Agriculture Committee on March 31st, 2022

[Clyde Graham]

The 4R program has gone through extensive scientific evaluation by major Canadian universities, and in some cases government researchers, to show the benefits. Certainly, we've demonstrated reductions in nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer use, losses of phosphorus to water and leaching to groundwater.

All [Technical difficulty—Editor] show that farmers' net economic returns from 4Rs are very positive, so we are seeing a growing adoption by farmers across Canada.

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Graham.

Mr. Pharand, do you want to comment as well?

[Benoit Pharand]

If you are talking about training on these nutrients, I can tell you that, in conjunction with Fertilizer Canada, we have provided various types of training to technologists and agronomists, that is, to the people who are applying them on the ground, in the fields.

We will be entering into a new agreement to direct farmers to this sector. In Quebec, environmental farm plans for fertilization already take into account some factors specific to that province. Over the next few months and years, we will be anchoring these principles in Quebec agriculture.

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you so much.

Mr. Chair, I think my time is up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

You gave us nine seconds back, so we'll remember that in the future.

Mr. Perron, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Pharand, you mentioned that your main concern was that the products arrive on time, which we understand, of course. Mr. McGregor asked a very good question earlier. He pointed out that we can expect the sanctions to be in effect for quite a while.

How could we find alternate suppliers or get local producers to take advantage of this space opening up in the market?

Is it realistic to think we could take steps to foster the development of local industries, and do it quickly?

[Benoit Pharand]

First, in terms of the missing products—and I am talking about Quebec here—some were ordered in October and they never left port. So they didn't arrive. Others were ordered in January. The products representing the entire supply to meet our needs for the year had already been ordered so that they could be shipped on time. We have four to five weeks left before the season starts, in my opinion, unless the weather doesn't cooperate. We need those products as soon as the season starts.

I have spoken to all our members. We're considering various options for sourcing elsewhere. All options are on the table. In Quebec, the St. Lawrence River makes it very easy for us. We will find solutions.

As to whether we'll be able to source locally, I would tell you that it would be difficult in the medium to long term, although we are considering all options. As soon as the season is over, we will begin to address supply for 2023, in addition to seeding and post-emergence applications.

All options will be considered. Of course, we will have to consider price, availability and quality of product. We are looking at that right now.

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

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

I'm sorry, Mr. Perron, but you only have 10 seconds left. So your time is up.

Since Mr. MacGregor is giving up his turn, I will use my discretion to allocate two minutes to the Conservative Party and two minutes to the Liberal Party.

Do you want two minutes, Mr. Epp?

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Yes. Thank you.

In Canada, we have the opportunity to become—if we get things built—self-sufficient in nitrogen. We have the feedstocks, and we certainly have potassium that we can supply ourselves and others with.

I'd like to focus a bit on phosphorus, both in the short term and the longer term.

My understanding is that Florida is one of our suppliers, but it's waning in production. Obviously, Russia and Morocco have been suppliers. If Russia ceases to be a supplier...my understanding is that the EU has banned some imports of phosphate from Morocco due to cadmium concerns.

Where are we at with that, from a cadmium perspective, in the future? My understanding is that it's not that serious, but I'd like Fertilizer Canada's perspective on that.

[Clyde Graham]

Canada has very stringent regulations on the presence of cadmium in fertilizer. I believe that the imports of phosphate fertilizer from Morocco meet the Canadian standard, which has been well established and there's a great deal of confidence in it. The EU has a different kind of standard. As we know, there are times when the European Union will engage in standards that are more about protectionism than—

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you. I'd like to get one more question in, if I may.

Can we consider phosphate sources from our cities, from our sewage systems? I know as a vegetable producer I've been banned from using it, but I know our grains can. Is that a potential, viable source of phosphate in the future, and/or do we have potential mine sources further north?

[Clyde Graham]

The last phosphate mine in Canada closed quite a few years ago in Kapuskasing, Ontario. I'm not aware of any other economically feasible deposit in Canada. There are limitations. Phosphate, like potash, depends on the availability of the deposits—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you, Mr. Graham. I apologize, but we're going to have to leave it there. I welcome you to send any additional information to this committee, because I think it's a warranted question.

[Clyde Graham]

Will do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Mr. Louis, you're going to finish this up. It's over to you for two minutes.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses. I appreciate this.

I wanted to maybe continue the conversation a bit more on the long term. We know that fertilizers are the largest on-farm expense for crop producers, and even prior to the conflict in Ukraine, the prices had already risen rapidly.

Canada's fertilizer industry is one of the most efficient in world, so I'm interested in learning about the sustainable methods of improving the industry's environmental impacts, ways of using less fertilizer that won't cut into productivity, because we've already heard it. Our farmers want to do their part by acting on climate change and reducing emissions. Efficient fertilizer management is integral to any program and can be cost-saving to farmers. This is especially true of nitrogen, which, if used ineffectively, can contribute to nitrous oxide emissions, which are more powerful than carbon dioxide.

I looked into the nitrous oxide emission reduction protocol, which gives farmers a new way of benefiting from reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Can you at Fertilizer Canada—either witness—explain the program that helps our farmers with climate-smart agriculture?

[Clyde Graham]

Sure. I would note that the committee could reference the recent discussion paper from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada on its emission reduction plan for fertilizer. I think in the plan you'll note that there are 26 different references to 4R nutrient stewardship, and so we greatly appreciate the confidence that the Department of Agriculture has placed in that program, and we're anticipating a spirit of co-operation with the department. That will be very important.

Under 4R nutrient stewardship, farmers are encouraged to use the right source of fertilizer at the right rate, the right time, the right place. When they are doing this with the reduction of nitrous oxide in mind, we've seen scientific data show a 15% to 25% reduction in N2O emissions per unit of crop produced. I think with some of the enhanced efficiency products, that could even be higher than that.

Also, we are always looking to help growers get the maximum value they can from every dollar they spend on fertilizer, and that's a key component of the 4R nutrient stewardship program.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you, Mr. Graham. Thank you, Mr. Louis.

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

Thank you for your leadership and your testimony on what is a really important subject. We certainly value your contributions.

Colleagues, we'll bid adieu to our first panel of witnesses. Please don't go far. We're going to just be a minute or two, and we will transition into the second panel and get going.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Colleagues and witnesses, we're going to continue.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, January 31, 2022, we are resuming our study of the environmental contribution of agriculture, so we're switching it up this hour.

Joining us today by video conference, from the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association, we have Cedric MacLeod, who serves as the executive director. From the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, we have Andrea Stroeve-Sawa, who serves as a council director, and also Kristine Tapley, who's also a council director, and Monica Hadarits, who serves as the executive director. From Ducks Unlimited Canada, we have Paul Thoroughgood, national manager of agricultural sustainability, and James W. Brennan, Jim Brennan, who is the national director of industry and government relations.

Welcome, everyone.

It's good to see you again, Mr. Brennan, and welcome to the committee.

We're going to have five minutes for opening remarks from each organization, and then we're going to get right into questions.

I'm going to start with Mr. MacLeod.

You have five minutes. The floor is yours.

[Cedric MacLeod, Executive Director, Canadian Forage and Grassland Association]

Thanks so much, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for the invitation. I'm really glad to be witnessing with some esteemed colleagues here today and I'm looking forward to a good discussion around this topic.

I'll start with some context. Around the Canadian forage sector, we're just about 70 million acres coast to coast, so it is the largest land use type in Canadian agriculture. It's important to note that and it impacts a lot of the other witnesses on the panel this afternoon.

There's a challenge though that we see before us, and I''ll give you a few numbers pulled from the census data here. Back in 2011, we had roughly just over 36 million acres of what we call native rangeland, which have been around for some thousands of years. And when we moved to five years later, 2016, we were looking at just over 35 million acres. It's about a loss of a million acres of native rangeland. I'll discuss a little bit later why that's so important.

Similar to the tame forage sector between 2011 and 2016, we saw just under a loss of four million acres of forages across Canada. That trend unfortunately has continued. So if we look into the latest census data, you're going to see that continued decline in the number of forage acres across the country. To compare to other annual type crops in the country, with the forage sector generally, the crops produced are fed here in Canada. It is part of the cyclical economy, so we're moving our nutrients back and through our livestock systems and back out onto the landscapes. It creates a resilient system that needs to be protected.

The forage sector in Canada [Technical difficulty—Editor] thousands of tonnes of dry hay products around the world into countries like the United States, Korea, Japan, China and numerous destinations throughout the Middle East, so it's an important contributor there to economic development or the total GDP of the country.

As we move into the environmental impacts, I'm going to reference a document and I will share this document as evidence for the committee. In 2012, we had a study commissioned that looked at the total economic value of the Canadian forage sector and also its environmental contribution. I'll mention a few numbers to note out of that report. These are coming out of Alberta and Saskatchewan respectively.

The total ecological goods and services value of the forage sector in Alberta was estimated from just under $400 million to somewhere in the $1.3 billion range. And, yes, that is a big range because markets fluctuate and the study is due for a refresh.

In Saskatchewan, there was the same value, about $890 million to $1.9 billion, so significant contributions from [Inaudible—Editor].

What are those contributions? We've got carbon sequestration. We know those 36 million acres of native rangeland out west contained billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalence that needed to be protected. And as we're seeing the conversion of those native rangelands into annual croplands, we are losing that carbon. So that's an important consideration that needs to be protected and we need to stem that reduction.

Also, there's the provision of biodiversity and habitat features. One of the richest habitat features in Canadian agriculture with respect to species at risk and species in general is Canadian grasslands. As we lose those grassland acres, so too we lose those habitats, and that creates additional pressure on our species at risk.

There is also water quality. Water that moves across that is not absorbed within agricultural soils typically finds itself into a forage of some sort. So we are offering significant water quality protection and those barriers are a natural filtration to our water systems, rivers and riparian zones as well as wetlands.

I'm going to close out here. In the larger conversation these days on soil health, forages, both annuals and perennials, are driving a lot of those contributions, so when it comes to climate resilience, the forage sector is the foundation for supporting that soil health.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you very much, Mr. MacLeod.

We'll turn now to Ms. Hadarits, for five minutes.

[Monica Hadarits, Executive Director, Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef]

Mr. Chair, if it's okay, I'm going to hand it off to Andrea Stroeve-Sawa, who will deliver our remarks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Ms. Stroeve-Sawa, please go ahead.

[Andrea Stroeve-Sawa, Council Director, Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef]

Good afternoon, and thank you for the invitation to participate in the standing committee's study on the environmental contribution of agriculture.

My name is Andrea Stroeve-Sawa, and I am a beef producer from Taber, Alberta. I am also a council director for the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, the CRSB.

The CRSB is a multi-stakeholder organization focused on advancing sustainability in the Canadian beef sector. We bring together beef farmers and ranchers, processors, retail and food service companies, NGOs, food and agriculture businesses, academic institutes and various levels of government. We believe collaborative and outcome-based approaches to addressing challenges and opportunities in the food system are imperative to making meaningful progress.

Canada is a global leader in sustainable beef production. In 2016, Deloitte LLP completed a benchmarking study to help us understand the social, economic and environmental performance of Canadian beef, from farm to fork. The study found that Canadian beef has one of the lowest greenhouse gas footprints in the world—less than half the world average—and accounts for just 2.4% of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, beef producers manage 34 million acres of grasslands, a globally endangered ecosystem with less than 20% remaining intact. Those grasslands store 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon, sequester the equivalent of 3.6 million cars' worth of additional carbon emissions per year, and are home to over 60 species at risk.

This sector has reduced its greenhouse gas intensity per kilogram of beef by 14% over the past 30 years, and has set ambitious goals for 2030. These goals include, but are not limited to, reducing greenhouse gas intensity by a further 33%, sequestering an additional 3.4 million tonnes of carbon per year and maintaining the 34 million acres of grasslands in the care of beef producers.

A recent scientific study led by Nature United assessed natural climate solutions, and showed that avoided grassland conversion represented one of the largest climate change mitigation opportunities in Canada. We also need to collectively invest in long-term research, and enable innovations that help the sector reduce its greenhouse gas footprint. For example, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada researchers have demonstrated that a product called 3-NOP can reduce methane emissions by up to 70% to 80% in feedlot cattle. This product has been approved for use in the European Union, Brazil and Chile, but has not been approved for use in Canadian cattle. We need to have timely approvals and access to these types of technologies to help us achieve our goals.

In 2017, the CRSB launched the first outcome-based certification program for beef sustainability in the world. We are very proud of this achievement. The certification includes requirements for environmental management, including grasslands, tame pastures and soil health. However, the one thing that sets this program apart from other certification programs in the world is the comprehensive systems view we take on sustainability. For example, we also include requirements around people, the community, animal health and welfare, food safety, efficiency and innovation.

The program has grown substantially in the past few years, with 17% of the cattle herd now being raised on CRSB certified farms and ranches, and eight retail and food service companies sourcing beef through the program. A paper by Haugen-Kozyra in 2021 highlighted how this credible and robust program can be used as a model in other jurisdictions.

Food loss and waste in Canada is a huge problem. About 58% of food is lost or wasted annually. That means that all the resources used to grow and produce that food are also wasted. Cattle have the unique ability to combat food loss and waste by upcycling products that are not suitable for human consumption. This includes crops damaged by weather or pests, by-products of manufacturing and even produce that does not meet retail standards for appearance.

In addition, manure produced by cattle provides a natural fertilizer for cropland.

In our work, we've learned that it's important to understand the Canadian context and to develop solutions through collaborative processes. The Canadian beef sector is a key partner in achieving Canada's environmental goals, and we look forward to continuing to lead the world in sustainable beef production.

Thank you once again—