Agriculture is not likely to be regulated under the Kyoto agreement, but it may feel the impact in higher fuel prices.
Alberta’s energy sector will be hardest hit, an Alberta Agriculture official told the Western Barley Growers Association convention in Calgary Feb. 14.
“We have the highest concentration of the energy sector in Canada,” Jilene Sauve said.
As a result, Alberta farmers can expect higher energy costs and changes to their rural communities.
The Alberta government has been an outspoken critic of Kyoto.
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Sauve said oil and gas companies may decide to relocate to the United States where the agreement has not been ratified.
They may also decide to decommission 50 percent of marginal oil wells. The companies might then pull out of communities that depend on the industry for jobs and other economic benefits.
Canada emits two percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, with agriculture contributing 10 percent of that amount.
Alberta agriculture is responsible for 30 percent of the agricultural emissions. About half comes from field fertilization and a third from livestock methane emissions.
Alberta has its own emissions reduction plan because it doesn’t agree with the federal approach.
By 2020, Alberta plans to cut its emissions by 50 percent while still allowing for three percent economic growth in the province. Reduction is planned through developing less polluting renewable energy sources, conservation, technology and carbon sinks.
However, there is no agreement on how soil carbon should be valued or who should pay for it.
“If the energy sector is not going to pay for it, then who is,” Sauve said.
“There is no domestic or international ruling or regulation so there is a lot of uncertainty.”
Barley growers president Albert Wagner said some studies place the value of carbon between $1-$2 per tonne.
“Really, there is next to nothing in it for farmers,” he said.
It should be of value to hold 0.4 tonnes of carbon per acre per year in the soil, but that has not been determined, as well as who should pay for it.
Sauve said the amount and value of soil carbon needs to be assessed by a neutral third party, rather than by farmers or energy companies.
“If someone does approach you, I would tell you to be very cautious,” she said.
A carbon credit is generated when someone changes from one practice to another to reduce emissions. This could involve moving from conventional tillage to minimum tillage with less disturbance of the land and less use of energy.
Farmers may be encouraged to introduce grazing and hayland to crop rotations or apply fertilizers in spring rather than fall.
Before cultivation, prairie soil contained high levels of carbon. Plants remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil.
Range management specialists have suggested that the soil underneath Western Canada’s grasslands may contain up to 80 tonnes of carbon per acre in the black soil zone under fescue prairie.
