Agriculture Committee on Feb. 7th, 2018

[Dr. Avinash Singh, Director, Canadian Organic Growers]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, and members of Parliament on this committee. Thank you for inviting me here to be part of today's hearing. While I have the floor I also want to thank all of the members of this committee for being vocal supporters of Canada's organic industry. This interest in and commitment to organics resulted in funding recently announced by the Honourable Minister MacAulay for the Canadian organic standards. Thank you for being a part of that and recognizing that Canada is and should continue to be a world leader in organic food and farming, and that organic standards are integral in achieving that.

As a professional agronomist specializing in organic agriculture, I am pleased to speak to you today about the energy efficient and climate-smart practices used in organic agriculture that mitigate climate change, enhance soil health, and protect water resources.

Organic agriculture combines tradition, innovation and science to benefit the environment and our economy. A key aspect of these techniques is that they allow a farmer to enhance soil health and fertility, and retain soil carbon, without the need for external inputs such as nitrogen fertilizers, which, as we know, contribute to over 70% of total noxious oxide greenhouse gas emissions. The largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon is soil organic matter. In fact, a protein produced by a mycorrhizal fungi called glomalin is integral in accumulating soil organic carbon.

A number of studies have shown that organic practices such as longer crop rotations and the use of perennial legumes and green manures lead to a greater organic soil matter and therefore greater carbon sequestration, which is important in climate change mitigation. This addition of soil organic matter also drives soil health. As a result, organic systems have been found to perform particularly well under environmental stress. For example, organic systems have enhanced yield stability under periods of drought because water and soil erosion is reduced and water retention and plant-available water is improved.

There is much more to say on the benefits of organic agriculture, but the point I wanted to make is that the agronomic practices used by organic farmers build soil organic matter, which leads to greater carbon sequestration, better soil health and improved water conservation. These are principal components of climate-smart agricultural strategies that are being promoted globally, because they mitigate climate change and create farming systems that are more resilient in the face of more extreme weather events.

Reflecting on this and on behalf of the Canadian Organic Growers, I strongly recommend that the Government of Canada continue to make strategic investments in soil carbon studies and measurement tools along with organic research, knowledge transfer, and standards maintenance in order to continue driving the adoption of climate-smart organic farming practices in Canada.

Now I'll pass over to Ms. Cornish for more on carbon sequestration.

[Kimberly Cornish, Director, Food Water Wellness Foundation, Canadian Organic Growers]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee.

Thank you so much for inviting me to speak to you about this potential game-changing initiative for Canadian farmers and ranchers.

I'm the Director of Food Water Wellness Foundation; and we're based in Olds, Alberta.

Canada's 159 million acres of agricultural land represents a powerful, yet largely underutilized, tool in the fight against climate change. The same soil that produces our food has an ability, through photosynthesis and biological systems, to draw carbon dioxide, or CO2, from the atmosphere and lock it in the ground in a process called sequestration. Once in the soil, the CO2 is converted to soil organic carbon, or SOC, a crucial element for soil fertility and health.

However, Canadian agricultural producers who prioritize the building of the soil organic carbon receive little recognition and support for the carbon offset they provide. Current agricultural offsets such as the Alberta system are based on conventional cropping practices that are rigidly defined. Producers who are seeking to improve their land and sequester carbon are excluded if they do not comply with the practices outlined in the protocols. Also, all 70 million acres of pasture land in Canada are excluded from the protocols, greatly limiting the offsets available for sustainable development of Canadian industry.

The federal government can play a critical role in establishing a carbon offsets framework to incentivize all producers to sequester carbon on their land. This would be a game-changer for Canada's agricultural producers currently facing narrowing profit margins, and a win-win for all Canadians. As Dr. Singh mentioned, carbon-rich soil can absorb and hold more water, mitigating extreme weather events like droughts, floods, and wildfires; and rebuilding SOC restores degraded soil and increases food security as healthy soil improves crop yields and reduces the need for high-emitting, high-cost agricultural inputs.

Unfortunately, many of our agricultural practices conventionally do not promote the carbon sequestration because they're antagonistic to the biological systems that are critical to the process. Regenerative and organic practices that support the biology in the soil, like those mentioned by Dr. Singh, as well as carefully planned grazing, conservation cropping, and cover cropping increase the soil's natural ability to sequester carbon. Using these practices and numerous others have the potential to increase soil organic carbon by as much as three billion tonnes per year globally.

Climate stability could be achieved if enough land, including the massive tracts in Canada, was sequestering carbon. We could see atmospheric CO2 reduced by 50 parts per million to 350 parts per million by 2100. We are asking that you consider supporting biodiversity monitoring in concert with broad-scale, in situ soil research. Such research would measure soil carbon in all types of agricultural land under a broad spectrum of management and would remeasure to see the amount of CO2 sequestered in the soil.

The research would capture innovation that is happening on the ground by producers to create data-driven management tools and enable farmer-to-farmer knowledge transfer, hopefully resulting in all 159 million acres actively sequestering carbon.

For this reason, I would ask you to support the provinces and territories in expanding their agricultural carbon offset programs to include this learning, and to develop performance protocols based on soil carbon sequestration. Action is critical at this time to help farmers to improve their soil and generate revenue through carbon offsets to help them deal with planned increases in carbon pricing and tight margins. As well, creating offsets will help industry comply with the emissions targets Canada's agreed to as part of the Paris agreement. Taking action would be a win-win-win for the planet, industry, and agricultural producers.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to you today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Cornish.

Now, Ms. Loftsgard, for up to seven minutes.

[Tia Loftsgard, Executive Director, Canada Organic Trade Association]

Thank you for inviting the Canada Organic Trade Association to speak with you today.

I have invited Dr. Tracy Misiewicz to join me. She's the associate director of science programs for The Organic Center, which is based in the United States. Dr. Misiewicz holds a Ph.D. in integrative biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master's degree in plant biology and conservation.

[Dr. Tracy Misiewicz, Associate Director of Science Programs, The Organic Center, Canada Organic Trade Association]

Good afternoon honourable members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to speak about the opportunity of organic systems to increase agricultural resilience to climate change and promote soil health.

Because the success or failure of agriculture is highly dependent on the weather, climate change is expected to present farmers with substantial agronomic challenges.

Projected temperature increases, changes in precipitation patterns, and increases in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as drought and flooding are expected to reduce agricultural productivity.

Warmer, wetter climates and increases in carbon dioxide also favour many agricultural weeds, pests, and pathogens. The geographical range of both invasive weeds and insect pest populations is expected to shift and expand as increasing temperatures enable them to survive over the winter.

Research also demonstrates that rising carbon dioxide levels are likely to have a positive effect on the establishment and persistence of invasive weed species and that commonly used herbicides such as glyphosate show reduced efficacy in settings with elevated carbon dioxide. Increased pest, pathogen, and weed pressure may also have numerous environmental and human health implications if increasing the toxicity of pesticides and the frequency of their application are considered to be the primary solutions to these challenges.

Organic agriculture is founded on the principles of soil health and resource conservation and takes a whole-systems approach to management, utilizing a wide range of farming practices that protect the environment and promote ecosystem services. For instance, organic farms utilize techniques that reduce soil erosion and nutrient runoff pollution, and they support a diversity of wildlife, including pollinators and beneficial insects. In return, the farm benefits through improved pollination of crops, higher water quality, better pest control, and healthier soils.

Soil health is considered by many to be the basis of organic systems, making them particularly well positioned to adapt to many of the challenges associated with climate change. Organic farmers tend to use cover crops and crop rotations in place of mono-cropping, and to utilize compost, legumes, and manure in place of synthetic fertilizers. These management techniques not only lead to reduced greenhouse gas emissions and increased energy efficiency; they increase soil organic matter, the foundation of healthy soils.

Soil organic matter has a positive impact on the physical, chemical, and biological soil properties. It provides structural stability to the soil, reduces erosion, protects against soil compaction, and improves aeration, water infiltration, and soil water-holding capacity, all key characteristics that will be particularly important in times of drought or flooding. Soil organic matter also serves as a reserve for nutrients essential to plant growth, including nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulphur, and it makes up the base of the soil food web, providing a foundation for all soil life.

A growing body of research from around the world demonstrates that organic farms often have higher levels of soil organic matter, greater beneficial soil biodiversity, and overall improved soil health when compared to their conventional counterparts. One of the most recent studies to examine soil organic matter between organic and conventional farms compared over 1,000 soil samples from across the United States and found that, on average, soils from organic farms have 14% more soil organic matter than soils from conventional farms.

Soil quality results from the Long-Term Agroecological Research experiment in Iowa, which compares plots under organic and conventional management, found that after 15 years, organic soils were significantly healthier than conventional soils, based on a combination of chemical, biological, and physical soil health metrics.

Results from this study also suggest that improvements in soil health through the employment of organic farming techniques can provide exceptional benefits to farmers during extreme climate events. In 2012, despite serious drought conditions during the growing season, organic management enhanced agro-ecosystem resilience and maintained the capacity to supply nutrients to the crops.

In addition to promoting healthy soils, organic systems also utilize integrated pest, weed, and disease management. By omitting synthetic fertilizers and most synthetic pesticides, organic farmers are able to maintain higher levels of micro-biodiversity and macro-biodiversity in the soil and field.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that by supporting beneficial biodiversity, farms can considerably reduce the negative impacts of pests and pathogens. Thus, instead of relying solely on pesticides, organic farming provides multiple lines of defence to address emerging pest challenges.

Organic farmers are innovative. Many practices that have been long-standing tenets of organic production are now recognized as key management techniques for building climate resiliency and soil health across all of agriculture. What's needed is further research investment to continue to advance the development of sustainable organic practices.

Now I'll turn the floor back over to Tia to provide recommendations on what the industry feels is needed to unlock the potential of organic agriculture to foster healthy soils and contribute to climate change adaptation in Canada.

[Tia Loftsgard]

Thank you, Tracy.

Organic production methods and standards fit perfectly into the national food policy pillar of conserving our soil, water, and air. In order to ensure that organic can prosper, lending its successful model to creating healthy soil and addressing climate change—adaptation as well as mitigation—the approach to agriculture of the federal and provincial governments needs to, number one, be more inclusive of all sectors, scales, methods of production, and market channels.

In order to be inclusive, the next agricultural policy framework must include a review of industry program cost-sharing, the application process, funding eligibility criteria, and what areas should be covered by government—not industry—in order to uphold the integrity of the “Canada Organic” logo, which is owned by the Canadian government.

The number two recommendation is to invest in organic research and innovation. Continued research in organic agriculture is required to further unleash innovation in technologies and techniques that will result in greater productivity, more efficient resource use, and improved sustainability of agro-ecosystems. There's a need for research that is designed to fit the specific needs of Canadian agriculture systems to address these various challenges. We recommend that more provisions be made for long-term research, greater than five years, and consideration of the nature of the research being done—commercial intellectual property versus the public good—when there is a requirement for industry matching funds.

Number three, adapt business risk management programs to be more inclusive of producers of all scales, types of production, and market challenges. BRMs should be adapted to serve all types of farming, including low-input and diversified farms. The AgriInsurance suite also needs to be expanded to include production insurance that is suitable for organic and transitioning producers across all provinces and protects organic premiums on export markets to zero-tolerance countries such as those in the EU.

Number four, incentivize and reward best environmental and climate-resilient practices. Programs should include incentivizing the use of techniques that will promote soil health, such as cultivation of more legumes and perennial crops, soil health and watershed conservation, long-term crop rotation and intercropping, biodiversity and habitat creation, rotational grazing, and the use of locally adapted organic seed.

Thank you very much for hearing our recommendations. We hope you take them into consideration.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you very much for your opening statements, all of you.

Now we'll go into our question rounds.

Mr. Berthold, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for being here today.

Since I have had the opportunity to hold this magnificent position of official opposition critic for agriculture and agri-food, I have discovered an extraordinary world. I have had the opportunity to meet some of you. When I talk to other people, I am surprised to see how organic is not always considered an agricultural sector. It is as if it is a separate sector because of the green, ecological and biological side. Yet the need exists. There are consumers who want organic agricultural products.

So I think you play an important role in our production chain and you too can contribute to achieving Canada's export objectives, exports that we want to see increased. This role is evident on a smaller scale because the scales of production are not the same. However, I am very pleased that you are here today to talk about water and soil conservation.

My first question may seem really straightforward, and I would like you to answer it in turn.

More often, we see the impact of climate change on large productions, but less so on small ones. In recent years, have you noticed any significant changes in how your producers do things?

Mr. Singh, do you want to answer first?

[Dr. Avinash Singh]

What we've actually seen is that the impact on small-scale farmers with respect to climate change has been minimal, in the sense that their systems are robust. When you have an extreme event such as flooding, their soils are able to drain properly, and they're able to benefit from having a better system. We've also seen that many small-scale farmers are quite diversified, so that in response to a lot of climate adversity, if one crop fails there are other crops that are able to support those challenges.

Where small-scale farmers have probably had the least benefit from climate change is in the fact that we have very little research that supports how small-scale farmers should be transitioning to adapt to the fact that our winters are no longer stereotypical winters. They should have other structures so that they may be able to capitalize better on some of the changes in the weather.

[Tia Loftsgard]

I've worked with small-scale farmers in international settings, as well as in Canada. In Canada, we don't have as many small-scale organic farmers, which is interesting, because that's a popular misconception. I have census data right here that shows that we don't have that many small hobby farmers in organic, but I can tell you from an international perspective, small farmers on an international scale are generally more well adapted to work with their local environment in a biodiverse atmosphere and also grow their own food.

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

I have one last question.

The minister recently announced that he would provide the funds needed to review the standards of the entire organic farming industry. It appears, however, that the minister's announcement is not quite up to the cost requirements. When I had meetings with you, it was said that this review would cost about $1 million. The minister mentioned a$550,000 investment in his announcement.

Ms. Loftsgard, do you believe that the industry will be able to find the necessary amounts, the amounts that are missing, to conduct this review?

[Tia Loftsgard]

The actual announcement by the minister, who we thank very much, is $250,000. That is to cover the Canadian General Standards Board's administrative costs. On the last review, $1 million was what it cost. As we've learned since, that's because it had to go back to 2006, before we even had the national program in place.

We're in discussions. No, we didn't get what we asked for. We asked for permanent funding so that we don't have to do this every five years. It's a requirement by WTO for the Canadian government to make sure that their standards are up to speed. We'll continue the discussions. We're looking for some immediate solutions, because we have to start the review in March. That's next month.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Dreeshan, do you have anything to add?

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thanks very much.

Ms. Cornish, coming from Olds and Olds College, that community is where I've been my whole life. I really think, too, when we talk about zero tillage, carbon sequestration, and so on, and programs that are out there, one of the concerns is how many passes you are going to have over the land. We really are talking about farms there that are 1,000, 2,000, or 5,000 acres in many cases. With the number of times you go over the land and the width of the openers you're using, these are definitions that go between, is it zero till, minimum till, or maximum till? Then if you go into agreements, you get paid, more or less, for the way you have done that farming.

How does organic farming deal with that, where in a lot of cases what you have is a green crop that you're going to plow under in order to make sure you have nutrients for another year? How does that really tie into the discussion?

[Kimberly Cornish]

What we've been looking at is actually developing a baseline of what the soil carbon is at this time, and then being able to track it in the future. Definitely emissions are an issue that we need to talk about in terms of passes of the land, but what we're finding is that a lot of the organic processes are regenerative processes, almost offsetting extra passes of the land. The emissions that you get from the tractor are so because you have a healthy, vibrant microbiology in the soil that's able to do its thing, so much more than you can if you're just doing the Alberta protocol that is—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Cornish. It's very interesting. I'd like to hear the rest, hopefully.

Mr. Peschisolido.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you to the witnesses.

Madame Cornish, would you like to continue?

[Kimberly Cornish]

Yes, thank you.

When you're actually building soil carbon, there's a huge distinction in my mind between soil carbon sequestration and the elimination of emissions from the soil by tilling. If we're not tilling the land, it definitely helps, but if we can be building those biological systems and supporting that, it can definitely mitigate. That's the need for large-scale research on a whole bunch of different practices.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Dr. Singh, my area, Steveston-East Richmond, has a very large organic sector, very large farms. For example, Mr. Falcon and his son have a 20-acre farm with organic blueberries, and then another 300-acre farm in the valley. What can the government do to expand the sector?

[Dr. Avinash Singh]

I find that one of the biggest challenges we have is that farmers do not have enough champions to promote the innovative practices, so we're lacking in a lot of extension. Great research is being done at the university level and being done in other parts of the world, but how do we transfer that knowledge from the universities onto the farms? Once we get that information to the farmers, we will have champion farmers who then can deliver that to the rest of the farming community.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Madam Cornish and Dr. Misiewicz, after hearing your presentations, I'm thinking I should have taken fewer economics and history classes in university and maybe an ecology and chemistry class. I may open my old textbook from high school.

You said something that intrigued me. You said that carbon sequestration is a game-changer. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

[Kimberly Cornish]

I think right now we have so many issues between economic development and climate-smart practices. It seems to be an either-or scenario. I think, if we can really understand the capabilities and the how of soil carbon sequestration, we can open up more possibilities for the sustainable development of industry, because we know exactly how much we can sink into the land.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Dr. Misiewicz, can you explain to me a little bit about the difference between synthetic pesticides and what is done in the organic sector?

[Dr. Tracy Misiewicz]

Absolutely. I'll be speaking from a U.S. perspective on this one.

In the United States, there are over 900 synthetic pesticides approved for use in agriculture, and about 20 synthetic pesticides that are approved for use in organic agriculture. Organic farmers are allowed to use those 20 pesticides that have been deemed to be non-toxic, and they are added to our approved list. Otherwise, the majority of pesticides that are used by organic producers are considered by the USDA and FDA to be grass or generally regarded as safe. They include things like oils or insecticidal soaps. That's the primary difference.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

You mentioned soil organic health. Can you elaborate a little bit more on how that is helpful to the environment and the soil?