A national project funded by food processors, retailers and lenders aims to lower the risk of adoption of environmentally beneficial practices by farmers.
The Canadian Alliance for Net Zero Agri-Food (CANZA) launched its Million Acre Challenge Oct. 7 and released details about its first projects, which will be in southwestern Ontario.
Why it matters:Â Programs that aim to fund environmental improvements on farms have been simplistic and limited in timeframe.
CANZA Managing Director Nick Betts says the goal is to scale resilient agricultural practices across Canada.
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He says CANZA is consulting with farmers and agronomists to try solve barriers that have held back sustainability programs in the past.
Unlike government programs, which go away after a few years, he says CANZA has longer-term goals.
CANZA’s executive committee contains some of the most influential people involved in Canada’s food system, including Galen Weston, president and chairman of Loblaw Companies, Michael McCain, executive chair of Maple Leaf Foods, Max Koeune, president and CEO of McCain Foods, Ken Seitz, CEO of Nutrien and Dave McKay, president and CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada.
“If this is important to companies, and this is important to Canada and this is a good thing for farmers, then how can we help address these barriers?” asked Betts during an interview prior to the launch of the program at the Globe Food Leadership Summit.
A main goal is figuring out how to reduce the risk to farmers of adopting practices that range from minimizing soil disturbance, keep soil covered and living roots in the soil, enhancing biodiversity and integrating livestock grazing.
The Weston family’s foundation has provided $7 million in funding for the first projects and to create an environmental outcomes marketplace.
The program’s first pilot projects will be in southern Ontario, with an initial cohort of 24 farms, aiming for 60 farms in year two and 180 farms in year three.
CANZA is working local professionals such as agronomists to get the “science-backed perspective and an agronomy-backed perspective.”
Finding a way to reward producers who have already been using practices that benefit the environment is a goal. A challenge with government programs is that it only rewards new adopters.
Betts says CANZA will tailor programs to the needs of different growing regions across the country and he encourages farmers or other partners to get in touch with CANZA if they are interested.
Reducing the risk of trying new things
Farmer Tobias Burgin’s introduction to CANZA is a good example of the extent to which the agriculture and food supply chain is involved in the project. The Co-operators, which provides Eusi Farms with insurance, made the introduction to CANZA during discussion about construction of a biogas digester at the farm’s beef feedlot.
The family feeds about 20,000 cattle each year through its feedlot south of Forest, Ont.
He says the focus on environmental stewardship “marries up very well with what we’re already doing.”
However, like many farmers, it’s the risk of adoption that’s a challenge.
“If it goes well, we win. That’s great, but if it doesn’t go well, then we pay the price, or have a loss of production.”
Burgin says he found the CANZA program intriguing because “somebody was willing to come alongside us and help us in those endeavours in trying out new things. Sharing that risk is what intrigued me on it.”
Eusi Farms grows crops that are harvested in the fall, like corn and sugar beets. Late harvesting dates make cover crop establishment a challenge and that’s one area that Burgin is interested in exploring.
Burgin’s feedlot is part of the Ontario Corn Fed Beef Program (OCFB), a certified beef brand that was created by the Ontario Cattle Feeders Association and ships premium beef to Asia and to stores in Canada.
The program is an early CANZA partner and John Baker, the OCFB’s director of business development and the director of the Ontario Beef Market Development Program, says it could help Ontario beef farmers to better tell their story to customers.
The corn-feed branding program has done an exceptional job telling the story of its beef producers and the way they use the crops they grow to feed their animals. Nutrients from cattle are used to grow the next season of crops. But they’ve lacked the data to back up the results of that system.
“We’ve got a great story to tell around our model of circularity, but we lack the ability to measure anything.”
The Ontario Corn Fed Beef Program has space to enroll 20 farms in CANZA pilot projects and Baker says they will be large and small beef producers.
“We look at sustainability as a journey, not a destination and continuous improvement is a critical factor in that,” he says.
Environmental outcomes marketplace
Baker was also interested in CANZA’s goal of building an environmental outcomes marketplace, where companies could post their offers for best practices and farmers can sign on to be rewarded for what they do.
These sorts of markets have been notoriously difficult to create, as the margin advantage they could provide is often eaten up by transaction costs and paying for administration.
Most of these sorts of marketplaces have focused on carbon, but CANZA is aiming for whatever best practices companies need in order to make their products more efficiently or to report to their consumers or investors about their supply chain practices.
Betts says one of the goals of the marketplace is to allow farmers to stack different outcomes from their farm, to create value.
“I’ll have the ability to take on new practices, try new things, innovate on my farm, and be supported in ways that I haven’t really been in the past,” says Betts. “And out the other end, have a market for that as almost a secondary product.”
