Evidence of meeting #13 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was carbon.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Kody Blois
Thank you, Mr. Perron and Dr. Caron.
Mr. MacGregor now has the floor for six minutes.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for helping our committee make its way through this study. Your testimony has truly been very valuable to us.
Dr. Bedard-Haughn, I'd like to start with you.
Australia has just embarked on its first-ever national policy on soil. This is a framework that's really going to govern how Australians value, manage and improve their soil for the next 20 years. It's a strategy that has been launched in co-operation with state governments, with many industry and agricultural stakeholders and the larger community. There is going to be a lot of data collected from this initiative that they're going to make sure that they share, and really try to identify the priorities through research to figure out how they're going to manage this incredibly valuable resource.
I find this to be a helpful example because Australia's federal system of government is remarkably similar to what we have in Canada. They have their national capital in Canberra and they have their state governments just like we do here in Canada with our provinces. The distribution of powers is remarkably similar to what we have in Canada.
What is your opinion of Australia's national soil strategy, and do you think that is a model we could use here in Canada?
Dean and Professor, College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan, As an Individual
I certainly do think that type of distributed approach would be very valuable.
In some of my own research, where we're looking at soil information systems, we often talk about what we refer to as a “federated model” as being one of the ideals, just given some of those regional differences, because if you centralize it to a single location, you lose some of that regional expertise.
To me, in an ideal world, if we're looking at a national soil information system, it would be built off of harmonization of regional systems. There are certainly plenty of data models for this, but that federated system, then, is such that information from Quebec, the Prairies and the Maritimes can be brought in and then essentially be harmonized. Ideally you have some standards, as I mentioned earlier, in place so that when the data is collected in the first place, it can be more readily compared with each other.
The other piece to keep in mind with that—and I think this is some of what Monsieur Caron was touching on—is that given some of those regional differences as well, it is important to make sure that we are measuring the right things. It may be having a good handle on nitrous oxide as well as soil carbon, as well as some of the other risk factors when we're looking at soil health. All of those various factors play into the overall picture of soil health.
When I am describing soil health, while carbon is a common indicator, it's so much more than that. It's really about the optimal function of the soil. It would be a distributed system that allows us to look at a soil in the context of what is the optimum function for that soil, such that for some of the organic soils that are used for agriculture in Quebec, their optimum function would look different from the P.E.I. potato fields.
There's what do we need to measure across these different areas, but I think the database could draw from the regions, so there would need to be that regional support. That would be the only risk. If you have differences in priorities among the different regions you would have to be sure there was that regional support in place so that you have the quality data that could feed into the federated system. That's one of the things that Australia has done very well.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you very much.
Dr. Caron, in one of the previous questions you were asked about soil productivity and how that works with compaction.
Just to inform this committee, can you just elaborate on that? What happens to the soil's ecology and micro-organisms when that compaction occurs, and what does that do to nutrient cycling and a plant's ability to grow?
You mentioned that in highly compacted areas, farmers are forced to use more fertilizer. I would like to invite you to delve a little bit deeper into that to help inform this committee's study.
Agronomist, Professor, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Chair in Conservation and Restoration of Cultivated Organic Soils, Université Laval, Soil Science and Agrifood Engineering Department, As an Individual
When the soil becomes compacted, the amount of air inside the soil is reduced. Initially, microbes use oxygen, but when they run out of oxygen, they start to take nitrogen from the soil and use it to breathe. At this point, they emit either nitrogen gas, N2, or nitrous oxide, N2O.
Work by Nimlesh Balaine in New Zealand on soil compaction has shown that as soils become more compacted, they could lose 10% to 60% of the nitrogen applied in the form of N2 or N2O. This is a huge amount.
As soils become more compacted, the likelihood of this happening becomes greater,especially in the context of climate change, where rainfall that used to occur once every two years 20 years ago is now occurring up to four times a year. This means that the soil remains wetter for longer and is more oxygen deficient, which means that more and more nitrogen is likely to be emitted at the beginning of the season.
We aren't sure yet, but according to the indicators on the situation in Quebec in the recent study on soil health, 60% of the soil was below this value.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Kody Blois
Dr. Caron, your time is up.
Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.
Mr. Epp now has the floor for five minutes.
Conservative
Dave Epp Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to both witnesses for their excellent testimony this morning.
I'd like to begin with Dr. Bedard-Haughn.
I will be lobbying my committee members to ensure that all three of your recommendations and points end up in the final report. I really do feel that they are very timely and accurate.
Being a farm boy from southern Ontario, from vegetable producers, I also appreciate the dirt-under-the-nails perspective that we bring to the settings that we find ourselves in. I'd like to begin by talking about Canada's participation in a lot of international discussions around some of the climate challenges and some of the soil challenges that we're facing.
Can you provide your assessment of some benchmarking as to where Canada is, relative to the other breadbaskets? Obviously, Ukraine is much in the news now but there are also the U.S.; Australia, which we've talked about a bit, and Brazil as other major food- producing areas.
Where are we at in our soil preservation, and in our storing our carbon and our gas emissions from agriculture? Can you provide us with a rough benchmark?
Dean and Professor, College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan, As an Individual
The challenge of course becomes that of regionality. If I were to provide a generalization, it might be true for one region but not for another.
When I think very broadly in terms of some of the work we've done in the west, certainly we have stored a lot of carbon here through mechanisms like conservation tillage. If I look south of the border to the U.S. at our comparators for the northern Great Plains, there is quite a bit of conservation tillage in parts of the more semi-arid Great Plains. If you go further south and east into some of the corn country and beyond, it gets to be much more straight ahead with intensive tillage and high fertilizer use, and there would still be a lot of greenhouse gases being emitted in those very intensive production systems. There is a lot of risk associated with those.
Again, Brazil is probably comparable to Canada in a lot of ways in terms of the mix of systems there. One of the challenges that you would see in parts of Brazil is where there is continued deforestation. There is going to continue to be a lot of carbon emitted in association with that as more and more land is cleared. That represents one of the biggest periods of carbon loss associated with the system.
Conservative
Dave Epp Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
Thank you, Dr. Bedard-Haughn.
I hate to cut you off, but what I'm hearing you say is that there is a lot of variability, and for that reason, we have to be careful that we don't import across-the-world solutions to address the problem.
Dean and Professor, College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan, As an Individual
Conservative
Dave Epp Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
You talked about benchmarking measurements being so important.
Can you talk about the dynamics between private and public lab testing and the understanding of soil fertility?
With all the change and growth, is there unanimity in those perspectives from those sectors?
Dean and Professor, College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan, As an Individual
The short answer is no. There's quite a bit of difference when we think about public testing, because we tend to be looking at trying to understand the system, as opposed to trying necessarily to find quick answers. As a whole, we tend to look a little bit more at those variability pieces. That said, there are private companies now that are increasingly recognizing the importance of that variability, particularly when we think about precision agriculture as an important tool that we can implement so that we're not applying excess fertilizer across the whole field. We're applying it where it has the most impact and the least likelihood of being lost through nitrous oxide, for example, or through leaching.
I think that as the viability and impact of those continue to grow, we're going to see more of that appropriate landscape-focused sampling take place, but, at this point, I would say it's fairly disparate.
Conservative
Dave Epp Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
Thank you.
I definitely heard the plug for precision ag, and I'm assuming that's one area that governments can certainly help the industry move forward on.
Dr. Caron, I'd like to move to a bit of discussion on compaction. I grew up on a vegetable farm in southern Ontario, beginning more years than I want to recount with small equipment. We've greatly increased our equipment size, but we've also increased our tire pressures, and a lot of our neighbours have gone to tracking.
Would you agree that certainly footprint and kilograms per square centimetre—pounds per square inch is what I'm more used to—would be a greater consideration when talking about the size of the equipment? There are certainly a lot of advantages to automation. Could you give a quick comment, please?
Agronomist, Professor, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Chair in Conservation and Restoration of Cultivated Organic Soils, Université Laval, Soil Science and Agrifood Engineering Department, As an Individual
The weight, the axle load, should be reduced to less than three tonnes per wheel, according to the latest expert recommendations.
Earlier you mentioned the analyses. There are good databases for chemical parameters, but there is very little measurement of chemical and microbiological parameters in soils. Even if we could have access to the private producers' databases, a lot of that data would not be there, for example, the aeration and drainage indicators. We would benefit by being able to obtain them.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Kody Blois
Thank you, Dr. Caron.
Thank you, Mr. Epp.
Now, Mr. Louis, you have the floor for five minutes.
Liberal
Tim Louis Liberal Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair; I appreciate that.
Thank you to both our witnesses. Your study is showing us that it is really our responsibility when borrowing and taking care of this land for future generations.
Dr. Caron, I want to let you continue. You were on a roll, and maybe you could take another minute to continue answering that question.
Agronomist, Professor, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Chair in Conservation and Restoration of Cultivated Organic Soils, Université Laval, Soil Science and Agrifood Engineering Department, As an Individual
Regarding Mr. Epp's question, right now we have very few biodiversity assessments. However, metagenomic techniques are increasingly available. Since we are not monitoring the situation, it's as if we didn't have statistics on the health of individuals. It's very difficult to develop public policy based on a picture that is inaccurate.
I would therefore like to take this opportunity to make our decision‑makers aware of the importance of having a statistics program that would take regional realities into account when making decisions or recommendations. More effort or investment is needed to encourage follow‑up analyses that are necessary for the development of these portraits.
Liberal
Tim Louis Liberal Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
Thank you.
Dr. Bedard-Haughn, I'm hearing both of you say that more data is necessary. We are also hearing that more public awareness is necessary and addressing costs to our farmers.
If I were to go back to the first point on more data, could you help me understand if farmers themselves would be participating in these samples, or is this something that would require more levels of technology than an average farmer has? How would we get down to the actual ground level?
Dean and Professor, College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan, As an Individual
I think there are two components there. One of the challenges we face, given the wide range of spatial variability associated with soil carbon, with asking a farmer to do this without providing a lot of important context to them is just knowing how to collect the sample properly, because collecting a soil sample for analysis.... If you over-compact it, for example, or you get too loose of a sample, that's going to influence your results. As well, there's going to be a big implication from where in the field you collect the sample, so a farmer might inadvertently overestimate the amount of carbon they have depending on where they collect that sample.
I think a combination of a more controlled or government-organized data sampling strategy would be important, but it could be complemented with some of those other techniques. For example, as we build that spectroscopic database that I was referring to earlier, there may be more opportunities for producers to collect more of those samples themselves, or in partnership with the agronomist they might hire to help with their work as well.
Liberal
Tim Louis Liberal Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
Given your level of expertise, what would your best-case timeline be? What would you like to see? How fast can we move on this one?
I saw you smiling.
Dean and Professor, College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan, As an Individual
That depends how much we want to invest in it. That's always the challenge. We can move fairly quickly if we throw enough money at a problem, as we saw with the COVID vaccines. We can move very quickly if we have the right resources, but we need to....
It takes a good bit of time to get out...it's 81% of the farmland here in the Prairies. That's a big area if we want to get a systematic sampling carried out.
Liberal
Tim Louis Liberal Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
If I could switch to Dr. Caron, you mentioned that a major barrier to adopting the agricultural practices that support soil health is the price of commodities themselves, which remain low. That makes it difficult for the growers to be able to afford the costs.
Sometimes we hear that rotations are disappearing, not only because of the cost, but also because of the disappearance of mixed agriculture. Initiatives like agroforestry—I think you mentioned that in your statement—and agricultural systems providing better biodiversity and additional rotations are needed.
Can you address why rotations might be different and disappearing like that? How can we encourage agroforestry or more diversity among farms, as they're becoming more and more focused on one crop?
Agronomist, Professor, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Chair in Conservation and Restoration of Cultivated Organic Soils, Université Laval, Soil Science and Agrifood Engineering Department, As an Individual
That's a very good point and an excellent question.
In fact, we do a lot to encourage grain corn and soybean production in the east. However, these grains are often grown by people who specialize in this sector. But in some sectors, such as dairy and pork production, producers also sometimes grow other products that they need on the farm. In many other cases, however, producers focus exclusively on grains such as corn, soybeans, wheat or barley in their rotation sequences. However, these rotations bring very little organic matter back to the soil and are regularly done with Roundup herbicides, which tend to restrict the range of crops that can be grown. So there is a real need to encourage the introduction of third and fourth crops. The development of crops such as legumes, protein crops, such as peas, should be encouraged to diversify production.
