Evidence of meeting #84 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.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Barlow. Thank you, Mr. Desrochers.
Now we'll go to Mr. Peschisolido for five minutes.
Liberal
Joe Peschisolido Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Mr. Chair, thank you, and I'm going to be leaving a few minutes at the end for Parliamentary Secretary Poissant.
Professor Thevathasan, thank you for coming out. I want to follow up on Mr. Drouin's point. I'm intrigued by your land use system or your analytical model. I'm from B.C. Would you be able to apply your analysis to the system in B.C.?
Prof. Naresh Thevathasan
Yes, Dr. Lisa Zabek, from the provincial ministry, is leading the silvopastoral systems in B.C. Actually, I have written two book chapters, and silvopastoral systems are promoted more for western Canada than for eastern Canada, so yes, this type of land use system that we see now on the screen is what is being recommended for B.C. because of the large number of ranches and the large amount of beef cattle production and dairy production there.
Liberal
Joe Peschisolido Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Mr. Barlow talked about the different grades of soil. As you know, in British Columbia we have the agricultural reserve land. There are a lot of folks who are saying that because of this grade of soil, we should take this farmland out of the agricultural system and have a certain type of development there.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Prof. Naresh Thevathasan
It's in this connection that I was talking about marginal land. In my talk I said, let us exclude classes 1 and 2. Let us not go into the highly productive agricultural lands. Let us focus these land use systems to classes 3 to 6, and we are blessed with 46 million hectares that are currently available.
Trees can reclaim those lands, depending on the type of system that you are talking about. I also work with the Canadian Wood Fibre Centre, for Natural Resources Canada, and we established a short-rotation willow plantation in 2009. By 2016, in about six years, they were sequestering at the rate of about five tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare per year. That land was not considered for agriculture because it was considered abandoned land.
These land use systems can contribute not only to climate change mitigation and adaptation but also to ecosystem services. That is the other side of these land use systems.
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
Thank you.
First, I want to thank our guests for their testimony.
My first question is for Mr. Thevathasan.
Mr. Thevathasan, I come from a dairy and grain farm. We've had an agro-environmental plan for about 25 years.
I'd like to know how the environment might profit if we had Canada-wide environmental plans.
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
No, I'm talking about the agro-environmental plans we have in Quebec.
You've never heard of them?
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
They are plans developed according to the type of soil, the types of crops and the inputs used to grow the plants, so as to make optimum use of them without putting too much into the soil.
You've never heard of them?
Prof. Naresh Thevathasan
Well, I have colleagues in Quebec whom I work with in agroforestry. I work a lot with Dr. Joann Whelan, Dr. Robert Bradley, and Dr. Alain Olivier from the University of Laval, but we generally collaborate mostly in the types of land use systems that I mentioned.
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
Okay.
I've been told that one hectare of adult corn captures more carbon than a hectare of forested land. Is that true?
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
It's a comparison between an adult corn plant and a deciduous tree of the same size. A hectare of corn, as compared to a hectare of deciduous trees, is five times more beneficial for the environment.
Prof. Naresh Thevathasan
Yes, it could capture more carbon, but the carbon is lost, whereas the carbon stored in the forest stays there. Also, because of the longevity of the trees, they also enhance carbon sequestration below ground, whereas corn.... I'm not a big fan of removing agriculture residue for energy production, because we need a certain degree of organic matter to go back into the agricultural lands to maintain the soil organic carbon level and the organic matter, but only part of that carbon goes into the grain, and then the grain is consumed. If the rest of the residue is removed from the field, then there's no net accumulation over a period of time.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you.
Mr. Poissant, I gave you a few seconds more, since we lost a bit of time due to the interpretation.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
This will wrap up this hour of witnesses and questions.
I want to thank Mr. Thevathasan and Monsieur Desrochers. It was a really interesting conversation. Thank you so much for being with us today.
We shall break for a minute or two just to change the panel and then we will be back.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
We'll continue our second hour on our study of climate change and water and soil conservation issues.
We have David Sauchyn, professor, prairie adaptation research collaborative, University of Regina. Also, by video conference from the University of Lethbridge, we have Professor Stewart Rood.
Mr. Sauchyn, you have up to seven minutes, please.
Dr. David Sauchyn Professor, Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, University of Regina, As an Individual
First of all, I would like to thank the committee for this opportunity to speak to you about an important issue. My remarks are based on 30 years of research on the climate and soil landscapes of the prairie provinces, including a recent five-year study of the vulnerability of agricultural communities to climate change. This project was funded by three federal government agencies: NSERC, SSHRC, and IDRC.
The Prairies are a good case study of soil and water conservation when you consider that they have more than 80% of Canada's agricultural land and that commercial agriculture has succeeded here in one of the least favourable agroclimates on earth. It has succeeded through technological innovation, but also through the sustainable management and conservation of soil, water, and rangeland.
Major changes in farming practices and agricultural policy have occurred primarily in response to periods of accelerated soil and water degradation, notably during the droughts of the 1930s and 1980s. Considerable progress has been made in conserving soil and water, especially in the past several decades. However, this progress could be undone by a changing climate.
Canada's climate is clearly getting less cold. The warming of a cold country is good news for agriculture. Unfortunately, this climate is also more hospitable for pests, pathogens, and invasive species, and there's a second major constraint on the opportunity to capitalize on warmer climate: the increasing severity of both storms and drought.
In the past few years, flooding along the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario and some hot, dry summers have been described as “unprecedented”, implying that they defy prediction and preparedness. A scientific interpretation of the severity of these events is that they are probably amplified by a warmer and moister climate, although events of a similar magnitude can be found in weather records that extend well beyond the limited experience of our lifespans. In our laboratory at the University of Regina, we've constructed a 900-year history of prairie climate using trees. It clearly shows that every century has had at least one drought of 10 years or more in duration. Therefore, the most challenging future scenario for prairie agriculture is the inevitable reoccurrence of a long drought, but in a warmer climate. The sponsors of our research have been preparing for this plausible worst-case scenario.
The most consistent climate change scenario is wetter and warmer winters and amplified drought and flooding. A resilient agro-ecosystem must have the capacity to store the excess water to withstand dry conditions that could last a growing season or longer. Healthy soils store water and carbon and support a continuous vegetation cover that is more likely to out-compete the undesirable species. Therefore, conserving soil and water is the most effective adaptation to projected climate changes.
The entire population of Canada derives benefits from healthy soil, quality fresh water, and a domestic food supply. Researchers from the University of Alberta have documented how farmers in Canada absorb much of the additional cost of conservation practices. Financial incentives from our government are almost 10 times less than the compensation given to farmers in Europe and the U.S.
At our research centre, the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, we do climate change research by working with the people who manage our soil and water. This producers' perspective is invaluable. It's the social context that enables us to translate our technical data to information and knowledge; otherwise, our scientific data is just a bunch of numbers.
I keep a catalogue of quotes from producers. For example, a rancher near Shaunavon, Saskatchewan explained that raising cattle takes water, grass, and shelter. He added that he can replace only shelter. Similarly, we've been told that people construct buildings and fences, but only God makes land. An old-timer from southwestern Alberta, when accepting an award from a conservation group, offered these words of wisdom. He said that when the oil fields run dry, we'll still have the real source of our wealth: soil and water.
In addition to these anecdotes, we have a large database of producer observations that we've collected using social survey methods and focus group meetings. Of the comments and recommendations we've received from producers, the most policy-relevant are regarding the limits of their adaptive capacity.
Producers told us that new technologies on the farm are expensive and that a single farm business can withstand only so much extreme weather. Without help from their neighbours, the local community, and higher levels of government, they are challenged to deal with the extreme weather that we expect in a changing climate.
Participants in one of our focus group meetings recommended that government establish some type of coordinating agency or boundary organization, with technical expertise to link scientific knowledge to adaptation options and agricultural practices targeted to regional stakeholder groups and rural communities. In fact, a federal government agency with exactly that mandate existed for more than 80 years. It was phased out in 2010 to 2013. The prairie farm rehabilitation administration, or PFRA, implemented government programming related to soil and water conservation and rural development in western Canada, and for a few years late in its mandate, right across the country. With the demise of PFRA, the federal government also has abandoned most of its responsibility for irrigation infrastructure, for soil and water conservation, and for the management of native prairie on crown rangeland.
It's somewhat ironic that our federally funded research has concluded that a major impediment to climate change adaptation in rural Canada is the demise of federal programming and federal services that helped to maintain the resilience, viability, and adaptive capacity of rural agricultural communities. Coincident with this recent loss of capacity is a disconcerting but almost predictable retreat from traditional soil and water conservation practices in favour of capitalizing on above-average precipitation over the past decade.
The University of Saskatchewan surveyed 61 producers recently, and 40% had removed shelterbelts from their operations. Mostly it was to accommodate large equipment. On prairie farms, air seeders are typically 85 feet to 100 feet wide. Some are up to 160 feet wide, which is about the width of a football field in Canada, and this is a single seeder.
Shelterbelts were first planted more than a century ago to prevent the loss of snow and soil. By capturing snowmelt water and storing carbon, today shelterbelts represent both adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change. Agriculture Canada's shelterbelt centre, which predated the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, distributed more then 600 million tree seedlings.
Liberal
Professor, Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, University of Regina, As an Individual
I have one paragraph left, sir.
This program was shut down in 2013. I have no expectation that PFRA and these programs will be restored, but I expect they will. The next time the agricultural sector suffers from a prolonged drought or the impacts of heavy rain, you can expect that a program like this will be recreated.
In conclusion, I laud this committee for undertaking this study and I recommend that you carefully consider two serious constraints that producers have in adapting to and mitigating climate change. The first is the demise of institutional capacity whereby the government was able to support producers' efforts to maintain the integrity of agro-ecosystems. The second constraint is the expectation in our country, but not elsewhere, that agricultural producers will bear the cost of protecting the ecological goods and services that make our lives possible. They should not be financially disadvantaged for providing this service that benefits all of us.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Professor Sauchyn.
Now we'll go to Professor Stewart Rood for up to seven minutes.
