The Green Party of Canada has produced a climate change policy that has good and bad news for farmers.
It calls for rewards to farmers for carbon storage, penalties for farms that produce large amounts of methane, higher fuel prices and government incentives to move Canadian agriculture to organic production.
The Green party said farmers should be compensated for environmental goods and services they produce but also pay for environmental damage they do.
It rejected the rush to grain-based ethanol as unsound environmental policy.
Read Also
Canola Council of Canada’s field agronomy program mourned
The Canola Council of Canada recently issued a news release announcing a new strategic framework with three core priorities, ending its field agronomy program.
“Corn or grain-based biofuels pose an unacceptable challenge to farming as well as having dubious net energy gains,” said a party document on its climate plan.
Party leader Elizabeth May said the goal should be to create policies that encourage a more sustainable family farm economy free from chemical dependence and focused on serving local markets.
“Our long-term goal is a shift to organic farming, although it would not be imposed in a draconian fashion,” she said.
“We’d like to help those farmers who want to make the transition sooner than later with economic support during the transition years, recognizing that the increased price you can get for organic food does not accrue until you are certified and that can take some years.”
She said the Green party believes that if Canadians want domestically produced food, “we have to support our farmers.”
The party’s climate change policy proposals would do that in part by paying farmers for carbon sequestration in their soils and allowing them to sell credits in a domestic carbon market.
However, the Green party proposal for a carbon tax that would raise fossil fuel prices 12 cents per litre would add significantly to farm fuel bills. The carbon tax equivalent also would apply as a penalty against large methane producers including large livestock operations.
May said the main target of the proposed tax on methane release into the atmosphere would be landfill sites. However, large barns could also be hit. She noted the Alberta electricity company TransAlta Corp. received carbon credits for diverting methane from a large hog operation in Brazil.
The party’s climate change plan centres on imposition of a carbon tax and support for international carbon credit trading systems.
“We will reduce income taxes and payroll taxes by shifting to pollution-based taxation,” said the party policy. “A carbon tax is a critical step to getting the prices right but a Green government will not rely solely on tax shifting. We will remove subsidies from the fossil fuel industry, cap extraction levels of coal, oil and gas and instead offer significant tax incentives and support for energy conservation and renewable energy development.”
Cellulose-based ethanol would be part of the solution.
The party document said agriculture has to be part of the solution because the sector accounts for more than 55 million tonnes of greenhouse gas each year, seven percent of Canada’s total.
The largest factor, 43 percent, is methane released from animal agriculture while nitrogen dioxide released from fertilizer contributes 40 percent and poor manure management accounts for 15 percent.
May said encouraging consumption of locally produced food would reduce the environmental cost of transporting food to market.
