Agriculture committee  I think it's hard to estimate (a) what the volume of those benefits would be and (b) what the value is, because we don't have a defined market mechanism to help us assign value to that—outside of carbon. We have seen the price on carbon. That is probably one of the easiest EG&amp

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. That's part of the work we've done over the last five years at CFGA. We started with carbon and we're doing a bit of work on the biodiversity and habitat side—mostly around education, but we see that all the time. The data gap is what really thwarts us in moving some

Agriculture committee  We're seeing additional investments in opportunities to secure those lands through conservation easements or other mechanisms. We're seeing the encouragement of private industry coming in to invest in similar mechanisms for securement. Some of the programs have been mentioned. P

Agriculture committee  The answer is a resounding “yes”. As a soil scientist by training and education, I fully support all of those initiatives being undertaken by the government in Australia. With what we've seen in Canada over the last couple of years with the living labs initiative that's been ro

Agriculture committee  Yes, absolutely, and I think that idea has been raised in a number of the presentations. The significant value that those grasslands bring to the table for all Canadians needs to be recognized and firmly embedded in policy, and so you're correct. You know, there is a discrepancy

Agriculture committee  I think the first opportunity is to recognize that carbon value and the increased carbon value. Through that, we would suggest that the Canada grassland protocol,—which is now approved under the Climate Action Reserve in the U.S., allowing for access to voluntary carbon markets—b

Agriculture committee  Yes, thanks for the question. It's a bit of a complex challenge conversation to be had. I think it links to what the folks from CRSB have brought forward and the importance of maintaining a functional beef herd, which really dominates the use of our grasslands across Canada.

Agriculture committee  That's a great question, and you're hitting on an important component of trying to drive carbon into agricultural soils. We do know that, over time, we reach those saturation levels, and it's really the degraded landscapes that have the best opportunity to absorb more carbon. To

Agriculture committee  Thanks so much, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for the invitation. I'm really glad to be witnessing with some esteemed colleagues here today and I'm looking forward to a good discussion around this topic. I'll start with some context. Around the Canadian forage se

Agriculture committee  In terms of programs, Hans and Gary had mentioned environmental farm plan programs and some of the incentives that become available for producers once those environmental farm plans are completed. Those are important programs for the forage industry, as well as in terms of the ad

Agriculture committee  I heard right up until you said that Quebec has been growing more forage year over year, and that it must have made a significant impact. Then the translation cut out for a second.

Agriculture committee  Excellent. I have some summary comments. I was almost done, so thanks for that. I have a couple of recommendations for continued development in the forage sector. We certainly want to move down the road of developing methods to quantify ecological goods and services. It's very i

Agriculture committee  Thanks very much. I regret that I'm not able to be with you in person, to sit next to my colleagues from New Brunswick. The pork industry actually started my professional career in agriculture. I was working on climate change with the pork industry, so it's interesting how we've