Agriculture committee  Yes, I'm very familiar with that. Probably management of grasslands is different from management of wetlands, I would assert, because grasslands have a value right now to a rancher as a forage resource, whereas wetlands generally don't have an economic value. In today's marketp

Agriculture committee  Probably the appropriate way to answer that would be to say both. An important step is helping people understand. I'll use soil conservation as the example for wetland conservation today. Fifty years ago, blowing soil was a normal thing to see on the Prairies. Today most people

Agriculture committee  I had the good fortune of being at a soil conservation conference last week in Moncton. There were several producer panels talking about the BMPs they've established to help reduce the off-farm impacts, particularly of potato production. They were talking about putting in grass b

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. I think the environmental farm plan, if properly adapted as we move forward, can satisfy a lot of the demands that Canadian farmers are getting put on them from a sustainable sourcing perspective. I think it can also be made into a more effective extension tool to hel

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. Of the two main motivators, one would just be purely economical benefits on a farm. I know the BMPs that I adopted on my own farm were mostly because they were financially good for my business operation. There are also benefits of just doing the right thing. In part

Agriculture committee  I think I'd like to talk a little more at the industry scale. We're one of the few NGOs that have engaged in both the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Crops and the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. Really that's a recognition that the working landscape is critically i

Agriculture committee  The one comment I didn't get to was about the need to quantify both the economic and environmental benefits of BMPs so that we can better understand what's happening. Under the last APF, WEBs, which was looking more at it BMP by BMP, was a good first step, but looking more broadl

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Jim. Good morning. Considering the environmental challenges and market pressures facing the sector, we believe there is a compelling need for an agri-environmental vision supported by policy leadership and intergovernmental collaboration. The next APF should be sup

Agriculture committee  Okay.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Ultimately, programming under the APF should send signals to farmers that the ecologically important areas on their farm are assets, not liabilities. I will conclude my comments, Mr. Chair, and I thank you very much for the opportunity to present.