Agriculture Committee on Feb. 7th, 2018

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

European partners—

[Tia Loftsgard]

Europe, Japan, South Korea. Some of them won't enter into equivalency arrangements with us because we don't have enough rigour in our system. Ninety percent of our organic trading partners do, and that's been the success of our Canadian regime.

When it comes to the opportunity, I think standards are number one. They have to be funded by the government; that is not an industry initiative. The only requirement out there...why it needs to be run through government is so that we can trade internationally, and we want to take advantage of that opportunity. It's been quoted in the Barton report. We do have an organic stakeholder on the economic round table. They are filtering that information upwards, that although we might be 2.2% of farms, our industry is the next generation and the wave of the future for agriculture.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Are you saying there's not much more that we have to do to get to a certain standardization that would be accepted in Japan or Europe?

[Tia Loftsgard]

We currently are great with those trading partners. The problem is that if our standards don't get reviewed every five years.... That is the million dollars that we were talking about, which right now we've been told industry should fund—except for the $250,000 we just got.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

The reason I suggest that is that in the CPTPP, there are 11 countries, and in CETA, there are 28. If you look at other potential trade deals, maybe with the ASEAN countries, you'll see another 10 or 12 countries. You talked about the Canadian reputation, and that stands on its own, so there would be a greater potential, specifically in terms of trade, compared to that of other countries. So you're saying...a little bit more, and we would be in the game?

[Tia Loftsgard]

Yes. I think the contamination issue is a huge trade barrier for our industry unfortunately. When we get zero tolerance happening, they're testing it at the border. They're saying, “Ship back that you're an organic product, because we won't take that as organic in XYZ country” or that they have to sell it as conventional.

They've gone through all the rigour, but there is some unintentional contamination that's happened. That's where we need to work together with all of agriculture to make sure that those opportunities for our sector are not in opposition to anybody else's.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. Barlow, for six minutes.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the witnesses. There's been some great testimony, very interesting.

I want to bring up an initiative that we've talked about a few times during this study. You brought it up, Ms. Cornish, when you were talking about in situ soil monitoring. I'd like you to explain that a little bit more if you could.

We've had discussion on how difficult it is for us when we talk about soil conservation and soil health. I know many of us in our rural municipalities, our counties, and MDs talk about 3T and 4T soil and trying to protect it, but development comes, and it isn't as protected as we would like.

Do you know, on the organic side, whether some of the provinces...? I think we need a national initiative to get a sense of where we are right now in terms of our soil health. From what I've heard from the Soil Conservation Council of Canada and some of these other groups, a really detailed study on the status of Canada's soils across the country has not been done in more than 30 years. Would that be helpful, or is it maybe too broad for us to take on? Would there be some benefits to putting some real work and funding behind that to get a starting point of where we are now? Then we can figure out where we need to be. It would be good to have a good understanding of where we are now.

[Kimberly Cornish]

I think a baselining project is absolutely critical.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thank you: “baselining”, here we go.

[Kimberly Cornish]

I think if we can do a broad-spectrum baselining project, we will learn so much. We'll have not just that baseline and be able to see where we are in the future, but we'll also have a compare and contrast. If you have really beautifully adaptive multi-paddock grazed land next to heavy conventional cropping, you'll get to see what the soil health looks like. You'll be able to contrast the biological communities, the levels of soil carbon, right across the board. That will give us a huge clue into who's going to be able to adapt better and what practices might help with climate mitigation and adaptation. I think that would be incredibly helpful.

In terms of technology, with the Alberta protocols we always say that we can't measure; it's too expensive. That was true 10 years ago, but now with algorithms, mapping, and monitoring, there is so much technology that's just burgeoning. What we're planning on doing, or what Food Water Wellness is trying to get off the ground, is a project that would use the conventional methods to actually use combustion to test soil carbon. We'd also be using spectroscopy to correlate that, and then correlate that with microbiological health. It is much more efficient now that we have genomics easily accessible. We hadn't been able to type the genes before in the microbiological community.

Yes, I think a baseline study would be incredible. The way I look at it is that if you can bring the opportunity for offsets in it, then you can actually have private industry help pay for part of that baselining study. It could be a co-operative process between large emitters and the government.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

You bring up a good point in terms of the difficulties and the effort that would go into it. I think you're right that maybe 10 or 20 years ago it would have been difficult. Now with technology and innovation, with the drones and X-rays, I think the ability for you to do it quickly is certainly much different from when you were going out there physically trying to test soil. I think you're right.

Can you explain to me a little bit more about the in situ soil monitoring? That's something I have not heard before.

[Kimberly Cornish]

It would basically be looking at farm scale across a broad spectrum. Richard Teague out of Texas A&M has done a huge amount of study on soil carbon sequestration rates. There's always a disconnect between what has come up in research plots and what's actually happening on the ground, because it hasn't been at a broad enough scale. The institute is about going out to the actual farms and ranches to see what's happening on the ground instead of trying to find some sort of version of it that we can study on a university campus or at a research centre.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

I appreciate that.

I appreciate the messages that you're all bringing forward, too, that we need to have a balance between traditional methods of agriculture and organics. I think they both have a very important role to play. It's great to see the growth in organics. I have several organic beef producers in my constituency who have gone in that direction for various reasons, but they still embrace traditional agriculture on the grain side or on the corn side, or vice versa. I think when you look at the innovation, whether it's zero tillage or the use of some pesticides, we are able to grow significantly higher yields on even less land.

I appreciate the perspective that you're coming from. I think there is a role for both to play. If we're going to feed the world and have $75 billion in agricultural exports in the next five years, we have to ensure that we have the tools to do that. Organic agriculture certainly has an exciting future, and it's great that we want to try to support that as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

We're just about out of time, Mr. Barlow.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

I was going to ask about interprovincial trade issues when it comes to organics, but we can touch on that another time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

That wraps it up.

Just to add my two cents, being a certified organic grower and a conventional one, I know that both have learned from each other. I've done it with both hands. The organic farming that my great-grandfather used to do has learned a lot from the conventional, but also the conventional, I can tell you, is quite a rigid system. To answer Mr. Saini, when inspection day comes around, you're quite nervous.

At any rate, Mr. Singh, Ms. Cornish, Ms. Loftsgard, and Ms. Misiewicz, thank you for your appearance here today.

To the committee, you will get a copy of the draft on Friday, I think. We have our analysts working very hard. We want to thank both of them. On Monday we'll have the instructions to give to the analysts about the drafting process. We will also have a second hour of subcommittee on agenda and procedure, if there's a.... Okay.

Thank you very much, everyone, and have a good day.

The meeting is adjourned.