From my perspective in southwestern Ontario, all the regulation in the world has failed to stop a range of serious, long-running pollution problems.

This is to be expected, of course, when uniform enforcement is absent.

Enforcement of existing regulations in my part of the province leaves much to be desired, allowing bad actors to get away with some pretty egregious behaviour. Put another way, it seems as if the Environment, Conservation and Parks ministry, and the province more broadly, are knowingly shirking their duties, forsaking much of rural Ontario in the process.

Several experiences have brought me to this position, some of which I’ve encountered in my journalistic capacity, others as a rural resident.

Within a stone’s throw of where I live, for example, two enterprises are seriously violating waste disposal regulations. I will refrain from specifically identifying them for what I hope are obvious reasons. Both enterprises are known to the ministry, having been caught willfully polluting on a previous occasion.

Despite violations again reported, sometimes repeatedly, by regional authorities who themselves having little power to stop unscrupulous actors, the destructive behaviour continues.

Another example, told to me by a colleague in the conservation sector, involved a development company dumping contaminated soil, trucked from the Toronto area, into a rural creek bed hours from the city. The company was reported and the ministry responded — and decided to neither charge the company nor order removal of the dumped cargo.

One has to wonder whether such behaviour would be tolerated if it occurred next to a popular tourist destination instead of on the backroads of a rural county seldom visited by non-residents. I suspect not.

Cases like these are not uncommon. Ten minutes of conversation in any rural community coffee shop is likely to prove the point. But there are higher profile pollution issues, too, which remain similarly unaddressed by the ministry.

Significant and endemic watercourse pollution from Essex County’s large greenhouse sector is an issue known to the ministry since at least 2012, a year when it released a report identifying several greenhouse-heavy Essex County drains as “the most polluted in the province of Ontario with respect to phosphorus and nitrate.”

Little was done, and the problem has become worse. Even with fresh evidence from a subsequent decade-long research study, the ministry has failed to make any serious, proactive headway with either the greenhouse sector or local authorities.

As Hilda MacDonald, mayor of Leamington and reeve for Essex County, told me when covering the issue in 2023, the Ontario’s environment ministry has “fallen down on the job … Where the hell are they?”

Ill-formed regulation can itself be a problem. A bureaucrat working for my local government, for example, recently described their frustration with how the municipality has to manage on-site and excess soils in construction projects (part of Ontario regulation 406/19 in the Environmental Protection Act).

According to this individual, the regulation is well intentioned but overly prescriptive, and they “are not sure how [the ministry] will ever be able to deal with enforcement and non-compliance.”

Another thing the ministry isn’t doing – providing journalists with useful information or perspective. When I contacted its media representatives over the aforementioned greenhouse sector nutrient pollution issue, I received only an acknowledgement that they had received my request for comment.

I wasn’t expecting to receive anything groundbreaking in response. I know several colleagues who regularly make inquiries with various provincial ministries, and receive little to nothing in return. But even a generic comment would have been nice, given I had afforded them a fortnight to do so.

To be fair to the communications person who acknowledged my inquiry, it’s likely someone further up the chain of command who failed to provide answers.

Another conversation, this time with an actual ministry enforcement officer, revealed on-the-ground struggle to enforce compliance with very limited resources. This individual’s tone was tired and resigned as they detailed funding cuts, the difficulty of attracting and keeping an effective workforce, and other challenges in the face of ever more development.

It would be naïve to expect our current development-obsessed provincial government to support environmental improvement, or actually worry about bad actors. For Ford and the blue crew, the environment always matters — until there’s an opportunity to pave it.

Even so, I suspect the ministry’s lack of engagement in both public discourse and in the field, is also a result of systemic cultural aversion to taking actions that might upset people.

Government inaccessibility and accountability is a real problem, generally, and I’ve yet to meet a journalist who has not expressed this sentiment to some degree.

All considered, Ontario’s environment ministry appears toothless and top-heavy; an administrative behemoth slow to move its gaze, seemingly loath to exert itself and often incapable of empowering people on the ground.

Combined with an unsupportive and aloof provincial government – the authority which ultimately bears responsibility – I suppose it’s no mystery why it can’t keep up with the breadth and variety of creative business practice happening in rural Ontario.

The post Opinion: Environmental regulation enforcement lacking in farm country appeared first on Farmtario.

There, it is spread on fields in an area with fewer livestock farms than Langeler’s area near Aalten, near the German border. Langeler then buys nitrogen fertilizer to top up the manure he was allowed to spread.

Trucking manure is part of the strange nitrogen mathematics used in Europe as it attempts to balance nutrient use and penalizes manure based only on its nitrogen effect, without considering other nutrients, soil organic matter and biological benefits.

The regulations led to farmer protests across Europe this winter and spring, leading up to the recent European-wide elections.

Langeler spends about 10,000 euros (C$15,000) per year to send his manure north to an area with more crops and clay soil. In two years, when the Netherlands decreases the amount of nitrogen allowed to be spread to 170 kilograms per hectare, Langeler’s bill will increase to nearly 30,000 euros ($44,400).

His farm can now spread 230 kilograms per hectare of nitrogen. Farmers on clay soils can spread about 20 kg more per hectare.

“We found we have a lot of problems among farmers with it. We said it is a little bit stupid because you must fertilize,” says Langeler during a visit to his farm, where he works with his wife, Marion, on the dairy farm started by her grandmother. They milk about 130 cows with two robotic milkers.

There are reasons the Netherlands is concerned about nitrogen. The country is on the North Sea coast and has thousands of man-made and natural waterways. The Netherlands has about 1.6 million dairy cattle, similar to Canada’s number, but they are housed in an area about one-third the size of southern Ontario.

There are areas of high livestock density, including Langeler’s neighbourhood. He stands in his farmyard, in the short distance between the house and the barn, and points to several other dairy farms within a kilometre. Most of them milk 100 to 200 cows. There’s also a beef farm nearby.

The farms are most often generational and started on small plots of land.

The Langelers have had to find more land, and their main crops are grown two kilometres away from the barn, but that’s still not enough land to satisfy regulations that limit nitrogen. The government is also pushing greater use of grass versus corn, as it says grass can hold nitrogen better, says Langeler.

The Netherlands exports 60 to 70 per cent of its milk, which has prompted the suggestion that it should aim for self-sufficiency, not exports. That would require a significant reduction in dairy farmers and processors.

Most of the guidance on limits to nitrogen application comes from metrics set by European Union bureaucrats. That’s resulted in what’s called ‘derogation’, cracking down on areas where nitrogen is believed to be too high, especially in the Netherlands and Ireland. Both countries have growing dairy production, and with more cows comes more manure.

When milk quota was phased out in 2015 in the Netherlands, farmers took steps to secure their business futures by expanding and becoming more productive, which meant an increase in milk. Now, the government is using environmental regulations instead of quotas to control milk production.

Langeler says EU officials claim chemical nitrogen fertilizer is more available to plants and has less pollution potential than manure. There isn’t strong research to support that stance and he says research is underway to provide better data on nutrient availability by nitrogen source.

Concern about the far-reaching implications of government regulations, like those in the Netherlands, has resulted in protests by farmers in the EU, especially in France and the Netherlands. It has become more than just a popular movement. The Farmer-Citizen Movement party (known as BoerBurgerBeweging, or the BBB) won the most seats in the Dutch Senate in March, and in May, the BBB was one of four parties that formed a coalition government.

Langeler says it’s estimated that 10 to 20 per cent of a Dutch farmer’s time is spent on paperwork and regulation compliance. During a tour of his farm, he pointed to numerous management practices determined not by efficiency, but by environmental or societal edicts on animal care.

For 30 years, Dutch farmers have had to inject their manure, but a few hundred metres from Langeler’s farm and across the German border, manure injection isn’t a requirement. Germans face restrictions on nitrogen use, but with more land, the situation isn’t as acute.

The demand doesn’t come just from government. Processing companies have their own requirements, adding to the complex web of sometimes contradictory subsidies and regulations.

Langeler’s farm qualifies as a low-carbon output farm, mostly because it doesn’t use imported soybeans for feed, instead relying on spent brewers grains. Grass has to be about 80 per cent of the ration, although that’s not a regulation. There’s concern that as fewer dairies graze their cows, the 80 per cent level could be regulated.

The low-carbon status gives Langeler a few cents more on his milk price to 0.48 Euros (70 cents). There’s another two cents to be had by grazing cattle.

Other practices, like keeping calves with their mothers for at least six months, can result in a higher milk price.

Significant pressure from the government will leave Langeler and his family with choices to make. The government has a buyout plan that pays 25 per cent more than the market value of the farm. If accepted, the buildings would be levelled and the farmer would have to sign a legal agreement not to produce livestock in the future.

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“Europe has a lot of the big fashion labels; they’re the ones that set the trend,” said Jane Underhill from Campaign for Wool. “I think that their investment in Europe is significant and that influences decision-making on a legislative level.”

Why it matters: The environmental footprint system is said to unfairly assess natural fibres against synthetics because it fails to measure microplastics, plastic waste impact or rate renewability and biodegradability.

At the request of the International Wool Textile Organization (IWTO), Canadian sheep producers have put their weight behind the Make the Label Count campaign, an international coalition focused on ensuring credible clothing sustainability claims in the European Union.

“The European Union is shifting to a climate-neutral and circular economy, which means products need to be more energy-efficient, durable, reusable, repairable and recyclable,” said the Make the Label Count website.

The European Council recognizes the fashion and textile industry has a significant environmental footprint and is reviewing sustainability claims for apparel and footwear. It is considering mandatory sustainability labelling for products to substantiate environmental footprint claims.

“Giving consumers the full picture is crucial to making sustainable buying decisions and avoiding corporate greenwashing,” said Matthew Rowe, Canadian Wool Council CEO.

The IWTO is an influential global wool industry organization, and this is the first time Canada has garnered a seat at the table, said Underhill.

“We have jumped on to the international stage to bring a spotlight over to Canadian wool,” said Underhill, who also serves as IWTO deputy head of delegation for Canada. “Canadian wool is among the best wool in the world. We were under the myth that it was worth nothing, and our studies have found the exact opposite. We actually have a brilliant quality of wool here.”

Underhill said a few low-cost or no-cost on-farm tweaks for fleece care could elevate a relatively ignored Canadian commodity into a new class, challenging any other wool nation.

Make the Label Count says that the environmental footprint system doesn’t properly compare natural and synthetic fibres.

There are six sustainability claims on clothing labels for which Make the Label Count is lobbying. They alert consumers to the renewability and biodegradability of a product.

In addition, the campaign intends to provide a fair comparison of fibres, longevity of material, social impacts, production practices and account for microplastics.

Underhill said an all-or-nothing approach to natural fibres as a replacement for synthetics isn’t the goal because there are challenges around processing capacity and production-level colour, texture and price point.

In contrast, synthetic fibre is durable, inexpensive and provides a consistent colour and texture.

However, as a petrochemical product, synthetic fibre carries a high environmental and sustainability cost, whereas wool is sustainable, lasts decades, requires less care to maintain and is 100 per cent biodegradable, said Underhill.

“We really have a job of educating the consumer in what it means to buy a wool sweater, as opposed to a synthetic sweater,” said Underhill. “(PEFs) only look up until the point where it (fibre) becomes a textile – what’s the environmental footprint of that? They’re not looking at the life cycle of the fibre, what it means in the consumer’s hands and what it means in the landfill site when we’re done with it.”

Underhill said data from academic studies on the sustainability of wool and its return on investment aren’t shared with consumers who buy natural fibre garments and textiles.

For example, she said wool is 100 per cent biodegradable in water and not harmful to humans or marine life, unlike synthetic fibres, which remain a pollutant at a microscopic level.

Wool is also a natural and marine-safe candidate for sequestering oil spills due to its ability to hold 10 times its weight in oil.

Canadian wool fits into manufacturing luxury tufted or woven carpets and braided rugs, said Underhill. Its natural wear resistance, insulation properties, fire retardant rating, comfort and hygienic properties lend themselves to expansion into the transportation industry, in such things as vehicle carpeting and seating material.

Jenn MacTavish, Ontario Sheep Farmer executive director, said there’s a ripple effect when EU policies and public opinion affect policy and programs in Canada.

“When these discussions happen in other jurisdictions, it’s important for us to be aware because it could influence policies here,” she said.

“It’s a call to action for our industry to emphasize wool and its benefits and make people more aware of it. And it should inform the decisions we make around lobbying and policy decisions.”

Several years ago, OSF initiated strategies to promote the environmental and sustainability benefits of grazing livestock and wool.

“We’ve done governmental communications on the renewability, biodegradability and versatility of wool,” she said. “There’s not much it can’t do.”

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Unlike early season photosynthesis, which is mostly driven by warming temperatures or the onset of the wet season, late-season photosynthesis can be limited by several factors, such as plant life cycle and radiation, and its underlying mechanisms are less understood.

Late-season photosynthesis contributes greatly to annual total carbon fixation and is sensitive to climate.

Scientists generally agree that temperature limitation on late-season photosynthesis will alleviate with warming but the effects of water availability are uncertain.

A new Columbia engineering study shows that increased water stress and higher frequency of drought due to higher temperatures, is going to constrain the phenological cycle. By shutting down photosynthesis, it will generate a lower carbon uptake at the end of the season, thus contributing to increased global warming.

The researchers used both remote sensing data and in-situ observations to analyze the temperature and water limitations on the end of photosynthesis date. They found that water limitation on late-season photosynthesis is regulated by both soil water and mean annual temperature.

Earth system models have predicted warming and soil drying over most of the land surface by 2100. Based on those models, water availability will become increasingly important as a limiting factor for late-season photosynthesis and carbon uptake.

“We wanted to understand what the driving factor of plant photosynthesis is during the late growing season, and how it will change in the future,” says Pierre Gentine, associate professor of earth and environmental engineering and affiliated with the Earth Institute, who led the study published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.

“Our study is a very good example of how advances in remote sensing technologies can be used to solve long-lasting questions like this one.”

The team found a contrasting spatial pattern of temperature and water limitations on photosynthesis at the end of the growing season. The threshold separating these was determined by the balance between energy availability and soil water supply. Precipitation and temperature had important yet opposite impacts on the end of the growing season photosynthesis for ecosystems at different locations: if plant photosynthesis in some areas is limited by precipitation (positive relationship with precipitation), temperature is likely to have a negative effect, and vice versa.

“We are the first to show that the balance between soil water and energy input into the ecosystem determines whether the system is limited by precipitation or by temperature,” says the study’s lead author Yao Zhang, a former post-doctoral research scientist with Gentine and now a post-doctoral scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“As temperature limitation diminishes, more soil water is needed to support increased vegetation activity, especially during the late growing season.”

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The southern part of the county is one of two sites left on the list developed by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), the national agency created to manage Canada’s nuclear waste.

The NWMO started looking for a repository site for what is known as the Deep Geological Repository (DGR) in 2010. By 2012, 20 communities from across Canada had expressed interest in hosting the DGR.

Many of them dropped out after local opposition, or they were declared unsuitable.

Two remain, one on purchased farm land in South Bruce at a proposed site just northwest of Teeswater and the other, on Crown land near Ignace, Ont., a tiny community located north west of Lake Superior. A final decision is expected in 2023.

“I would like council to let people vote. Stop wasting money and dividing the community, let’s have a vote and see what people actually want to do,” says Michelle Stein, who raises beef and milks sheep with her husband Gary on the edge of the 1,500 acres needed for the site. Neighbours have sold or optioned their land to the NWMO.

Stein says she’s worried that there hasn’t been enough information passed on to the community. Her own research convinces her she wants no part of the DGR near her farm.

“I’ve learned that my water is at a high risk of being contaminated. I’ve learned that nuclear perception of food will damage my livelihood, the repackaging plant and rock pile will be a source of radiation. Every time I learn more, I like it less. I know enough to know I don’t want it.”

One of Stein’s Toronto customers has already told her that he won’t take her lamb if it is raised near a nuclear waste facility.

Seepage risks

She cites a 2003 paper produced for NWMO by Kinectrics, an engineering firm that specializes in waste disposal as causing her great concern. The paper discusses the inevitability of water incursion into a DGR and the degradation of the structures housing the fuel bundles.

The report says that spent fuel would best be stored in an arid desert area or, as that’s not available in Canada, in granite in the Canadian shield.

A growing number of signs are popping up in opposition to the DGR in the community, as the deadline gets closer. Test holes are expected to be drilled this year in South Bruce. They were drilled several years ago in the Ignace area as that land is Crown land and as a result doesn’t have the access challenges of land in South Bruce.

The NWMO and members of local council encourage people to be involved and to let the consultation process play out.

“The questions we are hearing now will be addressed over the next three years as we complete community well-being studies,” says Becky Smith, of the NWMO.

Mark Ireland, a South Bruce councillor runs a busy dairy farm with his family. It has been recognized as a national leader in its management numbers by Lactanet (formerly Canwest DHI).

“There’s a whole lot of work to be done yet to assess the impact on the community and that work is just starting,” says Ireland.

South Bruce council identified the project years ago as a potential economic benefit to the community, says Ireland, who was elected in the October, 2018 municipal election.

He says that continuing to work to educate local citizens is important.

“The focus has been on education for close to eight years. Since it was narrowed down to just two municipalities, the focus is still on education,” he says.

“The NWMO said from the start it will only locate in an informed and willing community. Informed has to be number one. You have to be informed before you can be willing.”

Living in the shadow of a nuclear plant isn’t new for anyone in Bruce County. Trust in nuclear power has been earned and it’s a fact of life for people close to the Bruce Power plant. The power plant is about 50 km from Teeswater and many people in the area work at the plant.

“We’ve lived almost our whole life here under the shadow of Bruce Energy,” says Ireland. “When you think about nuclear safety I’m not sure when you’re not ‘just down the road’ from a nuclear facility.”

Ireland acknowledges that land will be taken out of farming to provide space for the potential facility, and says he always has a “bit of a grrr” when he goes to the city and sees the volume of land being turned into houses. However, the volume of land for the waste facility is small compared to the farmland being paved over elsewhere in the province.

“I’d really like people who are negative to have answers to their questions so they can be fully informed. With any large issue, there will be people opposed. It’s hard to satisfy everyone.”

Both Ireland and Stein worry about the schisms the controversy is creating in the community.

“We have a great fair in Teeswater, a smaller and good fair in Mildmay,” says Ireland. “These are just two of the many great community events in Mildmay, Teeswater, Formosa, Carlsrue and Belmore. We all need to work to preserve this. It would be such a shame if we lost some of the spirit our community has.”

Stein says the issue needs to be decided quickly.

“Unfortunately, this is dividing the community, which is another reason to get a vote as quickly as possible and get an end to it.”

She said it’s hard to make decisions for her farm under a cloud of uncertainty.

“Do you invest in something that might become worthless? It makes all the decisions trickier.”

Stein worries that there is an alternative timeline instead of 2023, with board minutes from the NMWO showing that an internal decision could be made quicker.

There’s another municipal election scheduled for 2022 and the council in South Bruce is believed to be pro-waste facility.

David Grant, a farmer near Formosa, not far from the proposed site, is part of a group of 30 people with concerns about the project who were meeting regularly before COVID-19 discouraged meeting in groups. A door-to-door campaign gathering names on a petition expressing concern garnered more names than people who voted in the last election, he says. There were other Bruce and Huron county municipalities where a wholesale change in council meant the end of any interest in hosting the DGR.

Solutions needed

The waste is currently stored in above-ground tanks at the Bruce nuclear site, as it has been for decades.

“I don’t have a perfect answer,” says Stein. “It is working where it is right now where it can be watched. As science evolves, maybe they can come up with something do with it.”

If the waste is buried 500 metres below ground, then it won’t likely be accessible to reprocess someday and she questions how well it can be monitored compared to above ground storage.

“It’s currently sitting in above-ground storage,” says Ireland. “People will have to decide if they are more comfortable with it in some other storage.”

Ireland says he’s visited the above-ground storage and is comfortable with the measures taken there. However, he says “I’m not sure this is a good long-term plan for storage.”

“This generation of people, it’s our responsibility,” says Ireland. Every one of us that turned a light switch on, our milking machine on, our grain elevator, we all contributed to it. It is our responsibility.”

But like all debates over waste, the question is where to put it and the pros and cons weigh heavily, including for farmers in South Bruce.

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Svein Tore Holsether said agriculture is responsible for one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“On the one hand, that is a big challenge, but it is also a very big opportunity,” he told analysts during a webinar on the fertilizer manufacturer’s fourth quarter 2019 financial results.

That is because half of those emissions are due to converting the world’s forests into farmland.

“This means that efficient crop nutrition solutions have a major role to play in solving some of the planet’s biggest challenges,” said Holsether.

By making more efficient use of existing farmland some of those acres can be converted back into forest.

He noted that the average corn yield of 59 bushels per acre in Mexico pales in comparison to the average yield of 175 bushels per acre in the United States.

There are huge gains to be realized if some of the world’s least efficient farms are shifted toward the best-in-class yields by using the latest fertilizer products.

Holsether was in India recently where he met with a couple who grow 10 acres of potatoes. They have increased their yields by 15 percent using the right crop nutrition program.

“Now this is only one example, but if you multiply this with tens of millions of farmers, we’re talking incremental changes with a world-changing impact,” he said.

Brent Preston, president of the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario, one of the lead groups in a coalition that recently launched Farmers for Climate Solutions, dismissed the notion that the fertilizer industry has a major role to play in saving the planet.

“It is a well-established fact that the manufacture and use of fertilizers, especially nitrogen fertilizer, results in very large greenhouse gas emissions,” he said in an email.

“Many of our coalition members have used practices such as planting leguminous cover crops and improving soil health on their farms to substantially reduce or eliminate their need for synthetic fertilizers, while at the same time increasing their profitability. This is the path we need to take.”

Holsether noted that the Food and Land Use Coalition recently produced a lengthy report that concluded it is possible to reduce agriculture and pastureland by one-third and turn that land back to nature.

The group believes that goal could be achieved by eating healthier diets, reducing food loss and waste, producing food with greater resource efficiency and avoiding “perverse incentives” for land expansion such as biofuel mandates.

The fertilizer industry believes it can contribute to that objective through precision farming and by improving nutrient use efficiency. That will reduce the amount of farmland required to feed the world and allow for reforestation of large tracts of farmland.

“As (former U.S.) vice-president Al Gore once said, the best technology for carbon capture is already invented,” said Holsether.

“It’s called a tree and when you put several of them together, it’s called a forest.”

One analyst said the European Union clearly sees the fertilizer industry as a big emitter of carbon dioxide, not the saviour of the planet.

Holsether’s chart showed that the industry is responsible for two per cent of global emissions.

While he acknowledged that the industry uses a lot of natural gas, it is working hard to reduce its environmental footprint. Yara has decreased emissions by 50 per cent compared to 2004 levels and has targeted a further 10 per cent reduction by 2025.

“Yes, there are emissions from producing fertilizer but the impact on more efficient agriculture means more land available for nature, so the net of this is positive,” said Holsether.

A recent report by the National Farmers Union had a different take on the fertilizer industry’s contribution to the greenhouse gas problem.

“Roughly 28 per cent of all Canadian agricultural emissions come from the manufacture and application of nitrogen and as we double and redouble its use, agricultural emissions rise,” stated the report.

This article was originally published at The Western Producer.

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The company claims to be the first major food company to be able to say that it is carbon neutral.

Why it matters: Major operations decisions by large companies almost always have impact on suppliers and in this case it will have an effect on farmers supplying feed, hogs and poultry to the company.

“We will be asking all of our suppliers to participate in this journey with us,” said Maple Leaf CEO Michael McCain during a conference call to introduce the policy. “It’s important for them and us.”

The introduction of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is generally accepted as the reason for a warming climate. That has prompted companies of all size to measure their carbon footprint.

Smithfield Foods, the Chinese-owned largest swine producer in the world, has aimed to reduce its carbon footprint by 25 per cent by 2025 in the U.S.

McCain called the decision to be carbon neutral “deeply personal” as he says it aligns with the values of Maple Leaf and its target to be the “most sustainable protein company on the earth”.

Maple Leaf has moved from its base in animal proteins as a large processor pigs and chickens, to plant proteins with its purchase of Lightlife and the building of a plant in Shelbyville, Indiana to make Lightlife products.

How is carbon neutral determined?

Maple Leaf used the Science-Based Target initiative as its certifying body for its carbon claim. McCain explained that the group has three areas of scope it looks at. They include Scope 1, which is the company’s direct emissions, Scope 2, which is emissions around energy production, usually involving outside sources and Scope 3, the emissions of suppliers. Each scope is worth about a third of the evaluation weighting.

He says since 2015 Maple Leaf has reduced its usages of:

• Electricity by 86 million kilowatt hours,
• Natural gas by more than 4.3 million m3,
• Water by 1.2 billion litres.

McCain said that lower carbon source and renewable electricity generation jurisdictions could be more attractive to companies in the future, as the generation of that power affects the carbon neutrality rating of the companies that buy it.

The company has had to invest in carbon offsets for what it calls its “unavoidable emissions”. That includes finding areas like composting, forestry and biomass that are carbon negative.

Their commitment includes continuing to reduce emissions as they grow, and McCain said that sustainability improvement is an area where the company will never be finished.

“Mission accomplished will never be in our sustainability lexicon,” he said.

Randall Huffman, Maple Leaf’s chief food safety and sustainability officer, says that the company expects the carbon neutral status to resonate with its customers, especially younger people.

The post Maple Leaf hits carbon neutral appeared first on Farmtario.

That was the message from recent interviews conducted by Farmtario with a member of the leadership team behind Lactanet’s annual ranking of herd management scores across Canada, and with an Ontario dairy producer whose farm was near the top of that ranking in 2018.

Why it matters: If managed properly, changes to enhance animal welfare and reducing a farm’s carbon footprint can also enhance the financial bottom line.

Lactanet’s National Director for Business Development, Richard Cantin, and Brussels-area producer Roger Haag were both asked, in an era of difficult-to-obtain quota, which management areas dairy farmers need to consider.

Likewise, Cantin was asked if enhancements in genomics — leading to an overall increase in the quality of dairy animals, as well as to a considerable increase in the proportion of those lesser-performing cows being cross-bred to beef — should influence on-farm decisions.

Both agreed, however, that concerns raised by the public are definitely starting to be heard more and more in the agricultural sector. To some degree, that’s because farmers want to comply with consumer demands, but also importantly, it’s becoming clear that some of these changes work in the farmer’s favour anyway.

“I guess, at the end of the day, the area that really matters is your profitability,” said Haag, who operates Haag Farms Inc. along with his wife, Karen. Based on the six herd management factors tracked by Lactanet for its annual ranking, the 150-cow dairy using three Lely robots was 14th best in Canada, and second best in Ontario, for 2018.

“You don’t want to spend a whole lot of money just to improve some numbers (in one of the herd management metrics). It’s got to make sense.”

“Making sense,” though, doesn’t necessarily just mean weighing cost against short-term gain. Haag’s example was the decision to use sand bedding when building a new barn four years ago. The family’s research indicated they could improve cow longevity through properly-managed sand. Longevity happens to be one of the metrics tracked by Lactanet, as well as a statistic that can trigger concern among animal welfare advocates if it’s low, and becomes publicly known.

But, even if longevity wasn’t on the radar beyond the farm, Haag Farms would have moved in that direction anyway. Because they knew that, in the long run, it would enhance profitability.

Cantin agrees. “That’s the business, I believe, that farms are in: milk production, and milk component production, and making that happen in the most efficient way possible,” he said.

“Yes, there are some new considerations that have emerged. And I think they will continue to emerge even more in the future, and continue to be driven by what consumers are saying and thinking.”

One is milk quality; another is striving to decrease the use of antibiotics. “All of these things are what consumers are looking for but, thankfully, they’re also things that farmers want to see improved.”

Better quality milk means less risk of milk quality penalties and sick cows; fewer antibiotics translates into healthier cows and less spent on drugs.

“If you roll back 20-30 years ago, it was all about production, production. Now, to a much greater degree, farmers are looking for that trouble-free animal.” And the Herd Management Score metrics have evolved, Cantin insists, to reflect that.

Feed efficiency, milk production still key

Cantin says milk production and feed efficiency are at the root of several off farm trends. And he believes there are metrics currently being tracked through the Herd Management Score program that effectively provide indications about how a farm is doing in these regards.

Efforts by dairy producers to get the best feed efficiency out of their herd fit directly into the ongoing global trend of reducing the carbon footprint. Government regulators and consumers want to hear that innovations are being introduced to gradually reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions as a result of food production.

In parts of Europe and some other jurisdictions, Cantin notes, different levels of payment to dairy farmers have been initiated to reflect how many of these sometimes-called “sustainability” innovations have been adopted on-farm. But he definitely doesn’t see a similar regime being introduced in Canada.

Instead, he says, it will gradually just make economic sense for Canadian farmers to consider such innovations. “On the farm, these things contribute to a better financial output.”

Work is ongoing at Lactanet and in research institutions towards pinpointing the genetic influences on dairy feed efficiency. Cantin expects that, by late 2020, producers will have some options for selecting genetics based on feed efficiency.

In the immediate term, meanwhile, there might be management changes that could enhance feed efficiency — something as simple as pushing up feed more often.

In herd management scores, meanwhile, he doesn’t expect any radical changes aimed at tracking feed efficiency. He believes it’s simply too difficult to collect data on that scale. Indirectly, though, feed efficiency will continue to be tracked through the assessment of milk value.

Animal welfare, meanwhile, is effectively tracked through the measure of udder health, longevity and herd turnover.

“We’ve got pretty heavy criteria that we’ve got to meet here on the farm,” Haag explains, referring to proAction quality assurance program requirements of record-keeping and animal care protocol being met by dairy farmers across Canada. “It’s not necessarily that we weren’t doing it before. It’s just proof that we’re doing our due diligence to make sure it keeps happening.”

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Pests that have not been reported in a certain area are usually assumed to be absent, but analysis by the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, shows many pests are “currently unobserved, but probably present” (a likelihood of more than 75 per cent).

Why it matters: If we can identify crop pests earlier, it could greatly improve control methods.

The study identified large numbers of pests in this category in China, India, southern Brazil and some countries of the former Soviet Union.

The researchers used data for 1,739 pests in the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) pest distribution database.

“Our model allows us to quantify the risk that a certain pest is present in a certain place,” said Dan Bebber, of the University of Exeter.

“Our trick for testing model accuracy was to use pest observations from China published in the Chinese literature, which have not yet been incorporated into global pest databases.

“A lot of species that people are worried about finding in certain places are probably already there.

“That early stage is crucial if we want to stop the spread, so these are the pests we should be focusing our efforts on.”

The discovery of crop pests and pathogens in new areas has accelerated in recent years, driven primarily by global trade, but also potentially by climate change.

Targeting areas where new pests are probably present, or are likely to arrive, could be a key aspect of tackling their spread and reducing the resulting crop damage.

“Prior studies have often assumed that unreported pests in a global distribution database represent a true absence,” Bebber said.

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Minis are a fraction of the cost of a full-sized digester (there are more than 40 here in Ontario) and require much simpler permitting. Full-sized digesters also require an engineering team, a full impact assessment and months of construction, explains John Hawkes, a project development manager at Martin Energy Group, which installed the mini for the McKinlays, imported as a ‘kit’ from the Belgium-based manufacturer ‘Bioelectric.’

Why it matters: Integrating new technology can be a challenge for farmers, especially if it needs an expanded skill set.

The components are assembled in a matter of days on a concrete pad, but a crane is needed to lift the stainless steel reactor panels, liner and roof.

Bioelectric has installed more than 220 of these systems on small dairy farms (milking herds of at least 50 cows) in several countries in Europe over the last few years. Working with Martin Energy Group, the firm has also installed two in North America so far, for the McKinlays here in Ontario last year and one in Pennsylvania this year.

The McKinlay mini produces 20 kW of electricity, well into the typical range of 10 to 50 kW.

Like its big cousins however, minis also produce lots of heat from their generator engines — more heat energy in fact, says Hawkes, than the electrical energy they produce. Still, with the fierce Canadian winter bearing down on Ontario again last fall, Rob McKinlay says it was “definitely a question for us” if their mini was going to produce any excess heat.

“But even with this past winter, which was pretty harsh, we found there was definitely enough waste heat that it would be worth putting in a heat-exchange system,” he says. “So, we’re looking at that for the future. We’d have to purchase and install the exchanger and then a heating loop to take the heat from the liquid in the digester to the farm shop and other buildings with underground insulated pipes and so on.”

Heat, power production, simple permitting, quick assembly and low cost aside, mini-digesters (like all digesters) also help farmers reduce their environmental impact.

Using a digester means that the release of methane into the atmosphere from manure when it’s stored in a lagoon is avoided as the methane from digested manure is converted to carbon dioxide, a much less intense greenhouse gas. Minis are in fact designed to run on manure alone, and they therefore have no requirement for off-farm feedstock, Hawkes explains, which avoids truck traffic.

In McKinlay’s case, because he currently milks about 65 cows, he adds stale grain (about half a skid steer bucket a day) to his mini to optimize gas production. However, he believes 20kW of electricity production can be achieved with a mini that uses only manure from about 100 milking cows. He and Rachel plan to go that route, increasing their milking herd as quota becomes available.

Like other dairy farmer digester owners, the McKinlays gain other benefits from their small digester. The digestate is put through a screw press, the solids are used for bedding and the remaining liquid is spread on the fields.

“I think of the digester as a manure processing plant, a way to get some energy out of it before it goes on the field anyway,” McKinlay says. “There’s a small pump that moves the digestate into our existing manure tank, and it’s actually runnier coming out than it is going in. And in terms of odour, there was a noticeable reduction compared to last year, when we applied the liquid manure after we did fourth cut in the last week of August this year.”

McKinlay is happy to talk about how much he likes his mini — and he’s done so at three packed ‘open houses’ he and Rachel held over the past year.

With that strong level of interest, some farmers may want to quickly apply for funding that’s currently available. Farm businesses and other small-and medium-sized businesses in Ontario and several other provinces can now apply for federal financial assistance with ‘energy-saving projects,’ with a deadline of Oct. 14 or until the funding is exhausted. There’s an online guide for preparing proposals and an online application portal as well, but Hawkes says Martin Energy Group is available to help farmers to put together applications for minis.

“With more than 3,000 dairy farms in Ontario and 4,000 in Quebec, there’s a lot of room for a major effect on greenhouse gases if dairy farms embrace the small-scale digester.”

There is no funding available for mini-digesters under the Ontario Environmental Farm Plan right now.

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