Good afternoon. Thank you very much for having me here today.
My name is Wade Barnes. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Farmers Edge. Farmers Edge is a technology company that operates in a majority of the key exporting nations in agriculture. We were founded here in Manitoba. Just in Canada alone, we operate on nine million acres. We go out and we connect farms. We help those farms move through digitalization. We provide analytics and help them make key decisions on their farms. Some of the by-product of that is carbon offsets and sustainability.
The other part of what I do is that I'm a farmer, born and raised on the family farm in Manitoba, right along the Saskatchewan border, on the right side of the border to cheer for the right and winning football team, mind you—no offence to any of the folks from Saskatchewan on the line. I'm also a trained agronomist. I've worked in the industry for close to 20 years. We have a unique perspective on how agriculture and sustainability will play out.
There are really four key initiatives we want to drive home.
The first one is collaboration. There does not need to be a difference between economic development and the environment. As most farmers know, it is good business to be environmentally sustainable. I think the majority of farms we operate within Canada—and we operate in Ontario and western Canada, not yet Quebec, but hopefully in the future—are doing the right things to essentially create sustainability. They have a natural attachment to this land, but they have a real focus around productivity.
One thing we hear from an agronomic standpoint that concerns us is the view around a reduction in nitrogen. I can tell you that a lot of the things that Farmers Edge does from a company's perspective is to enhance farmers' use of crop inputs, specifically around nitrogen. Our view is that, if government goes in and reduces the amount of nitrogen that is used on the farm, you'll essentially reduce productivity. If I use my own example as a farmer on my own farm, if we reduce nitrogen by 30%, we'll reduce my productivity by 25%, which will really end up costing me, on the canola that I grow, somewhere around $225 an acre. If you multiply that across 20 million acres of canola, it's a huge amount of revenue that will be pulled out of the farming community.
From my agronomic side, my concern is that a reduction of nitrogen may not give the reduction in nitrous oxide that people may be looking for, and that's the real concern. I think we have significant opportunity to enhance and help farmers move towards sustainable practices like the 4R program. What this really enables is not a give on productivity. You can have your cake and eat it to. You can have maximum productivity with, essentially, the most environmentally sound applications of crop input out there in the marketplace.
One way we can move toward this, from a Farmers Edge perspective, is that Canada has a unique opportunity—and you have to remember that I've worked in many markets around the world—to be a powerhouse in digital agriculture. There would be an opportunity to connect farms and utilize technology to be a world leader. That will enable farms to utilize technology, to go out and implement tools like the 4R program and to create much more sustainability on those farms, which will create significant opportunities beyond just producing grains, and have that ability to connect with that end consumer, which is, I think, really important and could be a unique opportunity.
With that, if we think about it, if we can enhance farms and motivate them to move towards adoption of technology, there's a huge opportunity around the creation of offsets. Today Farmers Edge, on the nine million acres we work with, will create over $3 million to $4 million in offsets, whether it be through nitrogen management, no tillage or cover crops, and we'll be utilizing those offsets and selling them on the voluntary market.
Our view is that there's a huge opportunity here to create value beyond just growing grains as a commodity by utilizing the tools we have to create offsets and allow Canada to be a powerhouse in sustainability.
With that, as farmers implement technology, the ability to create carbon offsets on the farms creates significant opportunities downstream when you think about how the majority of food companies are now looking at their own zero-emissions goals. Many of them are looking to source low-carbon grain. Again, the Canadian farmer can be a world leader in that. We have the opportunity to capture that value and capture it now.
The other thing I wanted to touch on is that, when we utilize carbon offsets to create value for the growers so that they invest in technology, it creates a much broader ecosystem. When you think about government's role in risk management and how the government funds risk management and how it helps support lending programs, and you think about how implementing technology can allow farmers to go out and create opportunities whereby they can get better insurance products, better risk management and better lending opportunities, that starts to take some of the risk off government and puts it towards private industry. Private industry can go out and utilize the data that farmers are creating and essentially provide those better management practices.
Right now, we see in Canada, but specifically in western Canada where most of our customers are, that there's a lot of concern around government coming in with environmental restrictions. We see that as an opportunity. Again, if they do it in the right way, farmers can create significant value out of these offsets. Utilizing technology and digitalizing agriculture can then allow for better risk management, crop insurance and lending.
I want to leave you with the idea that Canada has a tremendous opportunity here if things are done in the right way, using a collaborative approach that includes industry, farmers and the government.
I'm excited to answer any questions. Thank you.