Climate-focused group preps for new policy framework

With federal, provincial and territorial ministers set to gather this month for the final time before the expiration of the current Agricultural Policy Framework (APF), a national coalition of farm organizations hopes its newly published climate ‘task force report’ will win the attention of policymakers.

“We’re not sure if we’ll be allowed to attend (the meeting),” Farmers for Climate Solutions (FCS) director Brent Preston told Farmtario. “We’ve let the government know that we have someone available if they’re interested in hearing from us.”

Why it matters: A new agriculture policy framework will likely have a climate portion and some farm groups are working to influence what that could look like.

When the current $3-billion APF took force in 2018, agriculture was absent from Canada’s climate change mitigation commitments but since then, the sector has been singled out as a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and any future support programs will certainly have climate change mitigation as a major focus.

The next APF, potentially to be signed in Saskatoon July 20-22 during the ministers meeting, will run from 2023-2028.
Advocating for policy change has been a goal from the beginning for FCS, which formed in 2020 with six-member organizations including the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario (EFAO) and the Organic Council of Ontario, and has now grown to 24 members including Ontario Sheep Farmers and the National Farmers Union-Ontario. Preston says there have been early successes.

“The On Farm Climate Action Fund (a $200-million envelope within the $4-billion National Climate Solutions Fund) came directly out of our recommendations for the budget in 2021,” the Creemore-area organic vegetable grower said.

When FCS started, he added, there was virtually no acknowledgment in Canadian agricultural policy that federal and provincial governments had begun taking climate change mitigation seriously. Two years later, governments have more than $1 billion in their budgets for farming practices that aim to limit the sector’s climate impacts.

“It’s not only because of us that happened, but I think we’ve played a significant role.”

In February 2022, FCS unveiled its most ambitious project to date: “Grounded in Resilience: Adapting Business Risk Management programs to reward climate-friendly agriculture.” That report, compiled through the participation of a 13-member task force that included well-known Ontario-based agricultural economists Al Mussell and Alfons Weersink, featured recommendations ranging from decreasing business risk management premiums for crops grown as part of diversified crop rotations to limiting coverage for cropland newly-converted from grassland, tree cover or wetlands.

With the Saskatoon meeting looming, an interim report from a second task force – this one including University of Guelph agrometeorologist Claudia Wagner-Riddle and Ducks Unlimited research scientist Pascal Badiou – entitled “Rooted in Climate Action: An ambitious roadmap for emissions reduction and resilience in the next APF.”

An FCS news release claims the report “identifies the most cost-effective ways to rapidly reduce emissions, build resilience to protect Canadian agriculture, and help Canada meet its 2030 Paris Agreement targets.”

Preston says the strength of FCS’s task force model is that draws on expertise from wide-ranging sources but is led by farmers who can “ground-truth” the proposed solutions. The resulting plan, he suggests, “is totally realistic, it’s doable, it’s affordable, and we can do it without sacrificing yield.”

Regarding nutrient storage and application, for example, he says a list of eight best management practices (BMPs) ranging from impermeable covers for liquid manure tanks to enhanced 4R application for both synthetic fertilizer and manure could achieve a 33 per cent decrease in Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions due to farm-source nitrogen – which is more than the 30 per cent federal government commitment under the Paris climate accord.

Lucknow-area pastured livestock farmer and EFAO member Katrina McQuail is well aware of the reluctance of conventional farmers to latch onto proposed measures for lessening agriculture’s climate effects. Having gradually transitioned her farm’s 65 workable acres away from any tillage to only growing pasture – reseeded in part by adding legume seed to the livestock’s mineral mix – she recognizes how difficult it can be for a large-scale cash-cropping neighbour to look at her farm and understand how climate-friendly practices might apply at a different scale.

That’s why she appreciates FCS’s efforts to tie proposed BMPs to appropriate subsidies or rebates.

“Farmers are already risk-contingent simply in being part of an ecological system,” she said. “So asking farmers to sign up for something that is going to entail even more financial risk when they don’t even know for sure if it’s going to work in the long term isn’t going to go over well.”

Since returning to take over her family’s farm in 2014, however, she has become increasingly aware that those neighbours will eventually need to implement at least some climate-friendly best management practices (BMPs). With intense weather events seemingly on the rise, she has witnessed significant soil losses in her neighbourhood while her own rolling land more efficiently held the moisture.

With no appreciable rain for much of June, pastures and crops on nearby farms are exhibiting drought stress but she still has green, ready-to-graze paddocks on her rotationally managed pastures.

“Personally, in my own travels and in my own community, I’m seeing that when you take out wetlands and when you take out trees and fencerows, and when there’s less pasturing of livestock, the soil is being lost.”

Saskatchewan grain and oilseed producer Cam Goff, chair of FCS’s Rooted in Climate Action task force, agrees that BMPs must be implemented soon. “I don’t know if Canadians understand how urgent this situation is,” he said in the news release about the interim report. “If we want to have a fighting chance at tackling climate change, we need to get everyone on board to implement these solutions.”

Preston says the organization certainly welcomes new members but doesn’t actively seek them. He believes the two-year growth from six to 24 supporting farm groups proves that support for the FCS approach is building.

Mount Forest-area sheep dairy farmer Jenn Osborne is one of those relatively new FCS supporters. A recent call from Farmtario was her first opportunity to serve as what the organization calls a “farm-bassador” since volunteering to help promote the climate action cause.

Among the practices promoted in the new report already happening at her All Sorts Acres Farm are rotational grazing, grazing season extension, preservation of wetlands, and the re-establishment of shelterbelts.

Osborne agrees with McQuail that support programs need revamping to lessen the risk passed on to farmers when they try innovative practices.

“There are always a lot of other things that money needs to go towards, whether it be feed or seed or fencing or repairs.”

She supports FCS’s call for financial support to be more accessible and available up-front instead of farmers only receiving a cheque after they already spent a lot of money and filled out a lot of paperwork.

According to the report, all 19 proposed BMPs “are proven practices that are already in use in Canada, and all are supported by peer-reviewed studies or survey data that quantify greenhouse gas mitigation potential. Together, these BMPs have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Canadian farms by 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year (14 per cent of current output) by the end of the next APF in 2028.”

Osborne is optimistic that farmers of all scales in Canada will see value in implementing the report’s BMPs.

“None of us want to degrade our soils and our lands,” she said. “No matter how big or small you are, you want to see the land continue to thrive.”