Thank you very much for inviting the Manitoba Forage Council to be here today.
My name is Jim Lintott and I farm just east of Manitoba. The Manitoba Forage Council sees itself as addressing and representing all the forage industry in our province.
What is the engine driving the change we must address and adapt to through the science and innovation that we employ on our farms?
Population growth, now set at seven billion people, and rising energy costs are two factors putting increasing demand on our land for food and water. This trend will not change for a very long time. We must adapt to this change and pressure through the use of good science and innovation, with a constant eye to the changing marketplace.
Food--its quality, attributes, and production protocol--is in the media every day, and that is creating both challenges and opportunities for our producers. Only 6.8% of Canada's total land mass is currently classified agricultural. Of that, 44% is in some type of forage production, of which two thirds is unimproved pasture land. There's tremendous potential there.
Rising grain prices are putting pressure on forage lands to be converted to cropland. That in turn will put more pressure on the lower-quality forage lands. As each acre of good forage land is plowed and converted to cropland, it will take more than just one acre of that lower-quality land to replace it. We must find innovative ways to improve that marginal forage acreage so we can support the livestock industry.
There are two ways to improve our forage acreage. The first is to increase the resource base. This can be done by initiating programs to over-seed and re-seed the estimated 6.6 million hectares of unimproved forage lands to increase productivity, carrying capacity, and natural fertility. The same approach can be used to upgrade the so-called improved lands.
This is a perfect example of applying existing knowledge to a new need. This will require the seeding of legumes and improved grass varieties to increase soil nitrogen, and the use of the new grazing techniques to build and improve those soils. This can also build soil carbon, improve water retention for wetland and flood control enhancement, and increase wildlife habitat, all the time building productivity and profitability into the livestock sector.
The resource base can also be increased through the adoption of dual-purpose land management, such as demonstrated in the Garland project. That program demonstrated the use of aspen parkland and cattle grazing in combination as a management tool. We need to move that new knowledge base to the system and add that production base to our grazing resource base.
Getting it done will require programs that demonstrate this new technology on demonstration farms that are backed by detailed cost analysis and input-output balance sheets that can engage the farming community to adapt the new innovations. We see this being facilitated through federal-provincial programs and coordinators who can work in the farming community. Getting it done will also require governments to adjust policies in a timely fashion to encourage change and adoption of innovative ideas.
The second pathway to improve forage lands is through the development of improved species and varieties of forages. In Canada we have experimented with turning the plant-breeding sector over to the private sector. For the past 30 years we have allowed the public plant-breeding industry to die through natural attrition. The effect of that has been twofold.
The first effect has been that in the canola industry we have an excellent example of a business model that allows and even demands variety development. Canola breeding companies can create varieties that lock in margins for the company. You can have a variety that is herbicide-tolerant, thus locking in margins at the bag of seed and the pail of herbicide; and with marketing traits such as Nexera canola you lock in margins for the processing and wholesaling of the actual crop. This ownership of the variety allows for substantial margins to the seed company, of which they can give a share to producers and processors along the way. This encourages investment in plant breeding. This encourages science and innovation.
The second effect of this attrition in our plant breeding has been to prove and point out where private industry will not, or cannot, invest in plant breeding. On this point I have personal knowledge. I’m a part owner of Northstar Seeds Ltd., and we have a plant-breeding company. It is situated in Argentina, and we develop alfalfa and clover varieties for the world markets. We can do this because there is sufficient market for these legumes to give us the volume of seed sales to make the venture profitable. The private industry has not, or will not, do the same for the forage grasses. The pounds of forage grasses sold in North America do not support this level of investment. If we look at the Canadian forage seed industry, we see very few new grass varieties and an ever-shrinking investment in their development. It has created a very weak link in the forage industry.
We need to have the federal and provincial governments make a commitment to pick up this responsibility and fill the gap. We see the potential for partnerships of federal and provincial governments, universities, and the private sector. This is an area where there can be tremendous sharing of science and innovation. That sharing can lead to important developments in the industry. We have infrastructure in place. We need to use that infrastructure to create a centre for plant-breeding excellence—a place that can contribute to the overall agricultural plant-breeding needs.
The forage industry has all the protein production capability it needs with legumes. What is lacking are high-energy, high-sugar grasses for hay and pasture lands that are adapted to the Canadian environment. I believe that the solution lies in the ryegrasses. We need to develop high-sugar ryegrass varieties for western Canada. Currently the high cost of feed grains has a negative effect on the feedlot industry. These increasing costs at the feedlot drive up the need for shorter-keep cattle, cattle that can finish in 60 days on feed. That need puts pressure back on the cow-calf producer. Feedlots will demand 950-pound-plus feeders, and that will require cow-calf producers to become cow and long-yearling producers. To do that, those cow-calf producers will need high-quality pastures and high-quality storage feeds.
The development of high-sugar ryegrass varieties can become the solution to this concern. Every pound that we put on the feeders on the pasture is a cheaper pound to produce. To remain competitive in the world markets, we need to drive down our production costs through increased grazing of high-quality forages—high protein and high sugar.
In addition to improving the marginal forage acreage, there is a need to create greater efficiency in the grazing stages of livestock production. In the poultry industry, chickens are constantly being scaled to determine if they are gaining properly. The producer can then modify his management, and see the direct results as the chickens either continue to grow and gain weight, or not. In the grazing livestock production cycle, we only scale the cattle once, after they are shipped and after it is too late to adjust management techniques for better utilization of the pastures. Today we have the technology to constantly scale calves and stockers as they come for water. This data can be automatically collected using RFID tags for identification, and transferred to computer programs that track each animal’s growth. This then creates a very powerful tool for the management of our pastures and our winter-feeding programs. This would create feed efficiencies and allow for faster rates of gain.
Constant scaling is also a very good tool for genetic selection at the cow-calf level, benefits that would flow through to the feedlot and packing industry. This would create feed efficiencies and allow for faster rates of gain and, in my estimation, improve the pastures' overall health and productivity on a per hectare basis. This technology needs to be part of the new technologies that are demonstrated at the farm level. Once we show the effect of this intensive management practice, producers will buy into the technology.
If we are encouraging innovation and adaptation of new science at the farm level, we need to back that up with equal innovation at the business risk management level. Crop insurance needs to be responsive to the changes, and that translates into the government supplying funding to the provincially based insurance corporations to develop the new insurance products that will be needed to back up our new innovative practices.
I have included copies of the Manitoba strategic plan--it's a five-year plan we developed for the Province of Manitoba--and our forage and research priorities. I have copies of them here. I'm not allowed to hand them out, but you can get them from me. I apologize that we don't have translated versions; notice for this meeting was just a little too short. I have the English versions here, and the French ones should be made available shortly. Please pick up a copy from me as you leave. It will be great bedtime reading.
So we have those two documents.
The Manitoba Forage Council will pursue these goals with the industry and our provincial government. The Manitoba Forage Council will also be working closely with the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association in the development of national research priorities. We see the Manitoba Forage Council priorities dovetailing very closely with those national priorities.
We are requesting that the government develop a dialogue with the CFGA and look for ways for Growing Forward to assist us, provincially and nationally, to respond to these identified needs.
Again, thank you for this opportunity. We look forward to the discussion period.