Agriculture Committee on Nov. 7th, 2017

[Ian Affleck]

As Dennis said earlier, we earmark a one-year turnaround time as being what is easily achievable, given that in our experience, the files typically sit for 12 months of the 24 months before they're opened anyway. If you can reduce or eliminate that backlog, you've already landed a 12-month review. You're just spending 12 months in a queue.

To give credit to the regulators, they're looking at the United States, which has what they call the extension program. If you bring in something very similar to something else, we can make an even faster decision, because we're familiar with the product you've brought forward. They're investigating adopting a practice like that, but that would help only in bringing things to market very similar to what we already have. For what you're talking about, which is bringing new and unique products to the marketplace, that extension program really wouldn't help. We need to get rid of that dead space at the beginning and get right to the file and get it moving.

There are also opportunities within the review where you have Health Canada and CFIA and the two departments all doing the toxicology review. Could they do one and collaborate? Are there efficiencies there? That's a bigger project, but it's something we could look into. That first chunk should be easy to move off the board. Well, easy is probably oversimplifying. It should be movable, to be fair.

[Dennis Prouse]

I'll add very quickly that it was today, in fact, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it has tossed aside the previous set of proposals on regulating these. It is not proceeding with that particular set. It is going back to the drawing board in terms of looking at how it is going to regulate these technologies. Obviously, that's something that we in Canada are going to have to watch extremely carefully, because where is the global competition for investment dollars? That's obviously a big part of where it is.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Yes. Obviously we want to create similar regulations to the U.S. if we're going to level the playing field.

[Dennis Prouse]

Our member companies will tell you that the battle for investment happens internally. When there is a multinational company, and it is deciding where to invest, within the company the various branches have to fight for their space, if you will. That's why it is so incredibly important for Canada to be competitive and to benchmark itself, in terms of regulation, to where we are globally. We have to stand up and fight for our share of that investment.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I'm just curious to find out.... I'll just give you my personal experience in the riding on the unpredictability that climate change causes and I guess it's too soon to say if it was caused by climate change but I'll let the scientists answer that. They've spoken loud and clear on that. Last year in my riding there was a drought. This year it was a wet season. How is your industry positioning itself in helping farmers plant that right seed or that right crop that particular year? It's getting tougher and tougher to provide that predictability in the weather systems.

[Dennis Prouse]

That is why we've said that farmers are dealing with the effects of climate change now. This isn't an abstract. In many ways, as you've seen, they're seeing it now. You can parse words and you can call it what you like but they are having to deal with the here and now. That just speaks to the research on seeds. How many different varieties of seeds can we provide for farmers to buy? How many different options can we give them? That's the battle and, as Ian pointed out earlier, there is no magic wand here and we have to be careful that we're not out there promoting that there's a technological panacea out there for all of this.

We think that there are more tools in the tool box that we can give farmers on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Prouse.

Mr. Longfield, you have six minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to everybody for coming. You'll see that our conversations in this committee flow one into the other.

In terms of the discussion around climate change and the response to it, I'm going to go back to the soil and thinking of precision agriculture and precision monitoring of the soil. Could any of you speak to the use of data, the use of what we are measuring within the soil to try to make sure that we start in the right place to increase productivity?

[Dennis Prouse]

I'll ask the farmer to go first.

[Ian Affleck]

I grew up on a potato farm in P.E.I. and I've seen this evolve just in my lifespan. When I was young, we had the first kind of GPS mapping of our fields and it was on half-kilometre squares and now you're getting it down to applying lime where the lime spreader is changing how much it's putting on as you drive down the field. It's really incredible. That mapping is taking off and you're starting to see farmers farm with drones to look at different disease issues in different corners of the farm. Maybe all they have to do is spray in one part and not the whole field because they don't have a full field issue.

Gathering that data and storing it both for the uses it has now and the uses it will have in the future that we don't even know about yet.... But if you hadn't mapped it now, looking back you wouldn't be able to see those trends. I think Susie's group and the data they're collecting is going to be part of that. Precision farming is going to be front and centre in every element between the seeds you use in one part of your fields...maybe you'll change varieties in the future as you're driving down the field because you know one corner is different from another corner. It's not going to be as simple as one variety in 100 acres. You're going to see things start to change.

[Susie Miller]

Just to follow up, I can't provide you at this moment with the exact numbers but it was something that has been followed by the farm environmental management survey and the agriculture census as to what kind of, I would say, technology whether it's the precision farming or GPS or various technologies. We also included it in our survey. It definitely is increasing. For example, the ability to use variable rate fertilizer has increased the uptake of the fertilizer, the usage of the fertilizer, that is put in the ground and basically has reduced the overall environmental footprint. When it comes out in January, we'll have a definitive answer as to how much progress we've made.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Great. Mr. Drouin and I were at the outdoor farm show and went to the different booths that had to do with drone technology versus using a vehicle to do the sensing, physical sensing versus drone sensing, and the arguments going on around that.

Have we come to a point in the science where we have an integrated tri-cycle approach with carbon and nitrogen and water forming some kind of a database of where we need to be? Is there an optimum soil condition that we're trying to maintain or does that change by farm?

[Ian Affleck]

From my farming experience, I think that it changes by farm and by field, but that's what intrinsically every farmer is trying to achieve within their own subset. This ability to track and find trends and data that we couldn't find before will help them find that balance.

I'll go back to one of the earlier questions around wanting to raise our agricultural outputs by an enormous amount. As Susie said, we want to do that while showing a trend in the environmental impact being down. I think farmers intrinsically understand. They're trying to do both, and they intend to do both, to increase the outputs and reduce the inputs and their environmental impact.

That equilibrium is exactly what they need to find. Then add in technologies of seeds that are more nitrogen-use efficient so they don't need to use quite as much because the equilibrium—I'm seeing this as I'm planting that field—changes as the variety changes. What does that variety need for nutrients versus this variety?

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Right, but when you're sensing it coming up, you'll see what's reacting and what isn't reacting to what you're putting down.

I remember one conservation with an older farmer who said he didn't believe it. He didn't believe that he wouldn't have to go back out onto his field a couple of times a month. He didn't believe that he was going to get the results, but he took a risk and said, “Okay, I'm going to see whether they're right or not.”

There's a farmer trust issue. Is that just one person, or is that something that as we do our study—

[Ian Affleck]

I don't think farmers trust anything. I think they have to test it.

My dad was always that way. He would say, “This looks great. I'm going to do some alternating strips, and I'm going to prove it on my farm.” However, you need that data first to get them to buy into the test because the test is a risk for them. They're putting money on the table to do the test, so they want to see the proof. They want to try it on their farm, but once they're in, then the next year they're in 100%. I saw that with many things on our farm.

I remember trying to make sure the cultivators stayed in the rows. As soon as my dad figured out that the computer could do it better than I could, we had it on every tractor.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Right.

In terms of government policy then, there's a risk management piece. There is introducing new technology and somehow incentivizing farmers to try these new technologies that will improve.

What's the state of that? Is our current policy framework handling that, or is it something we need to look at?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

I'm going to have to put a hold on that. The time is up. Perhaps you'll have a chance....

Mr. Barlow, you have six minutes.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It's great to hear some of these stories about the innovation and the stewardship that our farmers have been doing. Our farmers and ranchers are some of the most environmentally conscious people in the country. I don't think any of us would argue that point. They live on the land. It's their livelihood.

That touches on something that is very important as part of this discussion: the fact that our farmers and ranchers have been doing this for generations. They've been embracing technology, embracing innovation, and ensuring they do everything possible to protect their land and ensure it is productive.

During a previous study, we had a witness in here who had a greenhouse in B.C., and the carbon tax was costing her $50,000 a year, so she closed her greenhouse.

With Alberta now having the carbon tax, I have farmers and ranchers in my constituency who it is costing anywhere from between $50,000 and $125,000 a year in additional costs. So, there are concerns that our farmers, ranchers, and greenhouse producers and operators have been doing all of these things to ensure that they have as small a carbon footprint as they can before this was even an in-vogue discussion to have, and yet they are being punished for doing everything right.

As we talk about climate change, I agree with my colleague, Mr. Drouin, that today is not the place to have a debate on whether it's true or not, but I do want to say, Mr. Drouin, that we should all have your farmers who can predict the weather. It's impressive that they've been able to predict the weather before now.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

No, they couldn't.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

As we go forward with a carbon tax plan on the federal government side, is there any discussion among your members—and your members as well, Susie—about exempting agriculture from these types of things because of the things and the activities that you have done, whether it's Roundup Ready seeds or no tillage, the technology that's been there to reduce water usage? Have there been discussions on that side?

Maybe that's a message we could take forward when it comes to implementing a federal carbon tax.

[Dennis Prouse]

I think that the grower groups themselves would be better positioned to speak to that. We don't represent those grower groups. Much as with Susie's group, everybody that we work with is committed to sustainability, and we're working toward sustainability broadly. Those more specific competitiveness issues would probably be best addressed by the actual grower groups that represent those farmers. I don't think they'd want me speaking for them.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Okay, I appreciate that.

Susie.

[Susie Miller]

There are no discussions. Again, it's not the kind of forum where we have those types of discussions, but we do know that the carbon life cycle report that we have conducted, which will be published in January, is a helpful measurement tool in any kind of policy discussion. That's our contribution.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

I appreciate that, and that's a message we'll maybe take forward—you touched on it—that it's not only the cost, but it makes them uncompetitive globally when we're talking about our trading partners not having those costs. I think that's something we have to be cognizant of.

You also talked a bit about the regulatory process. I want to touch on that as well.

Dennis and Ian, you were saying it takes two to three years to get approved in Canada, but I think that's only one step, because we have also heard from the canola growers that they have some breeds that they would like to get to market, but China is not giving them the go-ahead. I don't know if everybody is aware of that, but if they don't have the unanimous consent of all our trading partners, they won't move ahead with it. Some of these non-tariff trade barriers also have an impact on this. Maybe you could touch on what the global perspective is on some of these regulatory obstacles.

[Dennis Prouse]

Sure, I can start, and I'm sure Ian can finish with anything I may have missed.

You're right. If China, which is the most important market for canola, doesn't approve a trade, that means a Canadian farmer can't grow and does not get the benefit from those technologies. When I tell people that story, they find that fairly shocking, but that would be true of any number of markets. It speaks to why, when Canada is negotiating international trade agreements, the issue of non-tariff trade barriers is incredibly vital to agriculture. You will generally find around the world that, as tariffs fall, non-tariff trade barriers tend to rise.

I'm not saying anything that governments both previous and current don't understand very well, and the negotiating teams understand those, but we have to continue to make the point, because it does affect the competitiveness of Canadian farmers.