Environment Committee on May 1st, 2012

[Doug Chorney]

Something that has been worked on at the University of Minnesota, on the Morris Campus, just south of Winnipeg, is the production of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer from wind energy. Although wind energy makes sense in Minnesota, because of the high cost of electricity, they're actually using a hydrolyzer to produce nitrogen, which they in turn use to produce fertilizer that can be sold to farmers. In Manitoba we have abundant hydroelectric power generated. In the hydro generation power system, there are times of the day when they have power they can't use. It becomes a real challenge for them. When you start producing fertilizer from electricity, it becomes like a battery.

We need research on those kinds of projects that can remove our dependence on buying fertilizer from outside our communities. We need to look at ways to use the assets in our province to alleviate a big right-now cost.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Chorney, what would be the recommendation you would like to see in the committee's report?

[Doug Chorney]

I would like you to recommend funding a pilot plant to produce nitrogen fertilizer from wind or hydroelectricity, I think. The challenge with this technology is that you can't buy off-the-shelf components, and it's very costly to do a pilot project. That's been a challenge for the University of Minnesota, as well. That's why it's important to have funding to get some of those kinds of projects going.

[Ron Bonnett]

The other component of research would be taking a look at how to use existing agricultural waste to generate energy. That gets away from that whole food-versus-fuel debate. There's all kinds of product that is not even used. Farmers have agricultural waste that could be used for generating renewable energy. We have to look at ways to do that. That could be cellulosic technology for producing ethanol, or it could be looking at direct combustion of some products, provided it can be done without any air pollution issues. There's a whole series of issues on using that agricultural waste.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

I'm going to ask one last question.

Sadly, I know that you've had real trouble with flooding and in some cases with drought. What about disaster mitigation? Is that something we should be considering in the conservation plan? Because if we change stuff, if we do the prevention up front, we can have fewer disasters. Is it something we should be giving some thought to?

[Ron Bonnett]

I have just a couple of things to say on that. I think some of the incentives for water storage and water diversion are the types of investments that pay big dividends.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

What are your recommendations for the report?

[Ron Bonnett]

The recommendation to the report would be to have a funded program to take a look at water retention and water diversion. They both go hand in hand.

I'll give you an example. In southwestern Ontario in the Norfolk sand plain a few years ago they were having serious problems with drought and they put a program in place where they provided incentives for farmers to provide off-stream storage for water. All of sudden they had irrigation water in the summer. While they were doing that, they also created some spillways, so that if a huge amount of water came in the spring, they reduced the effects of flooding.

By putting that incentive in place, you've got the benefits on both sides. When the floods came, there was a diversion that was thought out and it took the water away from where it had to go. But at the same time, it recognized that with a lot of the weather patterns we're seeing, extreme drought and extreme wet, they were able to store that water for irrigation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you very much. Time has expired.

Next we have Monsieur Pilon.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your testimony. Everyone knows that if scientists and farmers get along, it is good for productivity and for the environment.

Do you have any suggestions for the plan to foster a good relationship between the scientists and farmers?

[Ron Bonnett]

My first thought is to really take a look at innovation research into plant and animal research. One of the things we're looking at as we go forward is how do we increase productivity on our land base? A lot of that is going to be done by having better plants and animals. Where we've come in the last number of years with understanding the genome.... I know that even in the beef cattle industry now, you can take a DNA snip and you can have great predictability of what type of offspring you're going get. All of sudden, instead of feeding two animals on a plot of land, you can feed one and get the same type of productivity.

With conservation, sometimes we've had a tendency to look at conservation as going back and doing what we did a hundred years ago. We need to be shifting our thinking of how we use science and innovation to let us do more with less. That's a mind shift that has to take place.

Even the World Wildlife Federation has adopted the position now that high-production agriculture is likely the best way to save the environment and the world, because then you can get the productivity you need without tying up all kinds of land base. It also then allows us to set aside more of that land for conservation areas and wetland areas.

The short answer would be for innovation in research in both plant and animal productivity.

[Doug Chorney]

I had the opportunity to attend a conference in Ottawa last year where we talked about the future of food in the world and how we are going to keep up with demand. The bottom line is that we are limited in the amount of arable land that can be committed to agricultural production. In order to have sustainable food supplies for the world, we're going to have to make use of the resources available to us more efficiently.

I'm told that 20% of the fresh water in North America will flow through Manitoba on its way to the ocean each year, on average. Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less. Therein lies a tremendous opportunity. They told us at this conference on the future of food that we're going to need to produce twice the crop per drop. We're going to have to use the water that we've got now and product twice as much crop from that water.

It appears to me that in Manitoba's example we're getting rid of water as fast as we possibly can at a time when it's obviously a challenge for the people who live in Manitoba. Maybe there need to be these storage projects to start planning ahead for the future when water is perhaps a more scarce resource, perhaps a conservation plan that brings researchers together with farmers to look at practical ways to do this.

Farmers can be quite responsive. In the RM of Dufferin, just south of Carman, we had a program undertaken by that municipality, where they paid $40 per acre—getting back to Bob's point about how much per acre—to set aside land for storing water. The cash rent for land in that market area is probably $75 to $100 per acre. You didn't have to pay the full cost of the land to get farmers to cooperate.

Often these set-aside acres are marginally productive acres to begin with, because they've been drained from previously being a wetland. Maybe it would be better to store water on them some of the time. If farmers are recognized as being compensated for the cost of this research and for this project, they will work and cooperate with scientists to find the answers to these questions that work for their farms and work for society.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Bonnett, your colleague has told us that an ecosystemic approach was better than a site-by-site approach. Do you agree with him?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Mr. Bonnett, you have 30 seconds.

[Ron Bonnett]

There's one thing I might add. This is now being discussed internationally about taking a holistic landscape approach. I just returned from an international meeting in Kenya, where they're talking about the same type of thing, how to blend all of the values together to look at managing the landscape, rather than looking at it in silos.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you very much.

Closing off the questioning will be Mr. Lunney. You have five minutes.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you very much.

I thank both of our witnesses for very thorough presentations today; they raised a lot of useful ideas.

I want to start with clarifying something. Mr. Chorney, I think it was you who remarked a minute ago, and I was a little slow on the uptake.... Did you say about Manitoba that 20% of the water flow goes to the Arctic, or...? Would you please repeat the early part of that--20% of what is passing through Manitoba?

[Doug Chorney]

On average, 20% of the fresh water in North America flows through Manitoba.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

So this is your Red Sea Rising type of thing, like the big flood you had. Is that what they called it?

[Ron Bonnett]

They called it that.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

The book in 1997 about the terrible flooding.

Yes, that's a lot of water moving through the Lake Winnipeg system and the Red River. It's amazing landscape there, with that river dropping I think four inches a mile--so it's quite a tortuous river system.

I think I also heard something in your remarks about the wetlands opportunities. This is where you're talking about science and innovation that maybe would identify areas that would not be highly productive, lands that formerly perhaps were wetlands, and finding a way to compensate for those, rather than high-value farmland, thereby optimizing use of the land and restoring habitat and water storage where possible. Is that what you meant by that, in terms of science and innovation helping to identify those things and making sure that incentives target the most appropriate land, therefore being more cost-effective?

[Doug Chorney]

Exactly. That's the experience they've had in Minnesota and North Dakota. The water storage projects were chosen based on LiDAR surveys that were done for the entire Red River basin, from the Canadian border south. This has been a long-term project the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assisted the state governments with over many years, and the LiDAR mapping allowed them to get the data on where the best places would be to store water. When they went to these landowners, I'm told, they were fairly cooperative with the idea, providing there was some compensation, because they could see they weren't really getting crop off those farms every year anyway.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

So that work was done south of the border, state-side. Is there any inventory of such work in Canada already, or is that the kind of work you're recommending could be done?

[Doug Chorney]

We had some LiDAR surveying done around the Red River prior to the construction of the expanded Red River floodway. That was felt to be necessary to design it properly. And there's been some other LiDAR work.

Last year, starting about May 7, I was on an emergency flood conference call every day at noon for about eight weeks with the Minister of Agriculture, the deputy minister, and many staff members. We were talking about opening the breach in the dikes along the Assiniboine River at Portage la Prairie. It became really obvious to me that they didn't know where the water was going to go. We had to have municipal stakeholders and provincial staff who were experts on the subject, and they were saying there's this creek here, there's that drain there, it might go this way, it might go that way. They were anticipating it could flood up to 152,000 acres of land in a worst-case scenario. As it turned out, it didn't get to be that extreme, thank goodness, but it simply goes to show you how important it would be to get this LiDAR work done.

I think that would be a good recommendation for your committee to consider, having LiDAR mapping data. It would be a fairly costly undertaking, but I think it would be a treasure for future planning for scientists and governments.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you for that.

I want to go to another area here, a different direction.

Part of our objective here is conserving; it's connecting, restoring habitat, and then connecting people to rural areas again. Canadians are increasingly concentrated in urban areas, which brings me to that conflict zone, really, where the rural land and urban areas intersect or interface, as I think you said. You might want to comment on the challenges that presents. In connecting people with rural areas again, can you comment on what kinds of programs exist now to actually get people out of the city in order to understand what is going on in the farm community and about the land issues?

I think you mentioned how many species were on agricultural land. Is it 300 or 500, or something? You mentioned a huge number of species that are found on agricultural land, or one of you did in your presentation. That would be vertebrates. Can you comment on what ideas, what is happening, what could be done to help connect young people and new Canadians, for example, with agricultural and rural areas?