Editorial: Feds won’t budge on climate goals

A new five-year agriculture policy framework was finalized during the federal-provincial agriculture ministers meeting last month in Saskatoon, and as expected, it includes a funding mechanism to help Canadian farmers deal with the effects of climate change. 

But many are questioning whether or not this new framework is sufficient for helping farmers for helping farmers reduce emissions from nitrogen fertilizer by 30 per cent by 2030, the target previously laid out by the federal government and reiterated in the new framework. 

The federal government released details of the new framework, called the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (SCAP), on July 22. Included in the SCAP is $500 million in cost-share funding to help farmers adopt sustainable practices, a 25 per cent increase from the previous framework. 

$250 million will be provided for the Resilient Agricultural Landscape Program to fund farming practices that support carbon sequestration, adaptation and other environmental practices. 

While an increase in cost-share funding will be beneficial to some, often this type of funding is given to projects or technologies that the federal government has deemed worthwhile – it doesn’t necessarily help a broad group of farmers, nor does it address the regionality of Canadian farming. And most importantly, it doesn’t address the changes and innovations that farmers have already been making in order to be more environmentally-sustainable. 

The new framework also states that Business Risk Management (BRM) programs such as AgriStability and AgriInvest will now be assessed over a one-year period on how they could help farmers mitigate climate risk. 

But tying environmental programming to BRM is likely not going to achieve what the federal government is hoping for, according to a policy paper released by the Canadian Agri-food Policy Institute (CAPI). 

“Lacklustre delivery and apparent lack of value in at least some programs (AgriStability, for example) is already a barrier to farmer participation in risk management programming,” says Al Mussell, a research director with CAPI.

The paper concludes that pursuing multiple objectives with a single set of programs increases the risk that those programs will be ineffective, as well as increases the risk that the federal government will have to implement ad-hoc programs. 

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) also expressed concern over BRM funding in a news release following the framework announcement. New to the AgriInvest program is a “cross-compliance tier” for large farms, “which would demand that larger farms have Environmental Farm Plans, or equivalents, in order to access the program,” the organization said, and that “we will be further assessing the implications in consultation with members.”

The most contentious issue coming out of the federal-provincial agriculture minister’s meetings was the fact that the federal government is not budging on its goal to reduce emissions from nitrogen fertilizer, nor will it compensate farmers for the 35 per cent tariff it imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Prior to the ministers meeting, several industry groups including the Grain Farmers of Ontario, Ontario Bean Growers, Ontario Canola Growers, the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, as well as Fertilizer Canada, the Ontario Agri Business Association and input retailer and fertilizer distributor Sylvite Agri-Services requested that farmers in eastern Canada be compensated for nitrogen costs as a result of the tariff.

In a media call following the request, federal agriculture minister Marie-Claude Bibeau made it clear that although the request was heard, the government would be supporting farmers “in other ways” and noted that the federal government has temporarily raised the interest-free portion of cash advances available under the Advance Payments Program. 

Despite the frustration Ontario farmers are feeling about high input costs, remember that the emissions target is a goal – not a mandate. Farmers in the Netherlands are being forced to comply with regulations that could see many of them leave farming altogether or reduce their livestock herds. 

It’s important that before the framework goes into effect next year, the provinces work with the federal government to find solutions to high input costs for the next growing season.