Agriculture committee  For larger-scale commodity crops such as corn, organic farmers often use varieties developed for conventional systems, because there hasn't been much research and investment in organic. This is another challenge they face—they're using a crop variety developed for a system completely different from an organic system.

Agriculture committee  Yes. A pesticide is something that you apply to either kill an insect, weed, fungus, or pathogen that's attacking your crop, deter it, or reduce the population size.

Agriculture committee  It is a good thing, but it can also disrupt many of the natural ecosystem processes that occur. Most pesticides have bad effects for their target populations but also for non-targeted populations. If we can control pests by increasing populations of beneficial predators like ladybugs, they eat the bad pests, and we won't have to use those extra inputs.

Agriculture committee  The things that organic farmers do to encourage beneficial insect populations would be planting hedgerows or buffer strips, rotating their crops to create more diverse food for those beneficial predators, using native plants, and intercropping. All of those strategies will basically create food and habitat sources.

Agriculture committee  I can start.

Agriculture committee  Studies show that basically the longer a farm is in organic production, the higher the yields are. A study that recently came out showed that we've lost 133 billion tonnes of carbon from our soils worldwide over the last 1,200 years due to agricultural production, so a lot of farmers are starting on soils that have already been incredibly degraded due to poor agricultural practices.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. I'll be speaking from a U.S. perspective on this one. In the United States, there are over 900 synthetic pesticides approved for use in agriculture, and about 20 synthetic pesticides that are approved for use in organic agriculture. Organic farmers are allowed to use those 20 pesticides that have been deemed to be non-toxic, and they are added to our approved list.

Agriculture committee  A pesticide is a pesticide. We know from research that many of the synthetic pesticides that are commonly used are more persistent and more toxic than most of the organic ones, but the thing that really makes a difference in organic systems is that organic farmers are required to use integrative pest management techniques first.

Agriculture committee  Good afternoon honourable members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to speak about the opportunity of organic systems to increase agricultural resilience to climate change and promote soil health. Because the success or failure of agriculture is highly dependent on the weather, climate change is expected to present farmers with substantial agronomic challenges.