Evidence of meeting #85 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 great.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Webster. Thank you, Mr. Longfield.
Mr. Drouin, you have six minutes.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair
Thank you to the witnesses for being here. I really appreciate hearing first-hand the issues, particularly those affecting you guys up there in P.E.I.
You mentioned the willow project you're participating in. Have you guys adopted precision farming in P.E.I. as well, or is that something you're looking to? Perhaps you guys are aware of this, but are your other members aware of precision farming? Are they adopting those practices?
5:15 p.m.
Board Member, East Prince Agri-Environment Association
Absolutely. The margins, especially in P.E.I. potato growing, are getting squeezed more and more, and the costs of production are increasing annually. I truly feel that P.E.I. potato producers probably led the pathway for agriculture in Canada in the precision ag area. We are specializing now in grid soil sampling. We're pushing that. There are likely 15,000 to 20,000 acres on Prince Edward Island that are under grid sampling today, and it's all potato, basically.
We are hoping to push that envelope even further and get the livestock guys and other commodity growers on board with precision farming.
5:15 p.m.
Vice-Chair, East Prince Agri-Environment Association
Maybe I'm not supposed to ask you questions, but when you talk about precision farming, are you talking about variable rate and stuff like that, or are you talking about GPS technologies and whatnot?
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I think it's all of it combined. I think it's something that we've heard about. It's out there, but I haven't been convinced that it's been adopted on a grand scale. Again, part of it is a trust issue and cutting costs and the bottom line. John and I had a chat about this, but sometimes it's a battle between the son and the father or the father and the son. I have it at home as well. I used to have it with my father about VHS versus DVD at the time. It can be as simple as that—
5:15 p.m.
A voice
Beta.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Yes, Betamax. That's right.
It was just the example that I use often and over and over again. It was just a matter of having that trust and paying in order to get that soil test done right away, and then they would know whether or not they should apply fertilizer across the field.
We hear a lot out there and we'll blame the fertilizer industry for not doing enough, but they are promoting the safe use of fertilizer, and precision farming jumps into that, applying fertilizer at the right time at the right place, and just on rows, as opposed to the whole field. I think that's where the value can be.
Obviously, from our committee's perspective, we can help incentivize and promote that education piece to farmers. That's something I would like to get your opinion on as well.
5:20 p.m.
Vice-Chair, East Prince Agri-Environment Association
The more of that, the better, of course. As far as GPS is concerned within the potato industry, it's been taken on. We had the first auto-steer tractor, I think it was in 2004, on Prince Edward Island, in our operation. I went through everything you're talking about. I had all the neighbours telling me, “You just can't drive a planter. That's why you had to get that”, and blah, blah, blah.
5:20 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
5:20 p.m.
Vice-Chair, East Prince Agri-Environment Association
Anyway, today I think I know of only two or three potato farms in P.E.I. that don't have a complete auto-steer system on their planting operation. We're really pleased to see that the growers, in general, have adopted that, but I think there are more steps to be made in incentivizing the variable-rate fertilizing and liming, and the precision agriculture piece.
Gordon here has just got a soil sampler, and he can speak to it. It's a soil sampler that hauls behind the tractor that makes that system a lot more efficient. A lot of members of our group have hooked on and are using that as well. It's our first year of getting into precision agriculture in a bigger way.
5:20 p.m.
Board Member, East Prince Agri-Environment Association
Our vision of precision farming is going to start with mastering the soil sampling side of things first.
As Jason alluded to, I invested in a very expensive machine from southern Illinois, and it covers 100 acres in less than an hour. I can pull 4,200 soil plugs. The problem with grid sampling is it's so labour-intensive and it totally relies on the human, and there could be human error. If you're talking about soil science, you're talking about depth inconsistencies and so on and so forth, so that's why I looked for this machine.
We're going to start with soil sampling and move into nutrient management.
I just got back from a trip to a fertilizer company in Great Britain three days ago, and they were emphasizing different kinds of nitrogens. Some work differently under different temperatures. There's no better fit with what we're talking about now: we have to pay attention to our soil temperatures more.
We're starting to apply fertilizers throughout the season, not just giving one bang in the row in May or June and hoping for the best. I think we have to look at that more. I think we have to learn our nutrients and the characteristics of them with climate change and temperatures and so on.
Then we're going to take this grid sampling and nutrient management and introduce drone imagery to potato production in Prince Edward Island. To take it a step further, we are investing in yield maps on our harvesters. Basically, you can imagine taking all the guesswork out of your yield and where it came from. You can zero in on the exact location in that field and why it overproduced or underproduced.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. This has been a great discussion with great information.
I'm going to try to go through this as quickly as I can.
With all due respect to our wonderful chair, I want to mention that when we talked about the wireworms, you did mention that some of these pests have come forward because of climate change.
5:20 p.m.
A voice
Absolutely.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
If this is something that we're going to see more of, we have to ensure we have the tools to address some of those things. I just want to make sure you know that I'm not trying to mess around.
With that, too, Mr. Webster, and for my colleague Mr. Drouin as well, I want to make sure that you don't tell my wife that we're not working very hard when we have auto-steer combines and those things, because after harvest this fall I want to make sure she knows how hard I worked.
5:20 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
5:25 p.m.
Vice-Chair, East Prince Agri-Environment Association
You can explain to her now that you can watch the machine so closely that you're just glued to it, and that's the truth, actually, with the potato machine. I end up looking behind me most of the day, right? I can watch the machine so closely and keep an eye on what's going on. It's great, for sure, but you were asking about incentives.
For the steps that Gordon was just mentioning, please, we do need incentives in order to get the growers hooked onto that. They've hooked onto all the auto-steer stuff. The next step that can really help the industry in our area is what Gordon was just talking about with the precision agriculture.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
The question I want to ask is a broader question. We've heard from many of our witnesses about how difficult it is to get some of these new innovations and new technologies into the hands of farmers—we joke a bit about it—and not only to get these into their hands but to get them to use them. You've talked a bit about drones. I know that we're using drones to check areas, and there are areas where I don't even have to use fertilizer anymore because they show that this area has been this good. The drones are that specific.
What did you guys do to get your group up and running initially? Was it a difficult discussion among your 12 to try to do something a little differently? For us, what's the message that maybe we can pass on about what works?
Can you can do it quickly? I have one more question for Mr. Smukler.
5:25 p.m.
Vice-Chair, East Prince Agri-Environment Association
There was a recognized need, I guess. I have to give our coordinator, Mr. John Phillips, who is sitting behind us here, a lot of credit. He got initiated by the minister of agriculture at the time to look into getting some growers together. He's a local guy and grew up on a farm himself. He went around to see all of us and started talking to like-minded growers. Every time he went to another place, he'd ask for suggestions for other names of people who would be good to have sitting around the table.
It's so key not to have the group too big and to have a group of people who you know are going to share, if you know what I mean. There's nothing worse than sitting around a table with two or three guys who you know are taking all your information but aren't going to share it. Then everybody starts to clam up. It was very important to try to work through that part and to make it very up front with everybody involved to start with. So far, we've been doing well with that.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
Thanks. That's much appreciated.
Mr. Smukler, I have a question for you. At the end of your testimony, you were talking a bit about the importance of building those bridges between industry and research. We have certainly heard from some other witnesses about that dreaded “valley of death” in getting some of that innovation from the researchers—what you're doing—to industry and to farmers. Do you have some recommendations for us on how we can help build some of those bridges?
5:25 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Junior Chair of Agriculture and Environment of the University of British Columbia, As an Individual
There's certainly a gap in terms of personnel. For those of us who are tasked with doing the research, it's very challenging for us to do the effective research we're working on without that bridge to the producer. Where I come from in California, there is an extensive extension program that bridges from researcher to producer. The extensionist spends a lot of time just building trust with the producer and then becomes a conduit for that knowledge transfer, and in both directions, so that the researcher is prioritizing what's important for industry and the knowledge transfer for the research to the producer.
5:25 p.m.
Manager, East Prince Agri-Environment Association
I need to say that our group has been extremely successful because our bridge is sitting right here. On a very personal basis, he has gotten to know each and every researcher at AAFC as well as he knows each of the farmers in our group and what their needs are. Many times he has physically taken the researchers directly to the field, and the researchers and the producers now have these wonderful trusting relationships, working together and sharing information, and now they're drafting the parameters for the research projects based on exactly what needs to happen in the field.
The researcher is coming back and talking about the results, and the farmers are sitting around the table talking about the results to their peers, and it is sinking in. They're saying, “Okay, a researcher was doing this on my field, and this is what worked, this is what didn't work, and this is what we've changed going forward.” They're talking directly to their peers, who are saying, “Okay, I'm going to try that.” The adoption of the best management practices is happening because it's working. We're working collaboratively. We have the trusting relationships. We have the two-way communication with the researchers and the producers.
I know we're a unique group because of that, but we want to keep expanding and working with more researchers. As I said, our bridge is sitting here, and we need more bridges to make sure that can happen with more producers.