Thank you very much for the invitation to appear before your committee this morning.
I am a professor at Université Laval. I've worked on soil structure in Quebec, Ontario and throughout North America, which has given me a bird's-eye view of soil health based on observations that have been made.
I was very pleased to be asked to provide an expert opinion and to hear that a Senate committee was going to look at soil health. In fact, I've submitted a document in English and French that summarizes the three points I will be addressing this morning.
I've been in the field for 36 years. Throughout my career, I've observed certain things about the soil health situation.
First, the study by the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry and the work the House of Commons is undertaking today will play a critical role, because the soil health issue is largely underestimated by the general public.
The problem is not new. In 1984, the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, chaired by Senator Herb Sparrow at the time, addressed the issue of soil health and put forward significant points for change.
In the 1990s, soil health became a priority issue. In fact, a number of programs were established with encouraging results.
Then, in the early 2000s, we gradually abandoned the efforts that had been initiated, owing to a lack of public and private support.
The soil health issue still exists, however. Over the years, the problem has gone unnoticed because we have conducted very little structured, organized monitoring. In addition, we have no program to compile soil health statistics, much like Statistics Canada does to track the health of Canadians.
A network of soil test plots was set up in the 1990s to monitor soil from 1990 to 2005. The project was gradually abandoned, such that we're now missing some critical information.
As Ms. Bedard‑Haughn mentioned earlier, changes have been successful out west, especially the transition to reduced tillage and carbon storage. However, things are slightly different in eastern Canada. We're seeing soils get more compact, crops are being rotated less and less, and soils are losing organic matter. As a result, the soil degradation issue continues to grow, and this is going to have significant long-term consequences on soil health.
That brings me to my second point: By 2050, we will need to achieve gains in productivity for our soils, whose health is deteriorating in general.
The major barriers are the costs associated with crop rotation and the price of commodities such as corn and soybean, which is primarily controlled by an external exchange. We have very little control over that. Therefore, the lack of financial incentives and the financial pressures on prices are causing the gradual disappearance of crop rotation, which has negative repercussions on biodiversity, the accumulation of organic matter and soil compaction.
The third major point that concerns us is greenhouse gas emissions. There's no question that soils act as carbon sinks. Carbon storage could help us meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets. However, we must understand that if soils become more and more compacted, we will end up with some nitrogen, the most commonly used fertilizer, that denitrifies and is lost to the environment, contributing to global warming. The main source of nitrous oxide in Canada is N2O, which mainly comes from nitrogen fertilizers applied to agricultural land.
In recent years, partly because of a growing soil compaction problem, we've seen a gradual increase in the amounts of nitrogen applied regularly. Therefore, nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture are likely to increase, especially if we don't keep an eye on compaction issues.
Therefore, I feel it's important to introduce incentives in agri-environmental advisory clubs to help them quantify ecosystem services provided. This will deliver a clearer picture and restore benchmark sites, monitoring statistics and the state of soil health, much like what they do to monitor the health of Canadians.
Lastly, I feel it's important that we finally reward those who have adopted good practices in the past that are helping us to accelerate the transition to more sustainable agriculture. This will also help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions and capture more carbon.
Once again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my perspective.