Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to present today.
My name is François Labelle. I am the executive director for the Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers. I have been farming here in the Red River Valley for 30 years.
Our association represents 3,800 producers of soybeans, peas, lentils, edible beans, and fava beans valued at over $800 million. I've been part of this association since 1984 as a founding director. Through the years we have seen tremendous growth, from 68,000 acres of pulses in Manitoba in the early 1980s to more than 1.5 million acres in 2015, and there are forecasts of continued growth in 2016. Since few of our pulses are consumed locally, we rely heavily on international trade to market our crops.
I would like to take this opportunity to build on the TPP-related messages you heard from my Alberta and Saskatchewan pulse colleagues earlier this week, but to add comments on sustainability and food security in the context of the International Year of Pulses 2016.
The challenge is to provide a growing population with sufficient, sustainable, and nutritious food, while significantly reducing health care and environmental costs associated with today's global food system. In order to deliver human, environmental, and economic health outcomes, we will need food production and processing methods that optimize health and environmental outcomes, new technologies for waste minimization, improved supply chain efficiencies, an enabling of global trade regulations, and avenues for poverty reduction through improving food systems.
Global trade regulations will play an important if not critical role. The United Nations sustainable development goal 2b notes the need to “correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortion in world agricultural markets”. The key is that when local production fails to meet the demand for food 365 days a year, regional, national, and international trade fills the gap.
Canada is one of only eight nations that consistently make a contribution to global food security by being a major food exporter. The TPP represents an opportunity to facilitate trade by addressing the non-tariff barriers that are increasing as the international regulatory landscape lags behind new technologies.
Environmental NGOs such as Nature Conservancy Canada and the World Wildlife Fund point out that sustainable intensification is the way agricultural systems will meet the challenge to produce more food without jeopardizing natural resources. Even as sustainable nitrogen-fixing crops that utilize soil bacteria draw nitrogen from the air—a natural process that replaces the need to add nitrogen fertilizer, in many pulse crops—pulses benefit from yield-enabling technologies such as fungicides and herbicides, which are extremely important.
As you've heard, misaligned technology approvals and maximum residue limits or MRLs, for crop protection products threaten access to key markets and the ability of growers to efficiently utilize technologies on the farm. You've also heard that risks are getting higher each year.
With me today is Gord Kurbis from Pulse Canada, director of market access and trade policy, who can specifically address misalignment challenges and the TPP.