Agriculture Committee on June 8th, 2021

[Fawn Jackson]

I certainly appreciate that question, and I must admit that I think we perhaps took it for granted for a bit too long that Canadians were connected to the farm and really understood what was happening on the farms. We are fully aware that we need to have very serious conversations with Canadians to help them understand that beef production in Canada preserves a native ecosystem, one that's endangered and one that is very integrated with the success of the cropping ecosystem in Canada too, so we're certainly fully in on this.

We partnered, for example, on a film called, Guardians of the Grasslands. Please, everybody watch it. Please share it through your networks. That's something, and thanks for the question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Jackson. We're out of time.

Mr. Ellis has the floor for six minutes.

Go ahead, Mr. Ellis.

[Neil Ellis, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I thank the witnesses for attending. My first question goes to both of the witnesses.

The Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada report entitled “Environmental Sustainability of Canadian Agriculture” explains that the provinces, supported by the federal government, have been working with farmers to help them implement environmental farm plans in order to reduce the environmental impact of their activities since 2005. However, the report notes that farmers often fail to fully implement the beneficial management practices identified in their plans because of economic pressures and lack of time.

What could the federal government do to support farmers in implementing environmental farm plans, and in what ways can economic pressures deter farmers from implementing these environmental farm plans?

[Aldyen Donnelly]

Should I start?

[Neil Ellis, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Yes, you can start.

[Aldyen Donnelly]

Farmers need revenues from new sources, not just inside the food supply chain but outside the food supply chain. This opportunity for them to coincidentally sequester carbon in their soils while they're adopting practices that reduce water pollution, increase water filtration and retention rates and deliver all sorts of other biodiversity benefits, might be, in fact, a one-time opportunity to provide the financing or spawn the financing that farmers need to adopt the changes in land management that are being recommended by the experts at this time.

[Fawn Jackson]

I would add that through the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef certified sustainable program—it's outcome-based, so farmers can choose how they would like to deliver on the outcomes that we're looking for—the use of environmental farm plans has been very helpful for some producers in proving what they've been able to do.

It's certainly been a helpful tool, but I would echo that it's one tool in the tool box. We need to make sure that we have a number.

[Neil Ellis, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Canadian Cattlemen's Association, you kind of touched on your 2030 goals, and I just wanted to know if you could explain your goals. If you had goals before this, are there targets that were set before 2030?

[Fawn Jackson]

We do have a number of goals. I'm really happy to share them and how we plan on achieving them. A few of them are to safeguard the 35 million acres of native grasslands. I would note that those are the native grasslands, but there are, of course, all the tame grasslands and the hay lands that also offer pollinator habitat and all the other benefits too. The goal is to safeguard those and to safeguard the carbon that is stored in them.

We also want to sequester an additional 3.4 million tonnes of carbon every year and to reduce our greenhouse gas intensity by 33% by 2030.

I think it's really important that we look at the broad array of government policies that are being brought forward right now on climate change and make sure that they don't have unintended consequences in how they interact. I do want to make that point.

[Neil Ellis, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Ms. Donnelly, you ran out of time, and you weren't able to touch on your six recommendations.

Could you explain any of them to us?

[Aldyen Donnelly]

Sure.

The most important one is the opportunity. The necessity here is to develop carbon offset quantification and credit issuance protocols that are in fact very different, but reflect the lessons learned from the experiences in other jurisdictions. Those existing offset markets have failed. They've taught us a lot. Now it's time for us to build the system that's really going to work.

Of the six, the second really important thing is that, back in the 1990s, the experts, the community and AAFC agreed that critical to making this market work is building and sustaining a network of experimental sites across the country where we're doing robust soil and plant nutrient testing and publishing the data so that the whole agriculture community can see what's been proved in those soils. In fact, Canada committed to building and maintaining that network back in the 1990s. The funding for it fell apart in the mid-2000s.

The USDA did the same thing. They got funding in place in 2002. They agreed that it was a key backbone. They got all the funding in place to do what was required in the United States in funding submissions that said that Canada's doing it right so the U.S. needs to do it right too. By 2009, their funding was cut.

From those lessons, I think we've learned we need to build that backbone—that network of experimental sites. We need to build it in such a way that it's seen as key infrastructure and will attract private financing, so that we don't yet again go down a path of depending on government revenues that'll be cut in five to seven years and have it fall apart again.

[Neil Ellis, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

My last question is to the Canadian Cattlemen's Association.

Since the implementation of a price on pollution, what steps has your organization or the sector taken to facilitate a transition to greener alternatives?

[Fawn Jackson]

Our environmental goals are certainly a portion of that. Right now, though, we're particularly focused on carbon markets and the development of protocols so that meaningful protocols will be put in place to recognize the practices done by beef producers so that we can further our contribution.

Those are a couple of the examples. I could go on for a long time, though.

[Neil Ellis, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Ellis.

Thank you, Ms. Jackson.

We'll go to Monsieur Perron for six minutes.

Go ahead, Monsieur Perron.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for joining us today. I'll start with Ms. Jackson.

Ms. Jackson, you talk about the very interesting aspect of preserving native grasslands, natural species and such. How does that preservation help create a balance with the production of gas by livestock? We are often presented with those arguments. How do you strike a balance? Is there a way to measure it?

[Fawn Jackson]

Yes, absolutely. We've been going to great lengths to make sure that we can measure it so that we can set goals to reduce it.

As Duane mentioned in his comments, we already have a footprint that is 50% of the world average. Our producers, in partnership with veterinarians, nutritionists and researchers who keep on driving it forward, are certainly focused on that reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions.

Also, on the other side of the ledger is this amazing store of carbon. I think it wasn't fully appreciated previously how stable it is and also that there's the opportunity to increase the carbon sequestration in those grasslands through very targeted grazing management practices. I think lots of people have really heard about the emissions side of beef production, but they really haven't heard about this other side. We need to make sure that we're understanding it as a whole picture.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you.

I'd also like you or Mr. Thompson to tell me more about the experimental grazing areas that have been able to prevent forest fires in British Columbia. Can you give me a little more detail on that?

[Duane Thompson]

I'm no expert on it, but the cattle in a forest environment have the ability, between grazing, tramping and inhabiting those areas, to keep the underbrush down to a minimum and keep that fuel source down, so it doesn't present the risk of the major fires that we've had in the past.

In the past, there were small fires that kept those covers of understorey in check. Because it's closer to urban areas now, small fires are not acceptable. Cattle can come in to replace that, keep some of that undergrowth in check and hopefully mitigate some of the fire risk.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you.

It's a good example of interaction between types of environments.

Ms. Donnelly, when my colleague asked questions earlier, you emphasized the importance of units of measurement and of recognizing the contribution of previous producers.

You claim that, based on land area, we are able to measure the state of production, the level of innovation of producers and thereby have a fair starting point for everyone, for those who are still major polluters and for those who have already made efforts in the past to obtain credits.

Did I get that right?

[Aldyen Donnelly]

You did. You will hear that I rarely use the term “measure”. I default to “estimate”. We are estimating the impacts of changes in practices, changes in soil treatment and management techniques, relative to a baseline, and there are uncertainties that are quite substantial associated with those estimates. However, if we're comparing trends over time, using techniques we know now, we can come up with a reliable enough credit quantification and issuance procedure to build a market in which there is confidence, as long as we are producing our estimates with uncertainty intervals. That's the big change. Getting a soil test result out of a lab with estimates that include uncertainties requires the labs to operate differently in the future from how they typically operate now, but we know how to do that. That's the first thing.

We can talk about it more if you'd like, but I also think it's not hard, once the private sector knows what the uncertainty intervals are, to construct financial rewards and contracts that reimburse the farmer or rancher initially, based on a conservative interpretation of the estimate, and supplement the payment to the farmer over time as uncertainty declines over time.

You can build incentives for investment in innovation and new technology into the crediting market from day one.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

That's fine.

Thank you very much.

That's a very clear answer.

In your remarks, you mentioned that voluntary programs do not work very well. However, a number of witnesses have told us that it is important to free up local creativity, to give producers flexibility, so that there can be specific innovations. I don't see how that could be done in a mandatory program.

Can you elaborate on that?

[Aldyen Donnelly]

Whether the program is voluntary or mandatory, the key is to not prescribe practices to land managers. It's to come up with those estimation and crediting methods that I just referred to in order to reward outcomes and to build the reward in such a way that the farmers, the landowners, get more with better numbers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you. I have to jump to the next question.

Mr. MacGregor, you have six minutes. Go ahead.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I'll start with the Canadian Cattlemen's Association. Maybe I'll just make a couple of quick comments.

Mr. Thompson, in a former life I worked as a tree planter for eight years. One of my big contracts was at the Douglas Lake Ranch in British Columbia, so I've certainly seen how cattle keep the forest fire danger down through that rotational grazing through their lands.

One other thing is that the B.C. Cattlemen's Association were very kind to invite me out to the Okanagan in September of last year. I visited two ranches that had previously won the Ranch Sustainability Award. I went to the Clifton Ranch in Keremeos and the Casorso Ranch in Oliver. It was very educational to actually speak to the ranchers themselves, to actually go and visit the grasslands and to see the relationship between cattle and grass, because of course, this relationship is thousands of years old. Before we had cattle, we had bison there. We have to remember that the best farming practices mimic what's already going on in nature, so you need to have that relationship between plant and animal and mimic what has been going on for thousands of years.

Ms. Jackson, you've already given the committee a lot of information, but in one minute or so, is there anything else that you want to cover maybe in the context of the recommendations you'd like to see in this kind of report to the federal government specifically?