Agriculture committee  Thanks for the question. Planting trees is a broad topic. It's everything from replenishing and putting in shelter belts to riparian trees, which was mentioned before, to silvopasture, which is putting trees in pastures, and then intercropping, which you were referring to in Fra

Agriculture committee  Yes, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. I wasn't being too clear. The point is that if you increase yield—increase biomass production in any way—it ultimately gets more carbon into the soil.

Agriculture committee  I can't give you the exact number. The goal is always to increase. It's first of all to maintain, and then to increase the carbon. Even giving you a number wouldn't really help answer your question. The point is that we're always trying to increase that carbon level to maximize t

Agriculture committee  I guess the optimal success is at least maintaining our soil organic carbon levels. The goal should be to increase it, but, as I said before, there are a lot of vagaries in what happens on a year-to-year basis and in the regions as well. Applying your question across Canada is re

Agriculture committee  Across the country—we're talking about a country-scale level here—a lot of what drives what we're talking about is large-scale change in land management. What built up the carbon in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s was that there was more no tillage in western Canada. No till or

Agriculture committee  That's in eastern Canada, yes.

Agriculture committee  No, it's not as much there, but that's what drove the process in eastern Canada.

Agriculture committee  It's fine. It has been stable and—

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  I think my colleague, Dr.—

Agriculture committee  I'm not familiar with that specific study, but as our ADM mentioned, across Canada we are a net sink in terms of soil carbon. It is improving and has improved over the years. In terms of the exact amounts—30 megatonnes or nine megatonnes—there are a range of estimates, and that r

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  It can store in the ground for long periods of time. That's the thing. It will stay there as long as we maintain it, and that's part of the challenge. Once we increase it to a certain point, it will stay there for quite a while, unless there's some sort of degradation process tha

Agriculture committee  Yes, there's a natural intake and outtake of carbon. The plant material goes into the soil and it's used by the micro-organisms. Their process of using it exhales the carbon. We can put a chamber on the soil and measure CO2 coming out, but it's the net balance of that input and

Agriculture committee  It depends on where you are in the country and what the management practices are. Across the country, our department has indicators that have shown that the organic matter levels have been going up since 1980 in terms of storing more carbon. They're plateauing out. The increase