farms. In my previous role, I worked at the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. The initial investment costs for smaller farmers was somewhat of a concern in terms of the cost share.

Environment committee  Absolutely. That's specific to the 4R program that I was talking about, which is a right source of fertilizer applied at the right rate in the right place at the right time. For example, you can take a similar quantity of fertilizer and apply it after a rainfall, and you would likely have reduced emissions compared to if you had applied it before the rainfall.

Environment committee  Absolutely. There are a number of examples in terms of precision agricultural technologies that we feature in our 4R best practices. One example would be switching from broadcast fertilizer to banding. We basically insert bands of fertilizer within the actual crop itself, within the soil by the root system, in order to basically provide more of an efficient uptake of nutrients.

Environment committee  In terms of equipment, unfortunately, I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but it would be in the high hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the size of the equipment you're looking to invest in. We do know that there is government support available on that.

Environment committee  Thanks, everyone. I'm Frank Annau, the director of product stewardship for Fertilizer Canada. We represent manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers in nitrogen phosphate, potash and sulphur fertilizers. Thank you for the invitation to appear and to speak today. We believe that voluntary industry-led initiatives that put farms at the centre are the best approach to reduce nutrient runoff.