Agriculture Committee on Nov. 9th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Rosser and Ms. Trudel.

Mr. Drouin, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I know that risk management programs are being reviewed. However, I was told that even though some producers would like to diversify their crops, the programs do not yet contain any incentives to help them. I know there are negotiations with the provinces, but there are no incentives to encourage producers to act.

In fact, diversification is in itself a risk management program for farmers. Technically speaking, it could cost the taxpayers less.

Do you intend to examine this matter in your review?

[Tom Rosser]

Thank you for the question.

Indeed, in our review we want to examine some quite fundamental questions, such as the nature of the risks and their evolution. We are at the very beginning of these analyses. One of the questions we will be studying is the options producers have to manage risks. We have to determine if the private sector would be in a better position to manage certain types of risks, or whether the government could do more. We also want to examine how producers themselves can better manage the risks. We could consider options like the diversification of crops as one way of managing certain risks.

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

One of the witnesses who came before the committee, and who lives close to me, said that the farmers in our area are still growing corn and soy. It is true that those are the most popular crops. However, when farmers always grow the same products, there is no crop rotation, and so the soil organic matter deteriorates. That is why I am asking this question. It's an education issue.

Does the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food record information on what is grown in the various parts of Canada? Is there a registry that allows you to access this data, or do you depend on the private sector for that?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

I mentioned the Centre for AgroClimate, Geomatics and Earth Observations, which provides information on the major crops throughout Canada. I think this data is available on our website.

Regarding risks, I mentioned the scientific living laboratories. This is on page 15 of the presentation. They provide an opportunity to work with farmers and producers to find the best system or the best rotations for every climate and region. They also provide an opportunity to develop partnerships and experiment with various crops.

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

I know GMOs and genetics will play a major role in the future, especially for climate science. Speaking to organic farmers, I'm trying to determine, in plant breeding, at what point it is still an organic plant. Is there a strict determinant for this?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

I'm sure there are several, depending on the domain. Unfortunately, I don't know. We can come back with the answer.

It's a very important point. Several members have mentioned the exploding domain of genomics. Because of high-sequencing machines, we can now get the information on the genomics of an individual plant or virus, for example, about 1,000 times faster than we could five years ago. Actually, the sequencing is faster than Moore's Law, so our problem will be that we're running out of capability to analyze or store it.

The area that's really interesting, and it touches on your question about organic farming, is the soil microbiome. The microbiome is the bacteria, the fungi, and the viruses that are living in that soil. I can't remember off the top of my head, but something to the effect of a teaspoon of soil would have over a million organisms in it, and those million organisms might be represented by a thousand species. Until we were able to develop high-sequence genomics, we couldn't know that. We don't know what the perfect soil is for a particular soil type or region, but we're going to get there some day. Understanding how that microbiome is reacting to corn and soybean rotation year after year, or an organic situation, or natural or synthetic fertilizer inputs, or any of these things will be critically important, and it will be a huge breakthrough.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Gray.

Ms. Nassif, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also thank the two witnesses for their presentations.

Since I did a masters in proteomics, I am happy to hear the world “genomics” used in connection with agri-food.

I'd like you to give us some specific examples of problems that are of concern to your department in regard to the land degradation caused by climate change. What areas would benefit from research, specifically?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

Right now in our branch we have over 700 research projects under way, and a significant number of those include soil research. I don't know, but I could come back to you with how that's broken down specifically in terms of microbiome versus organic soil quality or inorganics. This is an area in which we're seeing growth. We're in a period now in which a lot of our baby boomer scientists are retiring and we're replacing many of those with scientists from areas of microbiome, areas of chemistry that didn't really exist when these scientists started their careers, and areas of high-speed gene sequencing and informatics. This is the new domain. We still need what we would call the “agronomy scientists”. Those have been around for a long, long time, and we still need them, because we need somebody to pull it all together for a systems approach—knowing the rotation of the crops, the types of crops, and those sorts of things.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Mr. Rosser, did you want to add something?

[Tom Rosser]

No. I think my colleague is in a better position to answer that question.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Fine. I will ask another question.

In the past, the Government of Canada has supported environmental sustainability through its agricultural policies. In the context of the new Canadian Agricultural Partnership, how do you intend to use or improve these approaches?

[Tom Rosser]

Mr. Chair, I'm going to try to answer, but Mr. Gray may have something to add.

It is true that with the current framework, we made some important investments in the environment, but we think that thanks to better knowledge, it will be possible to better target the investments we make and to make progress in reducing greenhouse gases.

In addition, we think that we can better focus our programs and structures on reducing emissions and on adapting to climate change.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

What is being done currently in the agri-food sector to reduce greenhouse gases?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

There are several things, including that we are looking at how we treat the soil, because the soils can be a sink for carbon, as I think you heard on Tuesday. We can actually reduce some of the CO2 in the atmosphere through the sinks.

Also, as I mentioned, the way we apply nutrients to the soil is very important, because nitrous oxide is a molecule that's released when you have too many nutrients in the soil. It's released through microbiome breakdown of different molecules. One molecule of nitrous oxide is equivalent to 298 molecules of CO2, so it's a big deal. If we can look at changing the microbiome and changing the way we apply fertilizers, we can reduce that heavily.

Methane is another one, which is from dairy cattle and mainly beef cattle. The digestive process gives off gases. It's significant. We can reduce that. We're working on science to reduce that. You can do it through genetics, through breeding. There are cows that are naturally more efficient with food. You can also do it through diet. We've been successful in developing lines of beef cattle and diets for dairy cattle through which we're actually reducing the GHG emissions of an animal per litre of milk or per pound of beef depending on the animal.

Those are two or three examples specifically in areas that we're working on now.

[Tom Rosser]

I'll add that from a programmatic perspective, we take some of the things we learn from our science and try to operationalize them in individual producers' farms, and through our cost-shared programming with provinces, we'll support the development of what are called “environmental farm plans” whereby an assessment will be made of where there are opportunities to improve the environmental performance of a farm.

Also, we have what are called BMPs, beneficial management practices, if I remember correctly, whereby we can provide incentives to actually put in place some of the recommendations that come out of those audits. Those are programs that are cost-shared. They're delivered by provinces, so the specifics of how they operate vary from province to province, but that's the basic idea, and that's one of the ways in which we try to make a difference on the ground.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Rosser.

Thank you, Ms. Nassif.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

No, unfortunately, you're out of time.

Mr. Barlow, you have six minutes.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Dr. Gray and Mr. Rosser, for coming with some great information. We appreciate your time.

I want to talk initially about a memorandum that was given to the minister last January entitled “Potential Impacts of Carbon Pricing on the Primary Agricultural Sector”. I wonder if I could ask the officials if they would be able to submit this document for this study before the latter is complete. It is public information. I just want it to be part of the study.

[Tom Rosser]

Mr. Chair, I'm not specifically aware of the document. I'm familiar, I think, with the analysis in the document itself, but certainly we do have information in the public domain on our work in this area that we'd be happy to supply the committee with. Not being exactly familiar with the document the member is referring to, I can't specifically answer the question, but, yes, we can certainly provide some information on our work in that area.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

That's great. I appreciate that very much.

I want to talk a little about some of the information in the study. I understand that you may not be totally familiar with it, Mr. Rosser, but you can maybe help with some of the other information you are aware of through that.

One of the key points in this memorandum was the fact that there will be a significant difference in the impact that the federal carbon tax will have on eastern Canadian farmers compared with western Canadian farmers. The numbers here for western farmers is likely around $3,700 a year, and for eastern farmers, $2,400 a year. Those numbers are a concern. They had mentioned this was a preliminary study, that there's some uncertainty in those numbers and that further analysis would be done.

Do you know if any further analysis was done on some of that data that came forward?

[Tom Rosser]

Mr. Chair, I'll make a couple of comments.

The member is quite right. I believe he indicated that the memo in question dated from January. It is true that we've done some analysis in this area. It was done before the pan-Canadian framework was negotiated and, therefore, didn't incorporate some of the features of the framework, such as the exemption for on-farm fuel use, which is part of the emissions pricing system in British Columbia and in the federal legislation. So there have been changes and developments since then.

First of all, one of the bigger conclusions of the analysis was that even at a $50-a-tonne carbon price, the impacts in percentage terms on producers were relatively muted. My recollection is that they're in the neighbourhood of 1% or 2%. The differences across provinces and regions that were observed in that analysis, I think, stem from differences in the electrical generating mix across provinces. I hope that helps to clarify things.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

I appreciate your details on that. Would you be able to submit that initial analysis as part of that information, as part of the study, as well?