For the first time in a year and half or whatever it is, I did it: I finally was the one who was on mute. My apologies. I just got excited about talking to the witnesses.
Thank you to everyone for being here. I very much appreciate it. I'm so excited I did not unmute my microphone.
I'd like to begin by addressing Ms. Ross and maybe ask some questions.
We all know that farmers are on the front line of worsening climate impacts and unpredictable weather posing threats to our sector. So many of the farmers I'm speaking to—we are all around the country—are practising a lot of beneficial management practices to reduce GHGs. They're sequestering carbon. They are increasing their resilience and with more government support will be able to practice more climate-friendly farming practices. We even heard witnesses in the last panel talk about wet harvests and the ongoing higher risks of these conditions.
We're all looking for a more productive, competitive and resilient farm sector. We're looking also for alternatives to lowering emissions and supporting that innovation. All the parties in Canada have agreed that we need to price pollution, and now exemptions already exist on farm fuels. As discussed, with this bill we'd be exempting for heating, but another way to make the agriculture sector more competitive would be to lower emissions and costs in other ways. You touched on a few. I wondered if you could expand on them.
Part of your organization's six high-impact program proposals included doing more with less nitrogen, increasing adoption of cover cropping, normalizing rotational grazing, and protecting wetlands. Could you expand on some of those ways in which we could also become more competitive and lower our emissions in that sector?