Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to speak from the perspective of Saskatchewan wheat farmers.
I'm Brett Halstead, chair of the board of directors of Sask Wheat. I'm a grain and livestock producer from Nokomis, Saskatchewan.
Sask Wheat is a producer-led levy organization representing about 24,000 wheat and durum producers. We identify and support research, market development and advocacy efforts that contribute to profitable and sustainable wheat production. Since 2014, we have committed about $52 million to those research projects.
We are partners in a multi-year, multi-million dollar successful funding partnership with AAFC wheat variety breeding programs through the Canadian Wheat Research Coalition. These investments have made important contributions to Canadian and global food security and to economic, social and environmental sustainability.
The federal government recently emphasized the importance of Canadian agriculture and agri-food exports as both a critical sector of our economy and as part of a solution to global food insecurity. Canada is responsible for about 12% of global wheat trade annually, exporting 80% of our total production. In 2022, Saskatchewan's largest crop planted was wheat, which accounted for nearly half of all Canadian acres of wheat. This shows the importance of Saskatchewan wheat to the global food security situation. Saskatchewan wheat producers are very successful at providing a high-quality sustainable food source to the world with large positive impacts on global food security.
Saskatchewan wheat must be competitive in global markets. Saskatchewan wheat producers are price-takers. They receive the global price minus the cost of exporting to be competitive, profitable and sustainable. Saskatchewan wheat producers must rely on their productivity and efficiency.
There are two areas of concern that I want to address today. I probably don't have time for the grain transportation. I want to talk mainly about the increasing environmental policy and regulatory burden that we face. Over the past 30 years, Saskatchewan producers have been global leaders in the adoption of sustainable practices such as reduced tillage, continuous cropping and more. We have sequestered vast amounts of carbon in our soil and have reduced the total amount of land dedicated to our crop while producing more on those acres. However, Sask Wheat is concerned with environmental policies that we believe place an unfair burden on our export-oriented producers in pursuit of poorly defined national environmental objectives.
These policies will increase farmers' costs with no ability to offset them. International competitiveness will suffer. This will favour our global competitors, some of whom have little or no commitment to sustainable production. The federal carbon tax, we believe, unfairly increases direct and indirect costs of production of exports by Saskatchewan producers. The significant additional costs producers will incur cannot be passed along to our customers. Proposed carbon tax rebates will not offset those increases. Fertilizer is essential to increasing production to improve global food security. The committee has recommended that the Government of Canada ensure access to affordable fertilizer to maximize yield benefits.
One of the proposed solutions is enhanced-efficiency fertilizers. However, they are more expensive and do not increase yields. If reaching emissions targets depends on their use, then this means we could have increased costs without corresponding increased revenues. Sask Wheat advocates having science-based policy and programs across the government. This requires investment in science. Policy-makers must recognize the current limitations of scientific knowledge, the data and the regional and individual levels regarding fertilizer emissions. Farmers need adequate scientific support to economically and practically accomplish environmental objectives within reasonable time frames.
In conclusion, Sask Wheat supports the goal of increasing Canadian agriculture sector revenues. It is important both for the Canadian economy and for increasing global food security. High-quality, high-protein sustainably produced wheat is a key component of this global diet and increasingly so amid global trade uncertainties and food insecurity.
However, Saskatchewan wheat producers require policies and regulations, programs and funding that enable profitable production and access to global markets. Saskatchewan wheat producers must be profitable to be sustainable. We must be globally competitive to be profitable.
Thank you.