Manitoba farmer Ian Wishart thinkd it’s high time producers were rewarded for adopting environmentally friendly management practices.
Wishart makes his living raising cattle, grain, forages and special crops near Portage la Prairie, Man.
He is paid nothing for maintaining shelterbelts that trap moisture and reduce erosion.
The same holds true for his decision to eliminate grazing along river embankments, a practice that is reducing streambank erosion and enhancing water quality.
And even though the forages he grows are absorbing carbon from the air and fixing it into the soil, he is paid nothing for the public service he provides.
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Last week , Wishart presented Keystone Agricultural Producers with a proposal that would pay farmers for providing what he considers public benefits.
Those benefits – clean air and water, wildlife habitat and protection of native species – are gained from farm practices that promote a better environment.
Reduce supply
Woven into the proposal is a land set-aside program that would give farmers the option of taking up to 20 percent of their cropland out of production in exchange for government payments.
Wishart said Canadian farmers are under pressure to provide safe, nutritional and affordable food to the domestic market.
They also are under increased scrutiny from a society concerned about the air it breathes and the water it drinks.
The problem, he said, is that farmers are caught in a time of falling commodity prices and rising costs. That makes it more difficult to provide public benefits, such as the protection of native species on farm land.
“A lot of us have been good stewards of the land,” he said.
“It’s been bred into us and it’s been trained into us, but we haven’t been compensated.”
The proposal, which Wishart helped prepare as a member of KAP’s rural development committee, borrows from the European philosophy of multifunctionality. Farmers are paid not only for their production but also for the benefits they bring to society.
Wishart believes the proposal, if adopted by the federal and provincial governments, would be trade neutral and flexible enough to allow for changing times in agriculture.
He also thinks it would encourage stewardship of environmentally sensitive and marginal lands.
But the proposal is not a cure-all for the problems faced by Canadian farmers, including an oversupply of grain on the world market, he said.
Although an acreage set-aside might cause a decline in Western Canada’s grain production, Wishart thinks the decline would be modest. Land chosen for the program would likely be the least productive acres. Producers might choose to increase production on the balance of their land by applying more inputs.
“We didn’t intend this to be a silver bullet and we didn’t intend it to be a solution to the problem of oversupply.”
Under the program, cropland could be taken out of production for a short term or indefinitely, depending on a farmer’s wishes.
Also included
Other farming practices are cited for coverage under the proposed program.
- Reducing stocking rates on tame or native pasture.
- Seeding legumes or cereals that are incorporated for soil improvement.
- Land management that retains crop residue, including chemical fallow, zero and minimum tillage.
- Establishment of areas for carbon sequestration.
- Protection of areas that serve as critical habitat for wildlife, including endangered species
- Management of land adjacent to waterways to protect and enhance water quality and the habitat of aquatic and terrestrial species.
- Converting land to forage, pasture or wooded cover for more than one year.
- Creating and protecting either temporary or permanent water storage. “Wildlife gravitates to permanent water,” said Wishart, noting the storage would also act as a natural water filter.
The concept was endorsed by KAP during its Oct. 17 general council meeting in Brandon.
“I like the idea of this,” said Glen Franklin, a Deloraine, Man., producer concerned about marginal land being broken up in his area.
“Something like this program is really desperately needed.”
Wishart said the next step is to present the proposal, called Alternative Land Use Services, to commodity groups and government. While it was designed with Western Canada in mind, he thinks it could be applied across the country.
