“If you’re looking at your field and thinking, what the heck’s going on and you know it’s not fertility, it’s not moisture or topography, but you’re seeing kind of dead patches late in the season. Chances are it’s probably PED.” said Griffin Bailey, Little Potato Company’s regional agronomist for Eastern Canada.

WHY IT MATTERS: PED causes tuber size reduction, resulting in yield losses of 10 to 15 per cent under moderate pressure and 30 to 50 per cent under severe pressure.

Verticillium alone causes leaves to curl and change colour, leading to plant decline. But when the nematode is also present, the problem worsens significantly, Bailey told Ontario Potato Conference attendees in Guelph on March 5.

“The verticillium has to work pretty hard to infect the root on its own. If the nematode is there, feeding and creating an open wound, it’s kind of like opening the door for the verticillium,” he explained. “And infection happens a lot faster, a lot more readily, and the damage can be a lot more severe.”

Infection starts at the root and moves up, with symptoms appearing after flowering, causing the lower leaves to yellow, brown and die. A key indicator is that one side of the leaf, or the whole plant, wilts and browns while the other half remains green and healthy. The plant can also appear to wilt during the day and recover at night, or show flagging, where the plant remains upright despite being dead.

Non-visual symptoms that occur beforehand include reduced photosynthesis and transpiration, and increased leaf surface temperature.

In 2021, Griffin launched a study of Ontario’s potato-producing land, including 19 commercial fields in long-term potato production, to quantify root lesion nematode populations and verticillium soil inoculum pressure by using soil samples. Additionally, a grower questionnaire examined historical management practices — main crops grown, cover crop use, organic amendments, and pesticide use — to assess potential impact.

‘We do need alternatives’

Fortunately, Ontario’s nematode populations aren’t very high; however, several fields are at high risk of PED due to verticillium populations.

Bailey explained the threshold for nematodes to cause damage is over 1,000; if verticillium is present, that threshold drops to one.

In 2022, he focused on four fields due to field variability. He used small plots, about two rows of vines by 10 metres instead of 50 to 100 acres. Even in these small areas, he found significant variability within fields, despite their close proximity and similar management.

“It’s really, really hard to put your finger on what might be happening on your farm. You can sample all day long, every year, and maybe not totally understand the exact level that you have,” Bailey said.

Chemical fumigation for PED is expensive, highly regulated, and kills both good and bad pathogens, providing growers with a costly double-edged sword.

“It’s a good tool to have, certainly, but we do need alternatives,” he explained. “There’s a lot of good research on cover cropping, organic amenities and biochemical options.”

At the Simcoe Research Station in Norfolk County, Bailey ran several trial treatments over three years, testing biofumigants, along with potato trials using grower Chuck Emre’s biofumigant system:

• Continuous potato (CP) — no crop rotation, use of cover crops or fumigant intervention.
• Continuous fumigated potato (CPCF) — no crop rotation or cover crops, plus annual chemical fumigant intervention.
• Continuous potato with rye and oilseed radish (CPRR) — no crop rotation, use of PED-supressing cover crops, no fumigant intervention.
• Charles Emre mix with initial fumigation (CEMF) — Rotation with full-season cover crops (Caliente 199 mustard and arugula, followed by pearl millet), winter cover crops of fall rye and oilseed radish, and biofumigation in the second year, all following an initial chemical fumigation prior to treatment application.
• Charles Emre mix (CEM) — adaptation of CEMF without the initial chemical fumigation prior to the treatment application.
• Soil building with pearl millet (SBFM) — tested soil-building principles following a one-time chemical fumigation by rotating potato with a summer cover crop of pearl millet, use of winter cover crops and biofumigation in the second year.
• Soil building with hairy vetch (SBVF) — tested soil building principles following a one-time chemical fumigation by rotating potato with a summer cover crop of hairy vetch, use of winter cover crops and biofumigation in the second year.
• Corn rotation (CR) — conventional rotation, potato being rotated with field corn and use of winter cover crop.

Soil samples were collected each spring and fall, and each plot was irrigated and used the Superior potato variety.

Bailey reported in 2021, before the trials began, verticillium numbers were “pretty low” but jumped across all treatments after potatoes were planted.

He noted that verticillium inoculum was reduced and potato yields increased following the initial chloropicrin application; however, repeated applications provided no benefit.

“Our numbers kind of went up and went down as the season went on, but none of our treatments made any difference after that first year,” he said.

Given that it was virgin potato land, the first year of fumigation caused a “fertilizer effect,” with a yield boost, a higher proportion of larger potatoes, and a lower proportion of smaller potatoes. However, there was no discernible benefit from fumigation or cover crop on yield in the second year.

Improved soil health helps

In the third year, potato yields were slightly higher with the Charles Emre mix and soil-building methods, indicating that improving soil health worked as well as, or better than, other methods for managing PED and supporting higher yields.

Bailey joked that if someone wanted a difficult career, studying nematodes was a good choice, since root-lesion nematode populations were not influenced by the agronomic practices tested in the study.

“I will say that the (nematode) numbers are quite low, so maybe under severe population, you might see a little bit more of a difference,” he said.

The 2023 season was conducive to PED, with signs beginning in the first week of July and reaching severe pressure by the end of August.

“We had a pretty wet spring with a lot of moisture, and then a very hot, dry setting,” he explained. “Those are perfect conditions for PED.”

By the end of the trial, a significant difference in disease severity emerged, with continuous potato showing higher severity than the Charles Emre mix and soil-building treatments.

“Just rotating your crops, extending the rotation length, is a really good way to manage this disease in the long term,” Bailey said.

When testing the soil fungal-bacterial ratio (fungal DNA relative to bacterial DNA), Bailey found it was higher in crop-diverse treatments than in continuous potato treatments. Treatments with the highest disease severity had the lowest ratio, suggesting that soil health can directly improve crop resilience to stress and disease.

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“It’s a model-based estimate to the end of July. It may not capture the effects of that early August heat and dryness,” commented analyst Jon Driedger of Leftfield Commodities about the change in Prairie crop conditions.

“The numbers will be taken with a grain of salt,” he added, noting that some private estimates are likely below the figures StatCan will publish this week.

“Until you see the numbers, you don’t make too many assumptions,” Driedger cautioned.

Broker Ken Ball of Ventum Financial concurred with Driedger.

“I don’t think anybody has got a lot of faith in this [report],” Ball stated.

“The whole point of eliminating the [farmer] survey process was, I presume, to save money and to also speed up the process. That’s not really happening,” he continued.

Ball suggested StatCan might not have reliable estimates on crop production for 2024/25 until the agency’s December report, which will be based on farmer-surveys.

Until then, he pointed to provincial crop reports and a variety of yield estimates are likely to fill the gaps.

“It’s going to be a tough crop to pin down,” Ball said about this year’s canola crop.

A spokesperson for StatCan said in an email that the agency “has done extensive research to determine the feasibility of replacing the traditional survey data with Earth Observation model-based yield estimates.”

“Historical comparisons show that the EO model generally produced estimates of similar or better quality than the traditional survey-based methods for the same period,” they added, noting the agency is confident in the accuracy of the estimates made at the end of July.

“Statistics Canada understands the importance of timeliness in relation to published estimates. We continue to assess the current release strategy for the crop reporting survey, including the feasibility of releasing model-based estimates closer to the reference period,” the spokesperson said.

MarketsFarm senior market analyst Mike Jubinville suggested StatCan could revise its canola production number for 2023/24, by adding 500,000 to 700,000 tonnes to the approximately 18.33 million tonnes the federal agency has been going with.

He noted Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada pegged feed waste and dockage for 2023/24 at a mere 74,000 tonnes, when it would normally be seven to nine times that amount. In AAFC’s July report, feed waste and dockage for 2023/24 canola was pegged at 583,000 tonnes.

Bruce Burnett, MarketsFarm’s director of markets and weather, theorized earlier this summer that a canola harvest in excess of 20 million tonnes was possible. He surmised the estimate based on his crop tour of the Prairies as he made his way to Glacier Farm Media’s Ag in Motion show near Saskatoon.

However, like others in the trade, Burnett took in account the unfavourable weather that a good amount of canola received just as it was blooming. He pegged this year’s canola crop at 19.04 million tonnes, while Ball placed his call at 17.40 million.

Also, Ball estimated the country’s all wheat output for 2024/25 at 34.50 million tonnes, with Burnett higher at 36.23 million. For durum, Ball estimated 5.80 million tonnes and Burnett came to 5.88 million.

As for barley, Ball projected a crop of 7.90 million tonnes while Burnett placed it at 8.18 million. For oats, Ball was at three million tonnes versus 3.43 million from Burnett.

StatCan will follow up Wednesday’s report with another in September, as well as a stocks report, and its final principal field crops report in December, which will include farmer-surveys.

—Updated Aug. 27 – adds comments from StatCan.

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Ukraine saw several record high temperatures last month, and up to 39-40 degrees Celsius in some regions, according to the state hydrometeorological centre.

Taras Vysotskyi, the acting minister, told national TV that the early crop yield had not been critically affected by the heat. Southern and eastern regions saw a 10-15 per cent fall, which had been partly offset by increases in other regions, he added.

“On average in the country, the [early crop] result will be somewhere around five per cent less,” he said.

Earlier this month, state weather forecasters and producers forecast there could be a 20-30 per cent decline in the harvest of late crops in central, southern, and eastern regions due to extreme heat.

As of Friday, Ukraine had harvested around 20 million metric tons of grains, according to the farm ministry.

In June, the ministry raised its forecast for the 2024 grain harvest to 56 million tons from 52.4 million. Together with oilseeds, the crop could total 77 million tons, it said at that time.

—Reporting for Reuters by Yuliia Dysa

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Why it matters: Yields have lagged the usual trend for the past four years, leading to a tight global grain supply.

The global stocks-to-use ratio for major crops, excluding China, has been trending down since 2018, Jason Newton, Nutrien’s chief economist, told delegates attending the 24th International Farm Management Association Congress in Saskatoon.

Global crop consumption has been growing by 2.2 per cent per year since 2020, but yields have not kept pace.

“We’ve had four consecutive years of below trend yields globally,” he said, attributing it to adverse weather conditions and high input costs, which led to low fertilizer application rates.

Global crop area has also plateaued, which hasn’t helped matters.

“As a result, global grain supply and demand has been tight,” Newton said.

China is a big reason behind the steady increase in consumption. The country’s corn and wheat yields have fallen below trend lines in recent years, and it has run out of arable land.

Now a country that produced a 34-million-tonne surplus of major grains 10 years ago is expected to have a 49-million-tonne deficit in 2024.

“That has been a major factor that has contributed to support for crop prices,” said Newton.

Another factor is explosive growth in biofuel demand. U.S. renewable diesel production is forecast to grow to 7.4 billion gallons post-2025, up from 4.1 billion gallons in 2023, although that now appears to be wishful thinking.

“That is likely not going to happen because the crush capacity for that is not there,” he said.

U.S. sustainable aviation fuel production is forecast at three billion gallons by 2030, up from 25 million gallons in 2023.

North America’s crops are off to a good start because of plentiful early-season rainfall. Crops are green and lush, and crop condition ratings are higher than average for this time of year.

“As a result, we have seen pretty significant declines in crop prices over the last month or so,” said Newton.

Ukraine and Russia are two interesting markets to watch, he added. Ukraine’s production has fallen 30 per cent from pre-war levels, while its exports have only dropped four per cent by comparison.

“Obviously that’s not sustainable.”

Ukraine has drawn down its inventories to critically low levels, which will eventually have to be reflected in the country’s export numbers.

Russia’s exports kept a lid on wheat prices in 2023-24, despite tight global supplies of the crop.

However, record heat combined with dry conditions are expected to decrease winter and spring wheat production in that country in 2024-25.

Brazil is the key driver of corn and soybean markets. It is the one major source of cropland growth in the world, with cultivated area increasing four per cent per year over the last decade, Newton said.

Global crop prices have dropped, but they are still in line with the 10-year average, which has led to a rebound in fertilizer demand. Ammonia production costs spiked in the European Union in 2021 due to high natural gas prices. Costs have since come down, but 20 per cent of the EU’s production capacity has been idled and is unlikely to return.

China has been restricting exports of urea and phosphate fertilizers as it attempts to become self-sufficient in crop production, he said.

The other big factor in the phosphate market is low U.S. inventories. Distributors reduced stocks in anticipation of a flood of Moroccan imports due to what were expected to be drastically reduced duties on the product in early 2024. That did not happen, and they were caught off guard.

The post Global crop yields don’t match increasing demand appeared first on Farmtario.

The global stocks-to-use ratio for the major crops, excluding China, has been trending down since 2018, Jason Newton, Nutrien’s chief economist, told delegates attending the 24th International Farm Management Association Congress in Saskatoon.

Global crop consumption has been growing by 2.2 per cent per year since 2020, but yields have not kept pace.

“We’ve had four consecutive years of below trend yields globally,” he said.

That is due to adverse weather conditions and high input costs, which led to low fertilizer applications rates.

Global crop area has also plateaued, which hasn’t helped matters.

“As a result, global grain supply and demand has been tight,” he said.

China is a big reason behind the steady increase in consumption. The country’s corn and wheat yields have fallen below trend line in recent years, and it has run out of arable land.

The result is that a country that produced a 34 million tonne surplus of major grains 10 years ago is expected to have a 49 million tonne deficit in 2024.

“That has been a major factor that has contributed to support for crop prices,” said Newton.

Another factor is the explosive growth in biofuel demand.

U.S. renewable diesel production is forecast to grow to 7.4 billion gallons post-2025, up from 4.1 billion gallons in 2023, although that now appears to be wishful thinking.

“That is likely not going to happen because the crush capacity for that is not there,” he said.

U.S. sustainable aviation fuel production is forecast at three billion gallons by 2030, up from 25 million gallons in 2023.

North America’s crops are off to a good start because of plentiful early-season rainfall. Crops are green and lush, and crop condition ratings are higher than average for this time of year.

“As a result, we have seen pretty significant declines in crop prices over the last month or so,” he said.

The next month or two will make or break the Northern Hemisphere crops.

Ukraine and Russia are two interesting markets to watch.

Ukraine’s production has fallen 30 per cent from pre-war levels, while its exports have only dropped four per cent by comparison.

“Obviously that’s not sustainable,” said Newton.

Ukraine has drawn down its inventories to critically low levels, which will eventually have to be reflected in the country’s export numbers.

Russia’s exports kept a lid on wheat prices in 2023-24, despite tight global supplies of the crop. However, record heat combined with dry conditions will decrease winter and spring wheat production in that country in 2024-25.

Brazil is the key driver of corn and soybean markets. It is the one major source of cropland growth in the world, with cultivated area increasing four per cent per year over the last decade.

Global crop prices have dropped, but they are still in line with the 10-year average, which has led to a rebound in fertilizer demand.

Ammonia production costs spiked in the European Union in 2021 due to high natural gas prices. Costs have since come down, but 20 per cent of the EU’s production capacity has been idled and is unlikely to return.

China has been restricting exports of urea and phosphate fertilizers as it attempts to become self-sufficient in crop production.

The other big factor in the phosphate market is low U.S. inventories.

Distributors reduced stocks in anticipation of a flood of Moroccan imports due to what was expected to be drastically reduced duties on the product in early 2024. That did not happen, and they were caught off guard.

The post Global crop yields have not kept up with increasing demand  appeared first on Farmtario.

In many parts of the world, crop yields are dropping, largely due to the effects of climate change. According to a recent Cornell study, over the last four decades, for every one degree of warming, net farm income decreased by 66 per cent.

Farmers in developed countries can often rely on big data sets and risk management tools to reduce the impacts of extreme heat on their yield and income. But in developing countries, data is scarce, and it is often difficult to accurately measure crop yield.

In a paper accepted in Environmental Research Letters, the researchers suggest using satellite photos to remotely measure solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) as a way to assess and predict crop yield.

Using sample fields of corn in the U.S. and wheat in India, they hit upon an approach that should, in principle, work universally for any crop, according to Ying Sun, a co-author and associate professor of soil and crop sciences.

Chlorophyll fluorescence is the reddish light re-emitted by photosynthetic tissues and organisms, a measurement that serves as a proxy of photosynthetic energy conversion in plants.

“It won’t tell you how many ears of corn are in a field, but step one is to model photosynthesis from fluorescence,” said Sun. “Crop yield depends on photosynthesis. Here we have a mechanistic model, which is very important.”

This approach could be valuable for making policy decisions, establishing crop insurance and even forecasting areas of poverty. It could be employed to help food assistance organizations and nongovernmental agencies be more fleet of foot in providing aid.

The strategy takes advantage of the growing availability of satellite data and is cheaper to use and faster to access than other yield-prediction methods.

Sun said she and her colleagues are working on further research that would allow this kind of tool to be used in real time. Farmers could then adjust soil amendments or irrigation strategies to improve a crop’s health and productivity.

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“We wanted to create a way to promote our proprietary products that was different and fun for our customers,” said Derek Flad, agronomic innovation manager for the Southern Alberta Division of Nutrien Ag Solutions, in a release.

Flad is co-leading Nutrien Ag Solution’s Hometown Yield Challenge with Shelby LaRose, Crop Nutrition Product Manager for Canada.

Nutrien launched the program on February 2, and they are inviting farmers across western Canada to enroll in the challenge. The submission deadline is Friday, March 1.

The challenge will run until November 2024, when harvest totals will be tallied and the two top-yielding growers will be awarded $20,000 to go to a local organization of their choice. The three second-place winners will each be awarded $5,000 to go to a local organization of their choice.

“Competition always gets people fired up, but creating a benefit for the communities that our growers live and work in will not only engage our growers but their neighbours as well,” said Flad.

Growers participating in the challenge will have to seed at least 80 acres and will be required to use a number of proprietary Nutrien products, the details of which can be found on Nutrien’s Hometown Yield Challenge web page.

In a media release, Jesse Hamonic, Nutrien Canada’s vice president and country lead, said programs like this, which put a focus on community, are an important component of the work they do.

“While Nutrien Ag Solutions is a large, global company, we really pride ourselves on our focus and commitment to connecting with the communities where our employees and customers live and work,” said Hamonic.

For those interested in following along, farmers will be invited to post photos throughout the challenge with the hashtag #NutrienHometownPride.

—Don Norman writes for the Manitoba Co-operator from Winnipeg.

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Recently revised supply/demand tables from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada raised the forecast for domestic barley usage in the current crop year to 6.155 million tonnes. That compares with an earlier forecast of 5.471 million tonnes. If realized, that would be up by roughly 200,000 tonnes from the previous year.

Meanwhile, AAFC lowered their estimate for corn imports to 2.500 million tonnes from an earlier forecast of 2.800 million tonnes. That would still be up from the 2.147 million tonnes imported in 2022/23, but well below the record 6.141 million tonnes of corn imported in 2021/22 when Canadian feed supplies were decimated by drought.

Prior to the drought year Canadian corn imports had rarely topped two million tonnes, with a five-year average of about 1.7 million tonnes annually from 2016/17 through 2020/21.

U.S. Department of Agriculture export data for the week ended Dec. 14 shows that Canada has already imported 375,900 tonnes of U.S. corn during the marketing year that began Sept. 1. That compares with only 99,100 tonnes of accumulated imports at the same time the previous year. There are an additional 434,700 tonnes of corn on the books slated to move later in the crop year – roughly double the previous year’s outstanding sales at this time.

Delivered barley into southern Alberta was priced as high as C$325 per tonne range, according to Prairie Ag Hotwire data yesterday. That’s down by about C$15 per tonne at the top end over the past month.

— Phil Franz-Warkentin is an associate editor/analyst with MarketsFarm in Winnipeg.

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China reported a record corn crop this year and bumper harvests of other grains, but Beijing continues to be concerned with food security, particularly amid rising tensions with trade partners, climate-related disasters and military conflicts.

Record corn production of 289 million metric tons this year was achieved largely thanks to a 2.7 per cent increase in planted acreage, as authorities reclaimed land used for other crops for staple grains.

Speaking at an annual meeting that sets rural policy priorities for the year ahead, policymakers said China will “stabilize” grain sowing area and “promote large-scale increases in grain yields,” the official Xinhua news agency reported late on Wednesday.

It did not outline specific measures to boost yields, but Chinese corn breeders are preparing to plant more than double the amount of genetically modified corn next year than in 2023, as Beijing slowly introduces a technology that typically lifts yields.

Policymakers also said China should “consolidate the results of soybean expansion”, according to state media. China has boosted its domestic soybean production significantly in the last two years by promoting more planting to reduce its reliance on overseas imports.

The policy, however, has resulted in excess production of non-genetically modified soybeans for food use, forcing Beijing to buy up some of the supplies for state reserves.

Policymakers said China should strengthen the protection of arable land, accelerate the revitalization of the seed industry and prioritize building “high-standard” farmland in its bread basket area of the Northeast, famous for its fertile black soil, according to state media.

–Reporting for Reuters by Mei Mei Chu, Chen Aizhu and the Beijing newsroom.

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Now there’s a new research priority on the block: sustainability, which often clashes with the deeply held belief that yield should dominate.

In Ottawa, the Central Experimental Farm (CEF) is a microcosm of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s research. It is the largest AAFC facility in urban Canada.

Why it matters: Higher yields might not always be in farmers’ best interests as market demand begins to shift.

“A lot of farms out west for AAFC are bigger, but none are within a city,” said CEF associate director Julie Chapados.

Large or small, east or west, rural or urban, the facilities are part of AAFC’s Sustainable Agriculture Strategy. It aims to address industry-wide issues and create a more sustainable future for Canadian agriculture.

Adaptability is a main area of focus in the SAS and it gets lots of attention at the CEF.

“We’re always trying to balance the public’s desire for quality food with certain attributes, like protein content, or malting [quality] for barley,” said Chapados. “But then we have to balance that with how it grows in the environment, the yield, how it’s resistant to different disease.”

She believes the public is now paying more attention to sustainability and it can be a challenge to simultaneously manage yield potential and sustainability concerns.

“Some of these traits, they don’t go hand in hand, so we’re always kind of juggling,” she said. “Just because your wheat produces a lot does not mean it’s resistant to disease or resistant to drought. So, it’s kind of a balance.

“We’re trying to make farming more resilient, so it’s evolving and we’re trying to fit into the global agricultural field as well.”

At AAFC, the conflict plays out in research; between a need to keep food production high and a need to maintain viability of crops in the future. The sustainable agriculture strategy is described as being built on “a solid foundation of regional strengths and diversity in order to rise to the climate change challenge,” also noting agriculture is “one of the sectors with the highest economic growth potential in Canada.”

In other words, crops must be sustainable while continuing to grow in large, profitable quantities.

This tension may pose challenges to many operations, but the power to change the system could lie with external parties, like consumers, distributors and foreign markets.

Different views

A recent report co-authored by Tyler McCann and Elisabeta Lika for the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute found that “farmers, in general, view themselves as good environmental stewards of the land.”

Many also consider themselves to be “sustainable improvers.”

This view offers a stark contrast to an August report published by the National Farmers Union, based on data from Environment and Climate Change Canada, which found greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture to be up 41 per cent since 1990.

The NFU report takes aim at the high yield mentality as one culprit for unsustainable practices.

As Darrin Qualman, a Saskatchewan farmer, author and researcher who prepared the NFU report puts it, “Canada has a real focus on maximizing yields.”

Qualman said Canada’s path of constant yield increases will likely lead to many adverse environmental effects because it means maximizing everything across the supply chain — including harmful practices.

“The initial focus is on maximizing agri-food exports, and that leads to a focus on maximizing yield, and that leads to a focus on maximizing inputs, and thus maximizing greenhouse gas emissions,” said Qualman.

That path leads to a less sustainable food production system, he said, but there’s been a shift over the past three decades or so, as more people begin to see climate change as a major disruptor of agricultural practices.

“In the 1990s and beyond, the inputs became a much bigger factor in that yield maximization project,” he said. “We first started seeing people discussing climate-related agriculture in the 1990s.”

Coming pressures

David Lapen, a research scientist at CEF, suspects international scrutiny of exports could set the tone for Canadian agricultural practices in the future. That scrutiny may come at the governmental level, but it’s just as likely to come as a result of changing market requirements driven by consumer demand.

“Whatever you want to call them, adapting to climate change, the circular economy … the markets will be looking for those things,” Lapen said.

That could come down to the farm level, where individual farm carbon footprints, for example, become an important factor in marketing that farm’s products.

“Maybe countries are going to be looking at carbon footprints or biodiversity footprints,” he said.

As an example, some countries might be unwilling to buy grain or oilseeds from land that had been recently deforested. In Western Canada, where grain is grown to be exported, large-scale intensive operations could be a turnoff.

Trends within the food world have an impact on the direction of sustainable agriculture as well. Lapen said the craze over food labelled organic led to a shift in consumer demand. It doesn’t take farmers long to respond to shifting market demands and seize emerging opportunities, he added.

“They’re feeling the vibe on the street, they know,” he said.

Chapados echoed the sentiment.

“Health crazes come and go. Oats had a big thing a few years ago … Quaker Oats promotes Cheerios as heart healthy, because it’s got good beta glucan, so then all the breeders were like ‘we’ve gotta increase beta glucan.’”

She mentioned a similar situation with the appeal of omega-3 eggs.

If public demand can change producers’ practices, it’s possible interest in sustainability could do the same.

Qualman also pointed to organic status as something farmers have had to work hard to attain in response to demand.

“We’ve had a long history of that in the organic sector,” he said. “And I’m not advocating organic in any way or advocating against it. I’m merely just pointing out that that exists, that farmers who do the extra management work to produce organically, they get a premium in the market.”

He said changes and trends in production will most often be driven by what farmers see as profitable endeavours.

“I think I think every farmer is trying to do the best they can to respond to the signals the market’s sending them,” Qualman said.

“We hope that every farmer can earn a good, stable net income. Now, if some part of the market wants to offer more for grain produced in a different way and the farmers can make a premium, that’s good.”

However, profitability is not guaranteed when it comes to sustainability.

Beth Hunter of Foodbridge, an initiative focused on regenerative food and farming, said many farmers feel they are asked to take a leap of faith when embracing change.

“All of those things involve talking about risk,” she said. “It could be a social risk around doing something that’s different, that’s not … the way the neighbours do it, the way that Dad did it.

“It can be a technical risk, which is around like, ‘I don’t know, I’ve never done this before and it’s doing something different. It might totally fail out the whole crop.’”

She said bold, potentially risky action from farmers is required to develop new practices and technologies.

“I think of them as champion farmers that have done amazing things,” she said. “You know, then the question is, can you reproduce it? Can you scale it?

“That’s what’s so interesting and fascinating, I think, about agriculture,” said Hunter. “It’s like one giant experiment. The problem is that it’s a slow experiment because you only get one take every year. But there’s so many producers all across the country that are all like scientists experimenting in the petri dish of their farms.”

Of course, a challenge in taking bold action on sustainability is overcoming the focus on yield, which Hunter said she still sees among producers.

“It seems to me like for some reason, the yield metric has gotten more … is it cultural? It has more sort of salience.

“There’s this sort of ‘feed(ing) the world is our responsibility’ narrative,” she said. “People will say like, ‘we need to keep up those yields, or we need to increase them.’”

This focus could be shifted toward profitability, she said, and that can be achieved through a demand for more sustainable ventures.

“The idea that yields should dominate above profits is something that, from a farmer’s perspective, it doesn’t really make sense,” she said.

“What I’m saying is that the cost savings from reducing some of your inputs is part of the sustainability, and having greater sustainability outcomes while also maintaining your profitability is one of the paths to getting where we want to get to.”

Many aspects of healthy, sustainable farming that would look attractive to consumers on product labels could also mean long-term profitability for farmers.

Healthy soil, for example, might be something consumers want. But soil with higher organic matter can also absorb more water in times of excess and hold it for later use in times of scarcity. A healthy soil microbiome also has greater resilience against pests and disease.

Farmers know this and they’ve been changing their practices. According to the CAPI report, “a significant proportion of farmers currently enrolled in government or private programs promoting sustainable farming practices indicated that they would have adopted these practices even without depending on third-party funding.

“This likely reflects that farmers are adopting sustainable practices that provide economic and other benefits.”

Qualman thinks the direction of farming practices are mostly dictated by the market.

“The market is actual corporations,” he said. “It’s food processing corporations and retail corporations.

And when we look at the long-term data on what those corporations are taking out of the grocery store dollar, it’s more and more. It’s an ever-increasing share.”

This can lead to a system in which producers are pressured into potentially unsustainable practices, which he likens to a treadmill.

“Farmers are focused on yield, but they’re also encouraged to be focused on yield,” Qualman said. “And what that turns into in practice is kind of a yield and input-use treadmill, that no matter what amount of yield farmers are generating, they’re spurred to increase that yield.”

Sustainability discussions might best be focused on inputs and materials, he added.

He has seen an increase in fuel use as well as pesticides over the past 30 years. The NFU’s report found emissions from fossil-fuel to be a major contributor to on-farm emissions.

“All of that is occurring against the background of rising emissions, rising energy inputs, rising fertilizer use, rising pesticide use, so there’s really good questions around sustainability – ones that really need to be explored more fully.”

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