Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee.
My name is Duane Thompson. I'm a beef and crop producer from Saskatchewan and the chair of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association's environment committee. I'm pleased to have CCA staff person Fawn Jackson with me today.
The last time we presented to the committee we discussed the beef industry's contribution to environmental outcomes and outlined our robust 2030 goals. As part of the discussion, we outlined the 44 million acres of grassland under the stewardship of Canadian beef producers and how we're losing this at-risk ecosystem at astonishing rates.
With that in mind, we would like to do a deeper dive into the land use within the agriculture sector, as it's the highest correlating factor to our ability to deliver on our shared environmental commitments, including climate change and biodiversity, amongst others.
Analysis by the Nature Conservancy of Canada shows that, on average over the past 25 years, roughly 148,000 acres of temperate native grasslands have been lost through conversion each year. This doesn't include the tame pastures and hay lands, which are also being lost. In fact, a recent study by Nature United identified stopping this loss as the number one solution we have for natural climate solutions.
Naturally, we have to ask, why did this happen and what do we need to do to turn this around?
There are several reasons we saw this change and shift in agriculture use. Of course, the beef industry has had its economic challenges in the past, particularly in the early 2000s, following BSE. We saw a large economic impact that led to large land use changes that were felt for many years following. However, today, despite the beef industry being in a much stronger position economically in comparison to the BSE days, we continue to see loss of grasslands directly correlated to the shrinking cow herds.
One of the key factors is that the beef industry has less ability to manage risk associated with our sector in comparison with the cropping sector. For example, on our farm, we have more effective tools to manage our crop risks than we do our beef risks. Furthermore, our crop insurance is a cost-shared premium where our beef insurance is not. This is extremely important to our young producers and families. These factors lead to business decisions where farmers and ranchers convert land from pastures to cropland or perhaps sell for other purposes.
Today, with the demand on biofuels and crop prices as they are, there are further economic reasons for people to consider switching land use. Of course, in some cases, it might make sense to switch land use and we certainly want to leave it up to our private landholders to be able to make those decisions. However, we, along with our conservation partners, as you've previously heard, understand the immense environmental value that goes with keeping grasslands in production in Canada, such as carbon sequestration and immense biodiversity, including for species at risk.
We would suggest the development and adoption of a comprehensive land use strategy by all levels of government and stakeholders to strike a balance between urban expansion, agricultural production and environmental protection.
There are also further tools that we see as helpful to maintain grasslands, such as a national perennial forage conversion program, investments in term easements, enhancement of funding for programs that support best management practices, or programs that reward producers for carbon sequestration and biodiversity, water and wetland conservation.
In the beef industry, along with the robust membership of the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, we have ambitious 2030 goals, including maintaining 35 million acres of native grasslands and sequestering an additional 3.4 million tonnes of carbon every year. These efforts, combined with our work to reduce our greenhouse gas intensity hoofprint by 33% by 2030, which I would note is certainly on the right track with exciting new feed additives, as mentioned by the CRSB at their committee appearance, have us excited about both the environmental and economic future of the Canadian beef industry.
We in the beef industry are proud to be one of Canada's largest agriculture sectors, supporting 348,000 jobs and contributing $21.8 billion to the GDP, while conserving 44 million acres of the important grassland ecosystem that stores 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon.
We have much to offer, both to the Canadian economy and our environmental commitments, and we look forward to working with you on these shared goals.
Thank you very much for having us today. We look forward to questions.