Serving the producers of the Northwest
FARMER North Battleford, Saskatchewan
RancheR
Thursday, October 22, 2020
These simple farming techniques can curb greenhouse gas emissions By Marc Fawcett-Atkinson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter National Observer
Saving our climate — and the future of food — could be as simple as planting fields of clover or putting cows to pasture on wheat fields in winter. These steps could go a long way in reducing farmers’ need for artificial nitrogen fertilizers that are driving rising nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, a greenhouse gas roughly 300 times more potent than CO2. A study published recently in the scientific journal Nature revealed that, without major transformations to farming systems globally, these emissions will send global temperatures soaring far above the 1.5 C “safe” limit agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
Ian McCreary has been using cover crops, cattle and soil maps to reduce his farm’s use of nitrogen fertilizer in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Photo provided by Ian McCreary
“(This) is really caused by the excessive use of nitrogen fertilizer, and nitrogen fertilizer used in areas that was above what the
plant needed, and in wetlands,” said Ian McCreary, a Saskatchewan grain and cattle farmer and member of Farmers for Climate
Solutions, an organization aimed at helping farmers reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Nitrogen fertilizers dominate human contributions to global N2O emissions, which have increased by 30 per cent since 1980. And in Canada, nitrogen fertilizer shipments, an indicator of how much is used in the country, have almost doubled in the past decade. That increase is driving rising greenhouse gas emissions from Canada’s agricultural sector — the country’s sixth-largest emitter. Reducing these emissions will be impossible without transforming how food is grown in the country, said Darrin Qualman, director of climate policy at the National Farmers Union — and what it’s grown for. “The core of the feder-
al government’s agricultural policy is to increase export,” he said.“And increasing exports translates into increasing production; increasing production translates into increasing fertilizer use. What we’re seeing (with) the nitrous oxide is a fairly predictable outcome of the federal government’s focus on maximizing production and exports.” Artificial nitrogen fertilizers are a relatively new creation, with the industrial process required to create them having only been developed during the Second World War. It was an invention that revolutionized agriculture, fuelling a global postwar boom in industrial high-yield agriculture. That growth came with consequences, beyond N2O emissions: Excessive nitrogen fertilizer use can
also seriously harm soil health and water quality. However, managing emissions is a particularly tricky problem, explained Sean Smukler, a professor of land and food systems at the University of British Columbia. “I describe (the breakdown of nitrogen) as a leaky pipe,” he said. Nitrogen in the soil is broken down by bacteria in the soil — and the type of bacteria involved is key. “During the microbial transformations (that break down chemical nitrogen into gas), you have some that leak out into the atmosphere in a very benign way. Or you could have it leak out in a way that’s actually contributing to global climate change.” For instance, if soil is more than 60 per cent saturated with water, the Continued on Page 2
Job rebound sluggish in Canada’s agri-food sector By Sylvain Charlebois Statistics Canada’s recent September job market data is reassuring, overall. But for the agri-food sector, the reality is quite different. Overall, employment in the country increased in September, creating 378,000 jobs, the majority
of which were full time. This increase in September brought total employment to 720,000, shy of the level we had before the pandemic. Obviously, children being back to school has helped bring some normalcy to our lives. For the economy, that’s encouraging.
The agricultural sector, however, is hiring far fewer people than at this time last year. There are 17,000 fewer jobs than in September 2019. Undoubtedly, agrifood recruitment has been particularly difficult, given the challenges getting foreign workers. But with public investment
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discussions between the federal government and the provinces on more controlled-environment agriculture projects, seeing fewer jobs in the sector is to be expected. Our collective enthusiasm for greater food autonomy across the country has many thinking differently about food security.
Te c h n o l o g y - d r i v e n models in agriculture will control costs and, of course, limit the influence of the weather. As such, it will help consumers who are fleeing highly volatile prices, especially in produce. Right now, it’s typical to see prices for certain vegetables and fruits rise by 25
per cent in a single month. The cauliflower incident a few years ago was exactly that. With more domestic high-tech production, this is less likely to happen. And with 48 per cent of the population concerned about food shortages, this would matter. Continued on Page 2
TTENTION
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