Thank you.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to appear before you, and actually in person. It feels good.
I'm Susie Miller, executive director of the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Crops. We're an organization that is committed to pursuing opportunities and meeting the challenges of the sustainability of the production of cereals, oilseeds and pulses in Canada. Our members are grain farm organizations, input suppliers, grain marketers, food companies, conservation associations and researchers. We cover all of the stakeholders.
You've already received an extensive amount of excellent advice. Rather than repeating that, I thought I could focus my remarks on what grain farmers have told us about sustainability challenges and opportunities. We conducted conversations with them in winter last year and winter this year. We talked to over 600 individual farmers.
What they're saying is this. First and foremost, they want to be recognized for their contributions to climate solutions and for actions that they've taken and continue to take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on their farms and to sequester carbon in their soil. They feel somewhat like they're the villains, and they see themselves more like heroes. Good environmental practices like soil health have always been important to crop farmers. They're proud of the work they do. They want to be seen as professionals who have the expertise to undertake the right decisions.
They've told us that there are many ways to reach the end goals of soil health and GHG emissions reduction. It's important for them, for government and also for their customers not to arbitrarily dismiss certain practices as inadequate, to favour one practice over the other or to select a specific practice as “the” solution. They think their ways of reaching the end goal should be based on science, and they want the calculation of costs and benefits and impacts on them. Research is critical to identify not only best practices but also how to limit the risks of implementing new practices. They expressed that new and improved technology can help them in where they want to go.
They also told us—I'm sure you've heard this before—that the differences between regions and between farms must be recognized. One size does not fit all is something that we heard quite frequently. One example they raised quite often was no till. As a beneficial practice in western Canada, it could be more challenging in eastern Canada with wetter climates. Cover crops, for example, are challenging when the ground is frozen by the time you harvest.
Farmers have also told us that modern farming practices and wildlife can and do coexist. When it comes to nature-based solutions, they see some significant cost or lost revenue that can conflict with their risk management and viability goals. They would like to see these costs quantified and considered when supporting nature-based solutions.
They expressed most of all that they really do want to contribute. They feel that they do already, but they want to contribute more. They see potential conflicts, or more like trade-offs, between various priorities of the Government of Canada and the people of Canada that implicate them: reducing greenhouse gas emissions from farms, increasing the feedstock for renewable fuels, Canada’s contribution to world food security and the farm sector’s contribution to the economic growth. They're not certain how they can help meet all of those at the same time.
They would like changes to the market, which does not value the contribution they're making to climate solutions or consider the investments that farmers have to make. They worry about the loss of their ability to use modern farming practices that help them improve soil health and sequester carbon. They fear, as I'm sure you're aware, additional regulations or targets that are arbitrarily imposed, from their perspective, without due consideration of their ability to meet them.
Most of all, they want to be an active partner with governments and customers in determining the best way to make their contribution to climate change mitigation.
Thank you.