Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First, let me express my appreciation for this committee's work and efforts on an increasingly crucial issue, which is food security.
You have heard from many experts already, and they have provided some very credible and compelling facts and advice, so please allow me to provide some personal viewpoints and experiences from a Canadian farmer's perspective. I will share some sustainable food production methods and outcomes.
My wife and I spent 30 years actively growing field crops, starting with mostly wheat and barley and then evolving to rotations that help offset disease and pest challenges and help increase the sustainability of the soil. Those included oilseeds, pulse crops, legumes, varied winter and spring crops, and even spice crops. Our farm lies within the geographic prairie triangle that was famously reported by explorer John Palliser to be unsuitable for crops.
Over the years, we adapted and improved our methods, our varieties and our equipment. This year, for example, barley on our home farm with rainfall of eight inches, or 20 centimetres—which is about one-third of the Canadian average rainfall—averaged 99 bushels per acre or six tonnes per hectare. That's more than we've ever grown before. That's double the yield of 40 years ago.
There are many factors that have improved both yield and quality through research, such as improved varieties for drought tolerance, shorter season maturity, in-plant pest deterrents, timed-release nutrients and improved photosynthesis.
The use of satellite technology for data collection, GPS guidance and sectional equipment control have all enhanced efficiency and sustainability. Producers can grow more with less. This is good news for the grower, good for the consumer and good for the environment.
Never forget that sustainability has two fundamental components—environmental and economic. Many countries provide a stark example of not considering both. The EU's nonsensical farm-to-fork strategy has proven actually to reduce food. Sri Lanka's failed organic experiment that caused immediate mass starvation was and still is devastating.
The full-bellied activists want all food to be grown under the guise of regenerative agriculture, a term for which no two people could offer a similar definition. I would invite these activists, who have not set foot on a farm in search of knowledge, to explain to a mother in Kenya, Ethiopia or Somalia growing cassava to feed her hungry family that she should not nurture her crop with fertilizer or protect it from pests and diseases with approved safe chemistries. I was privileged to observe agriculture in Africa that used primitive agrarian practices. Subsistence farming is not sustainable, either for the soil or for food supply.
Why do I give these comparisons? It's because governments tend to listen to loud activists who care less for those who go hungry than they do for their unscientific research gleaned from their own Internet algorithms. They claim we would all be better off growing less food and using less crop protection, but they fail to understand the harm this would cause to the air, water and soil through organic practices that require increased tillage, which causes soil erosion, and organic pesticides, many of which are more harmful to nature than are those approved by certified regulatory bodies. The result is substantial increases in greenhouse gas emissions from excess field equipment passes.
Many of Canada's food-producing regions benefit from a changing climate, but along with that comes the moral responsibility to help feed those who are negatively impacted by a changing climate, and shame on us if we don't, or if we are not allowed to, step up to that responsibility.
Canada's farmers and ranchers stand ready to do that.
Several witnesses have shared how the war in Ukraine has created serious food insecurity in regions with the fewest available options. They all need our support.
In Canada, we produce more food and continue to do so, but beware of reckless theories, such as a blanket reduction of nitrogen fertilizer use as an attempt to reduce emissions, with no understanding that actions already taken by farmers have accomplished more to reduce emissions through practical methods that don't limit food production.