Agriculture Committee on Nov. 9th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Welcome. We are continuing our study on climate change and water and soil conservation issues.

This morning, we welcome two representatives from the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Dr. Brian Gray, Assistant Deputy Minister, Science and Technology Branch, and Mr. Tom Rosser, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch.

You each have 10 minutes for your presentations.

Mr. Gray, you have the floor.

[Dr. Brian Gray, Assistant Deputy Minister, Science and Technology Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

Thank you. My name is Brian Gray, and I am the Assistant Deputy Minister of the Science and Technology Branch at the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food.

On page 2 of the document you were given, you will find an outline of today's presentation. I am going to discuss the role and priorities of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and then I will present an overview of climate change and its impacts on agriculture. Finally, I will provide examples of scientific activities conducted by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to achieve greater resiliency of the agricultural sector to the effects of climate change.

Our vision for our department is to drive innovation and ingenuity to build a world-leading agriculture and food economy for the benefit of all Canadians. Our mission is to provide leadership in the growth and development of a competitive, innovative, and sustainable agriculture and agrifood sector.

The science and technology branch, which I am responsible for, conducts agricultural research development and knowledge and technology transfer activities to support a competitive, innovative, and sustainable Canadian agriculture and agrifood sector.

I have pulled out what I feel are the most important points in our minister's mandate letter related to the topic that you are studying right now, as it relates to my branch, the science and technology branch. First, I point out that the key point is to invest in agricultural research to support discovery science and innovation in the sector. Second is to work with provinces, territories, and other willing partners to help the sector adjust to climate change and better address water and soil conservation and development issues. Finally, we need to support the ministers of Natural Resources and of Environment and Climate Change in making investments that will make our resource sectors world leaders in the use and development of clean and sustainable technology and processes.

Let's move on to slide 5. Our branch has 20 research and development centres located across Canada. We have 35 experimental farms that are connected to the research centres. We have three regions: the coastal region, the Prairie region and the Ontario and Quebec region.

I will provide a quick overview of climate change impacts on agriculture. Climate change will bring, quite simply, longer growing seasons, due to temperature, but also more variable precipitation, resulting in more drought and also in more flooding. We'll see more extreme events. Warmer temperatures will produce more pests and disease outbreaks, and make Canada more vulnerable to invasive alien species. These are invasive species that might not have the suitable conditions to live in Canada yet, but that, with the changing climate, will. Finally, land suitability for spring-seeded small grain crops will increase, particularly in western Alberta and northeastern British Columbia. In summary, I would say that with the changing climate, we have challenges as well as opportunities in agriculture.

Globally, agriculture represents between 10% and 15% of the total anthropogenic—that is, caused by human activity—greenhouse gas emissions. In Canada, it's approximately 10% of our total greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to our own research, which I'll be talking about briefly today, we also have our department's agricultural greenhouse gases program, which provides $27 million over five years to Canadian universities and non-profit organizations for the research, development, and technology transfer of ways to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions from Canada's agricultural sector.

Let's move on to slide 9, which outlines agricultural drivers and challenges related to climate change.

There are two key points. The first involves adapting agricultural production to climate change while being involved in its mitigation. This implies adaptation to abiotic and biotic stresses; reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and supporting the development and use of clean technologies contributing to long-term, low carbon economic growth.

The second key point consists in conserving environmental resources and services while increasing agricultural production. The increasing world population stimulates demand for more food. Here we are talking about soil conservation, water and biodiversity in agricultural landscapes, and sustainable intensification.

I will now provide a few examples of AAFC scientific activities. This is slide 10.

Moving on to page 11, here is one example of a collection of science. When we talk about beneficial management practices, one of the stellar examples is moving to no-till. I understand the Soil Conservation Council was here Tuesday. They would have given you quite an update on that. With that, in the west came the reduction of summer fallow. Over the period from 1951 to 2013, the net carbon sink or storage that we were able to achieve because of that change in practice, that beneficial management practice, was about 11 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent. This offsets about 15% of the agricultural GHG emissions.

The point I'd like to make is that it wasn't one or two studies. It was a series of hundreds of studies conducted over decades, not only by our department but by our partners, academia, the provinces, and our colleagues in other countries, most notably the U.S. and the USDA. Research very rarely leads from one study to a beneficial management practice. It takes a fair bit of time.

With the next couple of slides, I'd like to talk about extreme weather events.

In our branch we develop new varieties of crops. We develop new varieties of crops in areas where there is the public good space. That is, there's not an industry that's developing that variety, so it is something we do for the public good and for the benefit of our producers. An example is potatoes. At our Fredericton Research and Development Centre, we are developing varieties of drought tolerant potatoes. This is just a very quick illustration of how that's done. We're doing several crosses in the hope of eventually developing a variety that is more drought tolerant.

Next is an example of where we have too much water. In a changing climate, you'll see that we will have drought, but we'll also have periods of more intense rain. We've already seen that across Canada in the past growing season. Barley is a particular cereal that doesn't do well in inundation. Normal varieties that we have now can't last more than a couple of days being inundated with water. At the Brandon Research and Development Centre, we are developing inundation tolerant barley. On the right you can see the two varieties: the sensitive one, which is the more normal one, and the one that we're developing. It's kind of a neat project. We have mini rice fields at the research centre. We flood them and that variety on the left is now tolerant up to 10 days.

The final example I'll give you is from the agro-climate, geomatics and earth observations division within our branch. They develop tools that are available to farmers and the public. They look at current climate conditions and future projected conditions given to us by Environment and Climate Change Canada or other members of the IPCC.

If you look at the illustration of the maps, the current weather temperature conditions are on the left. If you look at the right, there's a change of 3°C. You can see that this change of heat will make it a lot more attractive for these three examples of pests. What do we do with that? This informs our scientists to develop new varieties of crops that would be resistant to these types of pests, to develop beneficial management practices that would help the system be more resilient to the pests, and finally to search out natural predators to these sorts of pests.

The next slide, I apologize, is a bit busy. It's a work in progress, as are the living laboratories. I will try to explain it very quickly.

It's an adaptive management approach with the goal of improved agro-environmental performance and sustainable intensification. It's the use of multidisciplinary teams of scientists working together with producers, designing and experimenting with new, potential beneficial management practices on real working farms. These beneficial management practices would be different than the suite we have now because we'd be looking for multiple benefits. Beneficial management practices not only help in climate change adaptation but also mitigation, biodiversity, and water and soil conservation and protection.

We've been working with the USDA in the United States, with their science division, which is comparable to ours. We had several workshops leading up to one in January. They're quite supportive on this approach and we're going to look at collaborating over the coming years.

At slide 16, entitled “Looking Ahead”, you can see that the Canadian government is investing in agricultural science inside and outside of AAFC. Improving partnerships is integral to our approach, be it with the provinces, the sector or academia, through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, with other federal departments and agencies and with international organizations to leverage benefits for Canada.

AAFC is well positioned to collaborate across the agricultural science and innovation ecosystem to support the sector's resiliency to adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects.

Thanks. That's it for me. I'll turn it over to Tom.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Can you do it in four or five minutes?

[Tom Rosser, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

Mr. Chair, I will try to go as quickly as possible.

I'll add a couple of thoughts to what my colleague has said.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Take your time. We have lots of time.

[Tom Rosser]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

We'll be generous today.

[Tom Rosser]

I appreciate it, and I will try not to abuse the generosity of the committee, Mr. Chair.

I just thought I could build on some of Brian's remarks.

The main vehicle that the department, in collaboration with provinces and territories, uses to advance the goals of the pan-Canadian framework is our agricultural policy framework, known as the CAP.

The committee will be aware that since 2003 these policy frameworks have been a vehicle for federal-provincial-territorial co-operation in the agricultural domain. The current framework, known as Growing Forward 2, will expire on March 31, 2018. It will be succeeded by the CAP, the Canadian agricultural partnership.

Mr. Chair, I think members of the committee will be aware that when federal-provincial-territorial ministers of agriculture met in St. John's, Newfoundland this summer, agreement in principle was reached on what's known as a multilateral framework agreement, which is the basis of the framework. We've taken that agreement in principle and have been working over the past several months to operationalize it to give it legal effect and also, underneath the multilateral framework, to negotiate bilateral agreements with each of the provinces and territories.

Federal-provincial-territorial ministers of agriculture have identified environmental sustainability and climate change as one of six CAP priorities. Building on the efforts of past policy frameworks, the Government of Canada, together with provinces and territories, will provide funding to help the sector grow sustainably by reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions; protecting the environment, including soil and water; and adapting to climate change.

Brian shared with you some examples of research that we have conducted within the department and will continue to conduct under CAP to advance those efforts. I'd just like to touch briefly on some of the programs that we have to try to give effect to that research and innovation and transfer some of the knowledge that's generated.

An important element of the CAP is what are known as the business risk management programs, or BRM programs. These are a suite of cost-shared programs that are intended to help farmers deal with risks, market risks or other risks, beyond their control. Under the Growing Forward 2 framework, we anticipate that total expenditures under that program for a five-year period will be in the range of about $6 billion.

I won't talk in detail to each of the programs within that suite, but I would like to just highlight a couple that I think are particularly relevant to the work of this committee with respect to climate change.

There is the AgriInsurance program, which is the largest. It represents about two-thirds of total expenditures under the BRM suite of programs. It's a crop insurance program that's actuarially sound and self-sustainable, meaning that the premiums collected are based on historical farmer losses and, therefore, that the program is well placed to continue to help farmers remain resilient in the face of extreme weather events.

Occasionally when disasters strike, and the sector incurs extraordinary costs to recover, the AgriRecovery framework can be applied to develop specific programming to help producers with these unforeseen extraordinary costs. An example of where this has been done is in Nova Scotia after an unusually heavy, “once in a hundred years” snowfall in the winter of 2014-15. AgriRecovery was used to help maple syrup producers recover from damages suffered during that winter. More recently, an AgriRecovery response is being implemented for damage caused by the wildfires in British Columbia this summer. Support is being made available to help with the extraordinary costs related to feed loss, livestock mortality, farm infrastructure loss, and other damages caused to farmers.

The only other program I'd like to highlight in the BRM suite are the AgriRisk initiatives, which support research development and the implementation of new risk management tools.

In addition to the BRM suite, the CAP will have a series of cost-shared programs that are usually delivered by provinces and territories but financially supported by the federal government. On farm environment cost-shared programs, it will deliver the practices and technologies developed through innovation programming that Brian described earlier. Provinces and territories design and manage delivery of these programs, and this allows programs to be tailored to each jurisdiction's environmental priorities. These programs build producer awareness and knowledge of environmental risks on their farms, and based on these risk assessments, provide financial incentives to producers to adopt innovative, beneficial management practices to reduce these risks, including climate risks.

Canadian producers have adopted technologies and practices that both build resilience to climate change and reduce GHG emissions by improving production efficiency and increasing agricultural soil carbon. In particular, there is a lot of interest in the sector now in precision agricultural technologies, for example, which, among other things, can allow producers to reduce and better target the use of fertilizers and other inputs, and improve the efficiency of their operations while reducing their climate and environmental footprint.

I will briefly discuss some measures that are complementary to the previously described Canadian Agricultural Partnership initiatives, to present the government's objectives to mitigate the effects of climate change on the agricultural sector.

In Budget 2017, an amount of $70 million was allocated over six years to further support agricultural discovery science and innovation, with a focus on addressing emerging priorities such as climate change and soil and water conservation. Budget 2017 also included an amount of $200 million over four years for innovative, clean technologies for Canada's natural resource sectors, including agriculture.

Agriculture-specific funding will address key barriers to the development and adoption of clean technology in the agriculture sector. For instance, the funding will serve to produce advanced materials and bioproducts based on agricultural outputs, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in agricultural operations through improved land management and energy efficiency.

I know that the committee recently conducted a study on A Food Policy for Canada. The department has just completed a consultation process on that policy. The environment is one of the four themes of the food policy for Canada. During consultations, stakeholders across the country raised food waste and its associated greenhouse gas emissions as a priority for A Food Policy for Canada. We estimate that the value of food waste in Canada is approximately $30 billion a year. This represents 3% of greenhouse gas emissions across Canada.

Through the adoption of innovative practices and technologies, the agriculture sector has made important advances in increasing efficiencies, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, conserving soil and water, and building resilience to a changing climate.

The sector is proactively working to meet growing demands to demonstrate sustainability. For example, the Canadian Round Table for Sustainable Beef, the Canadian Round Table for Sustainable Crops and the Dairy Farmers of Canada proAction Initiative, are all working to advance the continuous improvement of the Canadian agricultural value chains, including in areas such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Through CAP and other complementary funding, the federal government, in collaboration with provincial and territorial governments, will support industry efforts to enhance the sustainability of the Canadian agricultural sector.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Rosser.

You said that when food waste is disposed of or buried, greenhouse gases are released. Could you clarify that point?

[Tom Rosser]

That is correct. The methane produced by the waste is quite a major source of greenhouse gases.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you.

I'd like to welcome Ms. Karine Trudel and Ms. Salma Zahid.

We will begin our question period. Mr. Berthold, you have six minutes.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you very much. That's very kind.

I thank both of you for being here today.

This study will involve a lot of discussion about greenhouse gases, carbon, the effects of climate change, and carbon taxes. In short, we are going to discuss many topics during our meetings for this study.

Mr. Gray, you raised a point that is quite clear in your document. There are a lot of questions being asked about how to face climate change and its effects on soil, and how farmers will react. You mentioned that there are opportunities, but that there are also challenges to be met. Temperature variations are among these challenges, and we are going to have to adapt crops to this new reality.

You spoke a lot about genetically modified products. What is the status of research on genetically modified products at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada? Your document indicated that this is Canada's main response to climate change.

[Dr. Brian Gray]

Thank you for the question. I will have to answer it in English.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

No problem.

[Dr. Brian Gray]

It's going to be hard enough in English.

I did not mention GMO in my presentation, but thank you for the question. The work we do in our breeding is not GMO as defined by most groups. I don't have the definition off the top of my head, but I can tell you what we do. In an organism, there is the genome, which is the entire sequence of the DNA. It's the entire genetic code of the organism, and what we've been able to do in the scientific community with our genomics people is to look for markers, meaning the genes or usually a series of base codes on the long strand of DNA marking an association with a trait that we're looking for. The trait could be resilience to drought or resilience to flooding or resilience to a fungus or whatever, and that trait, for whatever reason, is not expressed. There are ways of using viruses to express the DNA that's already in the naturally occurring plant. By doing that, we are able to express the gene that has been suppressed.

Generally I would consider GMO as something that takes DNA from a different type of organism and puts it into another. This is not that. You're dealing with the existing strand of DNA. By doing that, we are able to speed up the selection process for plants by half, so it will take half as long to get the varieties we want.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

I am happy to hear that clarification, because your document says “cross-pollinate drought tolerant germplasm”. You are talking about manipulating plant genetic material, but within the plant itself. Is that correct?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

Exactly.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

You also talk about gathering genetic material from certain plants, but within those same plants.

[Dr. Brian Gray]

Exactly.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

The committee heard from representatives of private sector enterprises who are working very hard to find different ways of adapting crops using certain genetic material, whether inside or outside of the plant. They told us that Canada may miss certain opportunities because of the long delays involved in obtaining approval for these materials.

Do your department and the experimental farms provide the approval for the different genetic materials?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

Yes, if they fall under our area of expertise. As I mentioned, we work with certain specific crops, such as wheat.

barley, potato, and those sorts of crops. We're not in the domain of corn or soybeans, generally speaking, because the private sector is well advanced on those things. As I tried to point out, we're looking for areas where the private sector isn't developing something or isn't developing a product that farmers, producers, or producer organizations would like.

Some of those other growing areas are pulses, specifically pea crops, dry peas, and lentils that we're developing, and some dry beans we are developing for southeastern Ontario.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Whether we are talking about internal or external genetic modifications, according to your document, genetics are essential to deal with the coming changes.

[Dr. Brian Gray]

Yes.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Absolutely?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

Absolutely.