I couldn’t judge the distance between train and bridge, nor how far along the bridge I had progressed, nor how far I had to go, nor how high I was above water or, more likely, rocks. But standing still was not on. Crouch-running, with a hand on one rail and motivation multiplied, I moved over unevenly spaced ties with toes up. I escaped.

The approaching train of my youth was certain and my uncertainty was in not knowing how to dodge it. The approaching ecological and climate crisis that amplifies weather variability may seem uncertain because we do not know what specific weather will happen, when it will happen and where it will happen.

However, disruptions and disasters, including loss of human lives, will happen in many places at many times and can no longer be dodged.

Using uncertainty about the ecological and climate crisis as an excuse to wait and see is bad for business, bad for farming and bad for health. To mitigate unwelcome surprises, it is practical to act now based on what we already know and adapt as we learn more.

If you doubt climate scientists, pay attention to the Insurance Bureau of Canada and other insurers who assess increased risks of weather-related disasters. They will not insure some force majeure risks at all.

As ecological overshoot gathers steam and its impacts come closer, we can choose to use scientific evidence to ascertain how to mitigate overshoot and how to adapt to soften impacts.

Misguided ads such as “Crave More” and the apparent certainties of required economic growth with excess energy consumption and extraction could give way to “more fun, less stuff”, a system that aims for healthy human communities on a thriving planet.

Farmers might ask about the conditions of natural habitat and biodiversity, clean water availability and soil organic matter levels on fields when their great-grandparents farmed. What are they now? How can they set an example so their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will maintain or improve these conditions?

Many farms are or will be in the same family for seven generations, and in addition to making a profit, their viability depends on high soil organic matter levels, clean available water and dynamic biodiversity.

Consumers might ask what their great-grandparents ate, how they conserved, avoided waste and practised cultural values. How can today’s consumers avoid processed food with excess fat, salt and sugar? How is a simple, seasonal, tasty and nutritious diet integrated with community engagement so descendants will have sufficient food to survive with dignity?

All of us might ask how we can use less energy, reduce our material requirements, lower our debts and live respectfully with our relations. Will we educate ourselves and others with reports from organizations such as The Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, aimed at de-risking the negative impacts of a changing climate?

Spiritual, cultural, artistic or personal values, to be meaningful, must be integrated into daily living, within realistic ecological limits. In the golden rule — do unto others as you would have them do unto you — the “others” should extend to non-humans.

Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, said “the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe around us, the less taste we shall have for its destruction.”

As in any strategic planning exercise, our greatest contributions to reconciling with ecological and climatic uncertainty may be to decide what we will stop doing.

– Ralph C. Martin, Ph.D., is a retired professor from the University of Guelph.

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There is a difference between climate and weather. For example, the climate in July 2023 was 1.5 C higher on average, around the globe, than pre-industrial (before 1850) average temperatures.

However, the weather was variable by location. July 2023 was much hotter than normal in Phoenix and relatively normal in Ontario. Nova Scotia saw exceptional flooding.

Wonky weather is the result of a shifting climate. Greenhouse gas emissions in our global atmosphere are increasing, which is increasing average global air and ocean temperatures, with less predictability about the movement of masses of air and ocean water.

People experience wonky weather in local regions with temperatures that are too low or too high or with too little or too much precipitation, possibly with excess winds and associated wildfires, at unexpected times.

Many of my farm friends in Ontario are skeptical about the actual risks of wonky weather because, so far, we have been mostly spared. However, conversations with farmers in hot and wildfire-affected areas and in flooded areas of B.C., or Fiona-battered, wildfire and flooded areas in Nova Scotia, are sprinkled with exclamations of “so much loss!”

My contention is that even Ontario farmers should prepare for wonky weather. Mark Twain (sixth cousin of my great-great-great grandmother and probably six times more prescient than me), warned how difficult it is to make predictions, especially about the future.

Nevertheless, I assert that wonky weather will strike again and again.

It is well established that relatively high levels of soil organic matter will mitigate crop devastation during both droughts and floods. It is arguably a public good, given its long-term impact on Canadian food security.

Farmers should be incentivized with government programs to maintain good organic matter levels or improve fields with poor levels. Measurements according to a consistent scientific protocol can verify the status in every field every five years.

Upon sale of a farm, when cash is available, it is reasonable to tax a seller according to the degree that fields have poor organic matter levels. Fields with good levels should not be so taxed.

With appropriate incentives, farmers will respond with integrated methods including service crops, soil amendments, reduced tillage and appropriate crop rotations based on their soil types, historical weather data and market opportunities. It is the outcome of good organic matter levels that should be incentivized and not specific practices. Farmers with choice will implement practices that achieve results while fitting their operations.

Recently, I watched closely as a farmer from Nova Scotia showed me how he intends to slow water on a sloping field, when there is excess precipitation, to store it for periods of drought. His diagram, sketched with a stick in mud as mosquitos harassed us, indicated there would be a ditch every 100 metres curving across the slope toward a holding pond. Each ditch would also be endowed with diverse habitat for an associated farm enterprise of nut and fruit trees and pollinator habitat.

Slowing and storing water could include controlled drainage to reduce losses of water and nutrients from fields, while also improving crop yields. An additional step might be to drain to a holding pond when there is excess water in the field and then pump water back to tiles at the tops of slopes when water levels are limiting.

Strategically placed berms and grassed waterways on natural low dips in fields can also help, especially if there are wetlands to absorb excess water. Not to be overlooked are the mitigating effects of wetlands when wildfires approach.

With a strategy of maximizing yields, it seems counter-productive to plant short season varieties and hybrids. However, with a strategy of stabilizing yields under the increasing probability of wonky weather, it makes sense to have some crop fields with shorter season genotypes that do not depend on an ideal season of optimum moisture and temperatures at expected times.

Crops that can be harvested early, even in ideal seasons, require less drying, if at all, and allow more leeway to establish service crops effectively.

The Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation allows farmers who have had to write off crops this summer, due to low yields or grasshopper damage, to divert those crops to feed. It makes sense to integrate livestock with cropping to capture nutrients from failed crops and deposit manure, while gaining more economic value from forages in rotation, following cash crops and in strips between crop rows.

I have long maintained that there is a growing opportunity for young farmers, without their own land base, to become experts at fencing and watering sheep and cattle in order to graze service crops, crop residue (including breaking down corn stover) and failed crops on other’s crop land.

They can fill a niche in areas where crop farmers choose not to complicate their management with their own livestock and yet want the compatibility of crops and ruminants.

The choice to adapt to wonky weather, or not, is becoming more urgent. Even if wonkiness wanes, cropping adaptations for wonky weather will still pay back.

– Ralph C. Martin, Ph.D., is a professor (retired) at the University of Guelph. He has authored a book, Food Security: From Excess to Enough. Learn more at ralphmartin.ca.

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However, recent Fertilizer Canada lobbying has morphed the fourth principle from right rates to holding the line at rates without “a mandatory reduction in the use of fertilizers.” These are 3R and STIR (same to increased rates) principles. Is this right? 

The stewardship section on the Fertilizer Canada website has many commendable points about optimizing nutrient management, better crop and soil management, improving fertilizer efficiency, reducing energy use per harvested unit of farm production and improving net farm profit. Nevertheless, these assertions, and especially the last one, can be contradicted with its proviso, “without sacrificing yield potential.” 

[READ MORE] Canada can cut fertilizer emissions 14 per cent by 2030, industry groups say

Highest yields may not be the most profitable yields depending on fertilizer and other input costs and weather conditions, which often constrain nutrient availability. Applying more fertilizer than can be used by a crop leads to inefficient nutrient management, leakage of nutrients from soil and wasted energy of fertilizer manufacturing, transportation and on-farm application. 

It’s not hard to imagine why Fertilizer Canada advocates for maintaining current or higher amounts of fertilizer on Canadian farms, given the correlation of fertilizer amounts with sales revenue. Its stated rationale is that if the government of Canada enforces its 30 per cent fertilizer emissions reduction target by 2030, then Canadian farmers will lose $48 billon. 

Daniel Schuurmann and Alfons Weersink, in their brief and potent analysis, “Is Fertilizer Canada Crying Wolf?,” deftly refute the $48 billion claim. 

Steffen and his colleagues demonstrated more than a decade ago that we have crossed the planetary boundary into the high-risk zone of excess reactive nitrogen and phosphorus in our biosphere, and correlated with synthetic fertilizer applications. The 4R principles, especially right rates, might prevent excess leakage of nitrous oxide into air and nitrates into water. However, insistence on 3R and STIR thwarts efforts to lower such pollution. 

In our current moment of planetary history, we use prime farmland to grow more feed than needed and give food grade grain to livestock. By optimizing food processing byproducts and forages for livestock, Ontario could reduce arable land for feed production by 40 per cent while maintaining sufficient animal protein in an adequate diet. Farmers could choose to grow food crops on that 40 per cent of land now used for feed. 

I recommend that farmers be incentivized to reduce fertilizer rates. Let’s suppose that on average corn, farmers apply 180 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre for a yield of 180 bushels per acre, a ratio of 1.0 (180/180). For those who reduce the ratio to less than 1.0, payments could be proportional to the reduction. 

For example, by employing genuine 4R principles, a fertilizer rate of 150 lb. N per acre might result in 170 bushels of corn per acre, a ratio of 0.88 (150/170). Others may use 4R principles with manure to limit N fertilizer to 90 lb. per acre with a yield of 180 bu. and a ratio of 0.5. Organic farmers, who do not apply synthetic fertilizer, would have a ratio of 0 (0/150).  Organic systems can achieve average yields of about 150 bu. per acre. 

Similar incentive payments could be calibrated to average fertilizer-to-yield ratios for each crop in each region. Payments should be contingent on submission of a nutrient management plan to ensure that manure or other organic amendments are not applied in excess. 

Nitrogen fertilizer when manufactured is an energy hog and accounts for more than 50 per cent of total energy use in commercial agriculture. The fossil fuels, especially natural gas, to manufacture it result in concomitant GHG emissions. 

For Canadian agriculture to meet its 30 per cent fertilizer emissions reduction target by 2030, it is critical to reduce the overall amount of fertilizer used in Canada and not default to 3R and STIR. This target and beyond is possible, so let’s get on with it. 

– Ralph C. Martin, Ph.D., Professor (retired), University of Guelph. Information is available in the book, Food Security: From Excess to Enough, at www.ralphmartin.ca

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