Evidence of meeting #77 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was change.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:05 p.m.
Chairman, Soil Conservation Council of Canada
We've seen that, occasionally, with other systems, not necessarily carbon, but somebody gets a payment to do something, it's great, and it lasts for a couple of years, but then once the payment disappears, they revert to what they were doing previously.
5:05 p.m.
Chairman, Soil Conservation Council of Canada
There has to be some way to continue that, either a payment or something, to make sure that the change actually stays in place, to make sure that carbon stays secure.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
In terms of sustainability of the program, you need to have a cycle on the carbon cycle as well so that it continues.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Ms. Grossenbacher, we spoke before this session started about the role of women. Your organization has really been a leader in empowering women in the developing world, and we spoke about the change that has had not only on agriculture, but also on the approach to sustainability.
Could you comment on the role of women in this whole discussion?
5:05 p.m.
Geneviève Grossenbacher
It's a great question, actually. I'm glad you raised it.
We do work with women in agriculture across the world and in Canada. In fact, what we found is women are incredible at saving biodiversity. They're incredible at agriculture. They make up most of the agricultural force abroad. In Canada, we sometimes tend to forget it, but actually.... I'm also very much involved with a lot of new farmers. In that segment of the population, new farmers who are starting—and in more sustainable forms of agriculture, I should say, also—they are predominantly women.
Women play a huge role in feeding us now and will in feeding us tomorrow, I really believe. Just to go back to seed diversity in Canada, again, they've been key at keeping old heritage varieties and improving the varieties that grow well in their community.
Martin, maybe you would like to expand on that. They're absolutely essential, and right now, unfortunately, programs aren't always designed to recognize their contributions.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
As you're saying that, I'm thinking of indigenous women, first nations, and the role they play in protecting water and promoting the protection of water. Does USC reach into indigenous communities as well? Can that be part of our study?
5:10 p.m.
Executive Director, USC Canada
We're very cautious about how we approach indigenous communities. We are, ourselves, not an indigenous organization and we want, as part of ensuring that we play an appropriate role in reconciliation, to work to ensure that leadership in indigenous communities comes from indigenous people. That said, there are a significant number of people within the indigenous community who are leaders in their communities in sustainable agriculture, in reclaiming some of the traditions that have been lost through the years, even in terms of restoring some of the historical traditional crops that are there.
We would certainly be very open to continuing to explore and go deeper in terms of our relationship with indigenous farmers, while recognizing that we are not going to be the leaders. We hope that the government can also be a leader in that reconciliation process.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
The nation-to-nation approach is really what we're focusing on as a government, as well.
I'll go to Mr. Kruszel, again.
On the biodiversity of crop cover and trying to manage the top layer of carbon, trying to increase carbon or put carbon back into the soil that we've lost over many years, could you comment on the diversity of crop cover as an important part of our strategy going forward?
5:10 p.m.
Chairman, Soil Conservation Council of Canada
For sure. Diversity of crop cover is obviously very important. We promote, very strongly, crop rotation. In Ontario, where I am from, crop rotation is not phenomenal. We have a lot of corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans. That's not a crop rotation. We'd much rather see a three or four crop rotation. On my farm we have a three crop rotation and then we plant covers with things that aren't normally in my rotation. We have, in our multispecies cover crop mix, buckwheat, peas, all kinds of things that we don't normally plant as a main crop but are just there to provide some biomass to go back into the soil.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Longfield.
Thank you, Mr. Kruszel.
Ms. Brosseau, you have six minutes.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Thank you, Chair.
I would like to thank all the witnesses for their presentations and the exchanges we've had so far.
I think what is really important is research and innovation. We know that in 2016 the federal government, Agriculture and Agri-Food, invested $649.5 million in agricultural research, which is very good, but $1.6 million went to organic, which is 0.25% of the R and D budget.
We know our trading partners invest a lot in research and innovation. I was wondering if we could get some comments around the need to invest in research and innovation.
5:10 p.m.
Geneviève Grossenbacher
Again, I love that question, so thank you.
Indeed, there is such an imbalance in research and development, and I think that needs to be fixed, because a lot of the great innovation leading us towards more sustainable practices is coming from ecological agriculture, partially through organic agriculture. Yet, when we only invest a quarter of one per cent in R and D for organics, especially when we know the organic sector in Canada is growing at an incredible rate.... It is now maybe only 2.7% of the market, but it's growing rapidly, and whatever comes out of organic research can be applied to all farmers. A lot of the best practices in terms of crop rotation diversity came out of organic agriculture.
Again, just to bring it back to seeds, that imbalance in research is definitely there. There is virtually no investment in plant breeding for seeds. All of the attention is going to genetic engineering or plant biotech. That needs to happen, but the sector of organic plant breeding is incredible. We have had great results in Canada showing that the seeds developed to perform well without inputs perform well both in years of drought and in years of flood when compared to conventional cultivars. Now, that is great for organic farmers, but those seeds could also be applied to conventional farmers to help reduce how much pesticides or fertilizers they use, and fertilizers are also a great source of greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture.
All that is to say that I think we need to invest in Canada. The biggest investment I remember from Canada was a $22-million investment last year in grains in the Prairies. We'd love to see an investment, not necessarily at the same scale, in organic agriculture, plant breeding.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
I saw a lot of heads nodding.
I don't know if I can get some more comments about the need to invest in research and innovation.
5:15 p.m.
Member of the Environment Committee, Canadian Horticultural Council
I totally agree with you that it's really important to invest continually in research and innovation. I also support the idea of putting more emphasis on organic, because certainly there is a huge overlap of opportunity for commercial growers to apply those technologies.
On our farm we do a lot of work with biological controls, such as beneficial insects and organic registered pesticides for fungus control, that will not impact our beneficial insect population. More research in that direction would help us move towards a more sustainable future.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
5:15 p.m.
Chairman, Soil Conservation Council of Canada
I do for sure. Anything that increases research and innovation funding for agriculture, in our view, is a win. There are lots and lots of opportunities. What we unfortunately see, as I mentioned in my presentation, is a lot of research happening but not getting out to the farm population. That's a huge issue. If we're spending $650 million, it would really be nice if all of that made it out to the farming population so that everybody knows it's there.
There's another thing we'd like to see. Of course, research and innovation is good, but with a lot of the programs, like the previous Growing Forward program, innovators on the farm are taking risks all the time, but none of the programs will compensate them for taking those risks.
The programs are inherently designed to take the ideas of the innovators and then help bring on the rest of the farming population with incentives. The really early innovators don't get any incentive at all to do these things, and that's something we should change. They're taking enormous risks trying new things on their own. It could be thousands or, in some cases, millions of dollars' worth of investment to try something that may not work. They really should have some kind of funding assistance to help them mitigate their risks.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Just to paint a portrait, the United States recently announced $56 million for investment in research and innovation for organics. I hope the government's ears are open and they're listening, because we are going to have that new framework coming up.
There's another question I would like to ask, if we can go back to USC. It's about how the participatory plant breeding model works and how important it is to involve farmers in that. Does the government currently have programs that put an emphasis on soil fertility, on clean...and on enhancing our biodiversity?
5:15 p.m.
Geneviève Grossenbacher
Again, those are two good questions.
On the $56 million, I want to add something. In the previous presentation, Mr. Drouin, I think, mentioned that we need to level the playing field. I think it's the same in this type of thing. The U.S. and Europe are investing in organic agriculture, and Canada, I think, can lead the way also.
In terms of plant breeding, the same thing is happening. The U.K. and the EU both have developed programs that are based on our programs in Canada. In the case of the EU, they invested in two programs—one at $3.5 million and one at $7 million—in participatory organic plant breeding. We would love to have something similar in Canada.
Going back to what you were just saying about the knowledge transfer, we couldn't agree more that farmers need to be involved in the knowledge transfer. We need extension agents, but also we need research that takes farmers into account. This is where the participatory aspect is so important.
Participatory plant breeding is designed around the farmers. Farmers are at the core, the centre, of the work. They help to establish the goals of the program. They help to decide what works, what doesn't work, and what criteria they want, so that in the end, they get a product that they want, that works on their farm, and that adapts every year to the local growing conditions. This is really a great thing that we should be investing in. With the work we've been doing in Canada, Canada has established a really successful model that other countries are turning to—
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Madam Grossenbacher. We've actually gone a little bit over the time. I'm sorry about that.
Ms. Nassif, you have six minutes.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Eva Nassif Liberal Vimy, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My thanks to the witnesses for their presentations. Each witness has really helped us to understand their area better.
Mr. Kruszel, you talked about research. What kind of research are you suggesting? Who is in the best position to do this research on soil conservation?
5:20 p.m.
Chairman, Soil Conservation Council of Canada
If I may, I will answer in English. It is a little easier for me.
5:20 p.m.
Chairman, Soil Conservation Council of Canada
What kind of research are we looking for? Certainly, we need soil health research. There is some soil health research going on. There could be an awful lot more.
I mentioned that one of the things we would really like to see is in terms of the costs and consequences of soil degradation. We talked about this number of $3 billion per year being lost because of soil degradation. That is an on-farm cost only. We don't have any information at all about how much it costs to clean out the creek in terms of all the soil that's landed in the creek, or how much it costs to re-dredge the seaway because of the soil that's landed in there.
For all of this stuff, we need some really good numbers. We're sure that it's going to be in the tens of billions of dollars. That's something we need to address. If we can put some of that money into programs to help address that, we can try to get more no-till on the ground and try to get farmers to think more about preserving the soil, getting more carbon in the soil, and increasing soil health.
Increasing soil health does a marvellous job at biodiversity enhancement, clean air, and clean water. It all relates back to the soil. If we can get some money on research for soil health, as well as for costs and consequences of the soil degradation, we'd be really pleased.