Agriculture committee  Thank you, Fawn. Our family runs a beef cattle and cropping operation near Kelliher, Saskatchewan, northeast of Regina. We take pride in caring for the environment as part of our role as ranchers. In this country, cattle producers care for 35 million acres of temperate native gr

Agriculture committee  I'm no expert on it, but the cattle in a forest environment have the ability, between grazing, tramping and inhabiting those areas, to keep the underbrush down to a minimum and keep that fuel source down, so it doesn't present the risk of the major fires that we've had in the pas

Agriculture committee  The unintended consequence of the tax is that it hits home pretty hard, because when we have to operate under.... We can't change our market prices. We take the prices we get, and we get the extra taxes it costs us. Agriculture is a system, and we talk about the systems that lin

Agriculture committee  That strikes a cord with me, personally, certainly. When we talk about sustainable farm practices and our environmental farm plan and some of the encouragements we get to apply the best management practices, those have been very effective. When we look at our operation, the thi

Agriculture committee  Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee. My name is Duane Thompson. I'm a beef and crop producer from Saskatchewan and the chair of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association's environment committee. I'm pleased to have CCA staff person Fawn Jac

Agriculture committee  I'd like to speak to the cross-compliance part of the question first. Cross-compliance is a challenge because, in this industry, agriculture is a system. Some of the unintended consequences of having cross-compliance across programs is that producers don't have the flexibility to

Agriculture committee  I think you have a good understanding of the fact that the grassland is an important ecosystem and provides so much value to the greater economy and society in general. Number one, we have to figure out a way to promote the stabilization and prevent the conversion from further

Agriculture committee  That's one of my pet things. The quantification of carbon and optimizing our system and optimizing the practices is really an important thing. I think the answer is, no, we're not at the point where we can quantify it effectively. I really hesitate to promote best management prac

Agriculture committee  Can I just add one more thing, please? By not promoting and not encouraging people to optimize their system on the grasslands that they manage right now, and if we develop programs that encourage new practices and people who have been doing it a long time.... We have to be very c

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. That is a key point. We're getting very close with the technology. I understand that in the States there is some infrared type of technology. They do a balance of organic growth and some soil sampling, and then they can do it from satellite imagery. As I mentioned, th

Agriculture committee  I think you and I have a lot in common that we could talk about.

Agriculture committee  It is important that we do it on a regional basis, because regionality.... Even in Saskatchewan, production systems are.... There's such an incredible diversity of what landowners are managing. You're dead on. You're absolutely right that we cannot do it on a broad spectrum. We h

Agriculture committee  It would be a great idea. I'm not familiar with the Australian program, but going back to our own history even, my dad was part of the SOS program, Save Our Soils, back in the early 1980s. Farmers have made really great strides since then. The dirt is our very existence, so a na

Agriculture committee  Fawn, you're very well versed in this. Could you take that one?

Agriculture committee  The first step is to get these products licensed. If we get the products licensed and we endorse them and promote them, then business will pick them up and make them available to producers like me. There have been other products in the past that have been things that would have b