Agriculture committee  It's pretty exciting. It involves partnerships with the federal government. In Lethbridge we have a large Agriculture Canada research station. We have a large Alberta agriculture research group. Then we have the university and college. We're all working together. There are explo

Agriculture committee  I think poppy is an ideal example. It's interesting that poppies were grown in the Lethbridge area during the Second World War when there were embargoes on export and movements of some of these alkaloids, so yes, that plant is well adapted to our climate. Instead of having the ha

Agriculture committee  I'm expecting that over time, irrigation will progressively move to the warmer, drier regions for the higher-value crops. We do have a water market in Alberta to allow for the farmer to sell their licence. It's fairly new. I think this should be encouraged. I think it makes sense

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. Perhaps the biggest influence of climate change on water resources is indeed the change in the snow pattern. What we have is winter warming, so the ratio of rain to snow changes. Especially in the shoulder seasons and at lower elevations, we have shallower snowpacks.

Agriculture committee  That's right. All of these have feedbacks, and unfortunately, a lot of the feedbacks are not what we really want. The benefit relative to agriculture, unlike forestry or maybe agroforestry, is that since the crops are generally annuals—or if they are biennials or perennials, it

Agriculture committee  Sure.

Agriculture committee  I think the situation in Saskatchewan may involve more federally owned lands than in Alberta. In relation to PFRA, and it may be the chronology of it, it's interesting that there were a number of transfers of ownership of infrastructure and properties to Alberta Agriculture. They

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. That principle of prior allocation—first in time, first in right—is really tragic, and it's so inefficient. It does not make sense to allocate something based on conditions of a century ago, so yes, that principle needs to be revisited. There are one or two fortunate

Agriculture committee  It's interesting. This point was also raised by Dr. Desrochers earlier on. I thought his early point that all agriculture in Canada is going to benefit was a little bit flowery. I think David's suggestion is more realistic. There will be some winners and there will be some losers

Agriculture committee  There is one thing. I acknowledge that the federal government did make a very major investment in aspects related to water and climate change with the global water security program. I'm not sure—David might remember—but I think it's $70 million. It will, I think, be a better-inte

Agriculture committee  This is an opportunity and also a challenge. Partly it's a challenge because we've gone so far down one particular pathway, and that pathway is to commit as much water as possible for as much land as possible. Relative to changing that, instead of thinking about.... There are s

Agriculture committee  Yes. The Green Revolution was regarded as a huge success, and I think there were elements of it that indeed were; there was a Nobel Prize for Borlaug. What that did is develop types of wheat and rice that were able to cope with high levels of water and fertilizer without topplin

Agriculture committee  Fine. Thank you for the question. An example of this might relate to shelterbelts. Again, this was a topic with Naresh's presentation earlier. From the point of view of the farmer, as David indicated, it's most convenient to get rid of them because of the large machinery, but

Agriculture committee  It's perfect timing, because that was the end of my presentation.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. I do have a slide deck, and I wonder if it's up.