That’s according to Alberta-based soil health advocate Kim Cornish, who spoke at the Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association’s regenerative agriculture conference in Brandon last fall.

Why it Matters: On paper, ecosystem or carbon credits should offer a path for farmers to get paid for good management, but the reality of taking on-farm practices to the bank has been filled with questions and road bumps.

Cornish said she first became interested in soil health long before she knew anything about carbon protocols.

“It felt like there was a buzz or a hum,” she said, recounting the feeling of a biodiverse landscape.

“There seemed to be a lot of pollinators around.”

She noticed that same “alive” feeling on farms using adaptive grazing, holistic management and other regenerative practices.

However, figuring out how to measure that kind of soil function in a way that could eventually translate into payments for farmers has proven complicated.

Every industry and policy maker in North America seems to have carbon, greenhouse gases and climate change on their mind.

At first glance, that focus should be slam-dunk good news for regenerative farmers. Their management style, after all, also prioritizes getting more carbon (in the form of organic matter) out of the atmosphere and into the soil, where it can bolster productivity and their farm’s bottom line.

The concept of a carbon offset market, therefore, should make those farms hot commodities.

However, early attempts to build a carbon-credit system around grazing hit a wall when it came to codifying practices in a way that could be commodified. No two operations looked alike, and rigid protocols failed almost immediately.

“The only consistent answer I got was, ‘it depends,’ ” Cornish said.

“There was absolutely no consistency. Everybody had a different way.”

Producers told her the solution was simple: just measure the carbon. But scientists warned it was too expensive, too complicated and too variable to trust.

Overpromising on offsets

Existing efforts to capitalize on carbon credits have also run into caution-inducing obstacles.

Prairie farmers have occasionally been pitched on carbon-offset programs and contracts, with uneven results. Issues included struggles to find buyers for farmers’ credits.

In one case in Manitoba, farmers registered with the FarmersEdge Smart Carbon program, which promised to use data gathered by the farm management firm to backstop sellable carbon credits, reported in 2023 they had not seen payments and were on the hook for subscription costs they had been led to believe would be covered by sale of their credits.

Over the past several years, carbon-offset programs have approached Prairie farmers with contracts, but results have been uneven. Some companies struggled to verify their credits or never found buyers, leaving producers waiting on payments that never materialized.

In one Manitoba program, farmers enrolled in good faith but said they had yet to see compensation because the credits couldn’t sell at the expected price.

Trust in offsets was also shaken globally when an investigation found that many rainforest-based credits approved by a leading standard were largely worthless, prompting a sharp drop in demand.

Kathryn Harrison, a professor at the University of British Columbia whose field of expertise includes climate policy, said many agricultural offset programs face structural credibility problems.

One of the biggest is additionality, or the requirement that credited actions go beyond what would have happened anyway.

Fifteen years ago, Alberta allowed large emitters to purchase agricultural offsets to comply with emissions rules, while neighbouring Saskatchewan did not, said Harrison.

“What was striking is the rate of uptake of low and no-till agriculture was the same in both provinces,” she said.

“What that suggests is that those changes in agricultural practices were going to happen anyway.”

When something like that happens, those offsets aren’t considered “real,” Harrison added.

The other major challenge is permanence, especially as climate effects intensify.

Both buyers and sellers have strong financial incentives to be optimistic about potential carbon gains, Harrison said.

“The seller wants to say, ‘of course I wouldn’t have done this otherwise, I’ll only do this if you pay me,’ and the buyer wants to say, ‘of course this is additional,’ because they want to get credit for reducing their emissions at a lower cost,” she said.

“That is a worry for me.”

Digital soil mapping

Cornish’s breakthrough came when she connected with global experts in digital soil mapping, which is the system used in Australia to quantify soil carbon at scale.

That partnership led to Alberta’s carbon map, built by combining satellite imagery, soil surveys and targeted sampling. The Regenerative Alberta Living Lab then expanded that work dramatically.

Today, the project includes 111 producers and more than 340,000 sampled acres, with cores taken a full metre deep and analyzed for everything from total carbon to microbial DNA.

The findings surprised many adaptive grazers who expected to show clear advantages over neighbouring cropland. Some didn’t, at least not on paper.

“As soil gets healthier, the bulk density drops,” Cornish said.

That fluffy, sponge-like structure is great for infiltration and resilience, but it weighs less. That structure is important to soil health, but it also means carbon-density of the topsoil isn’t the right measure to take when looking at overall soil health.

“You can’t store carbon in air,” she said.

“You’re just not going to get using carbon stocks as the only mechanism.”

That’s where deeper indicators came in, including more stable aggregates, higher fungal diversity and carbon movement far below 60 centimetres, especially in adaptive multi-paddock grazing systems.

Cornish’s group used those findings to help redesign an entirely new ecological credit that avoids the weaknesses of current carbon markets.

The Alberta team rebuilt the system from scratch around measuring actual outcomes rather than prescribed practices —locking data securely using blockchain, reducing verification costs with geo-referenced photos and soil maps and paying producers annually through an investment fund instead of one-time easements.

“You basically don’t have an easement. You can leave at any point, but you surrender that annual payment,” she said.

The project will now look at bringing in international buyers, tapping green bonds and stacking new credit types such as biodiversity and flood mitigation.

Cornish said Manitoba is high on the list, especially with tools like the Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association’s Aquanty water model ready to plug in. A Prairie-wide grassland-conversion monitoring system is already in development to address leakage concerns.

Through all of it, her goal remains simple: reward good stewardship in a way that reflects what producers already know from the ground up.

“This was not about a scheme to just make money,” Cornish said.

“It was a desire to see more people have more living land.”

Harrison, however, said the uncertainty inherent to offsets is amplified by the price incentives buyers and sellers have and is being amplified by climate change.

She said she personally believes offsets should not be allowed for regulatory compliance unless they involve permanent solutions such as carbon capture.

“I would rather we find other ways to incentivize changes in agricultural practices, other than looking to big polluters and heavy emitters to pay for those,” she said.

On the one side of the wall are government, the food industry, researchers, and concerned environmental groups who see the future markets requiring lower greenhouse gas emissions, improved carbon sequestration, and reliable measures of environmental results as critical to a future competitive industry. On the other side are Prairie farmers and farm organizations who see many of the solutions proposed as unworkable.

The uniquely short growing season and often extremely arid conditions make many of the ideas proposed from the other side of the wall seem unreasonable. The conflict deepens to the point that climate change deniers and science skeptics come through as the loudest voices in response to efforts to suggest change.

Reasonable discussions are rare.

Despite being in his late 60s, David Rourke, who has raised crops, livestock and operated a contract research company near Minto, Man. over the past 45 years, decided to do a PhD research project on the reasons for resistance to specific proposed best management practices on the Prairies.

The research focused on 12 farmers who expressed an interest in sustainability. The study included an examination of the economic condition of the farms, a measure of their greenhouse gas emissions using best available measures, measuring total production from each farm measured in kilocalories of food and fuel for the market, and a detailed interview, which was designed to capture beliefs and farmers individual perceptions of real barriers for their operation to make changes.

The information from the interviews and the measures collected from each famer were then summarized and combined to determine the reactions and reasons for adopting or not adopting specific changes to improve environmental outcomes.

Two indexes were developed. The first:

• BERT/E provided a numeric rating that was intended to reflect the farmers’ assessments of their beliefs, economic value perceived of the change, regulatory implications, and available technology divided by a farmer’s energy for change. Each of the five variables were given a value between one and five.
• The second was the sustainable farm index, which combined three measures. The first was the farm’s financial wellbeing as measured by their contribution margin. The second was the farm’s capacity to produce as measured in kcal/acre. The third was the farm’s net greenhouse gas emissions as measured using the HOLOS model.

Profitability key

The sustainable farm index thus recognizes the need to remain profitable as individual units; the need to sustain Prairie agriculture’s contribution to global food, feed, fuel and fibre needs. The final measure recognized the importance of not creating irreversible harm to the planet.

Rourke breaks “best management practices” into several categories. Some are practices such as zero tillage that he identifies as “no regret” practices because they benefit the farmer, the consumer and the environment.

There are practice he categorizes as “neutral” such as incorporating renewable diesel fuels into the equation.

There are others, however, that are “sacrifice BMPs” that come at a cost to the farm’s productivity or profitability, such as cover crops or limits on drainage. If those practices are to be implemented, someone — whether it is the farmer, taxpayers or consumers — must absorb those costs.

By combining these into a single index, the research recognized in a formal way that any new management practice that takes away from profitability or total production may cause harm in a manner that causes other regions to simply replace our production and possibly make total outcomes worse overall.

The impact of the research on the impenetrable wall is profound. The study is written recognizing the unquestionable need for change. The study concurrently supports many of the Prairie concerns that the proposals for progress are in many ways a poor fit given available technology farm structure, and culture. The study then goes on to recommend concrete ideas to move forward including research and new technologies such as non-legume crops that can fix their own nitrogen or delayed seed germination technology for cover crop establishment, to support change.

The path of reason

Rourke has completed his thesis and his work will soon be publicly available. It is a must-read for players on both sides of the wall.

On the farmer side, leadership needs to quit hiding their frustration behind a climate change denial movement. Agriculture has worked for a science-based approach to dispute resolution on issues from food safety to trade. Sustainability needs to be treated similarly. The government and food company side needs to respect the voices stating that the proposed “best management practices” will not get us to a new place. In addition to support for management practices, a realistic research strategy and public investment will be required to overcome the barriers identified. Improvements in measurements and modelling are needed.

Agriculture interfaces with anthropogenic global warming both from the emissions — largely nitrogen fertilizer and fuel; and from the potential for sequestration of carbon in the soil. All three of these nuts need to be cracked and the current proposed changes are not enough to get us to a new place.

Rourke’s work offers a direction that provides hope. We all have an opportunity to learn from his work. Let’s push the wall aside and start making changes that have potential.

Ian McCreary farms with his wife Mary Smillie, their sons Luke and Matthias and their partners Shannon and Taylor at Bladworth, Sask. He has a Masters degree in agricultural economics.

The arrangement will see the agency contribute $72,300 to the non-profit Grassland Stewardship Agreements project, and used to cover the infrastructure costs of fencing for Ritchie Bison and their neighbour, Brian Powell, near Souris, Man.

The fencing provides a guarantee that the land will be kept as pasture, say those involved. That will assist in maintenance of biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

The partnership aims to show a new possibility for companies looking to improve their environmental footprint while helping the ag sector.

“We were just looking at meat and dairy in general,” said Donna Dagg, manager of sustainable development at Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries. “And we were looking for an ecosystem or somebody who was interested in advancing the ecosystem from a biodiversity perspective, water holding capacity, generating less greenhouse gas emissions — the whole ecosystem approach.”

The conservancy’s Grassland Stewardship Agreements project is focused on maintaining Manitoba’s grassland ecosystems and grazing habitats for large grazers such as cattle and bison.

“The Prairies were evolved under grazing and livestock, and so it’s a natural fit,” said Stephen Carlyle, MHC’s chief executive officer. “And all of the animals and birds hanging out in those pastures all evolved to coexist with both animals (cattle and bison), basically, grazers.”

Carlyle said large grazing animals play an essential ecological role on the Prairies.

The Canadian Cattle Association and Canadian Bison Association commonly pitch their sectors as promoting biodiversity of plants and animals, as well having environmental benefits including carbon sequestration, especially through practices such as rotational grazing.

That’s why a partnership with the bison operation and its rotational grazing plan made sense, Carlyle said in a press release.

“This allows areas of native grassland to rest and put down large root systems while the bison graze other areas. These healthy root and plant systems, with the addition of manure from the bison themselves, really helps keep carbon in the ground that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.”

Grassland experts commonly note that growth of root systems and grasses are important to the carbon cycle. Proponents of sustainable grazing say that pairing that growth with the hoof action of cattle or bison helps incorporate organic matter and stores more carbon, creating healthy grasslands.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture Climate Change Resource Centre, soil carbon accounts for approximately 81 per cent of a grassland ecosystem’s carbon. Grazing management practices are commonly used to maintain that carbon.

“Treating grazing and farms as ecosystems is such a cool way to look at the world,” said Dagg. “We tend to think of them (ecosystems) as coral reefs or oceans or forests, but you know, a farm is an ecosystem. And there’s so many things that farmers are doing to maintain that ecosystem for years to come.”

The project matched with the Crown agency’s priorities, which call for continued support of farmers and meat in local restaurants while also being ahead of the game in measuring greenhouse gas emissions.

The Crown corporation’s efforts have expanded to include a rating system, wherein emissions are ranked on a three-point scale denoting how directly that emission is linked to the organization. It also has a goal to develop strategies targeting different emission items and a goal of net zero by 2050.

Corporation representatives say there is no way to reach net zero without offsetting strategies. For that, a “nature-based solution” like the bison partnership was considered the best option.

“Looking at animal protein, it makes sense to go back to nature,” said Dagg.

To ensure both organizations are meeting their goals, an outcome assessment tool will be used by the conservancy.

The tool, developed in partnership with the International Institute for Sustainable Development, is a computer model that the organization uses to estimate results from ongoing conservation work. It’s built with information on current research, literature and expert opinions to estimate what effect the activities will have on certain landscapes.

The conservancy has used it on other projects, such as those funded by grants. It has seen success with the tool and the “good news” numbers it provides.

“We work in numbers. I mean, I’m attached to the finance department, so we love numbers,” said Dagg. “When the executive or my boss asks me what’s the estimated reduction in greenhouse gas emissions … our employees want to see what’s the benefit of that.”

This partnership is estimated to offset 1,001.25 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year through carbon sequestration.

It’s even more sustainable if wool products can survive rips and tears. That’s one reason the Sept. 6-7 Manitoba Fibre Festival in Winnipeg featured a mending workshop.

“We have always focused on sustainability,” said festival co-ordinator Mandy Furney. “We highlight local wool; it’s a renewable resource that lasts and doesn’t contaminate landfills.”

Organizers decided to highlight mending when planning for last year’s event. That festival held a mending drop-in session. This year, they expanded the idea to a full workshop led by local business Reclaim Mending, run by Anne-Marie Janzen.

“She’s helping people learn and understand better about mending their own clothes for sustainability,” Furney said. “That’s a really important thing for us and we’re very happy we’ve got folks who can help other people learn about that actively here at the festival.”

The festival features vendors, workshops and demonstrations aiming to connect local fibre farmers with the crafting community. It is held at the Red River Exhibition Grounds in Winnipeg.

This was the second year the festival has singled out a breed of the year. Last year, Shetland sheep got a moment in the spotlight. This year, it was Icelandic sheep.

“We have quite a lot of Icelandic sheep in Manitoba, as well as a lot of Shetland sheep, so that’s why we started with those two,” said Furney.

The Icelandic breed is a good fit for the Manitoba climate, she added.

“They’re a breed that does well here. Not all breeds do equally well at all parts of the world. They’re nice, hardy sheep. They’re relatively small because they haven’t been bred for meat. My understanding, from talking with folks who have raised them, is they are nice sheep to raise and are relatively docile.”

They are also unique in the fibre world because they have a dual coat. The outer coat, with long, coarse hair, is referred to as “tog,” while the shorter, softer undercoat is called “thel.”

“It’s why Icelandic yarn can be done up in what’s called lopi style,” said Furney. “If you’ve ever seen those Icelandic sweaters … they’re made from a single spun yarn that hasn’t been plied, because they have such a long fibre. Icelandic sheep are quite well known for that feature in the fleece and fibre world.”

Sheep are always a major part of the event, but other livestock species kept for their fibre are also featured.

“We have different animals on display, from different breeds of sheep to alpacas, and this year we have some Angora rabbits,” said Furney.

This year’s festival also saw return of the ever-popular sheep shearing demonstration. However, the workshops continue to be one of the biggest draws for the event. Furney noted that many sold out in advance.

“We have lots of really great workshops, like learning how to spin, working on felting, fabric weaving, and rug hooking is always a popular one. We really try to keep it diverse and try to mix it up.”

Vendors are also a big attraction, and this year included booths for yarn, crafts, sheepskins and other products and services associated with wool.

One of those booths was the Austin Woollen Mill, which opened earlier this year and was welcomed by wool producers due to a lack of nearby processors. The mill is now one of only two wool processing facilities in the province. The other is Long Way Homestead in Ste-Geneviève.

“It’s really wonderful for the Manitoba fibre communities. It’s another option for where they can bring their wool to be processed,” said Furney.

I remember having to clean our windshield at every stop along the way because the dead bugs accumulated so quickly as we drove along. These days, invertebrate populations have collapsed, the swarms have all but disappeared, and I don’t think my kids even know that gas stations have squeegees.

We can think of our too-clean windshields as the canary in the coal mine: Prairie ecosystems are in trouble, and our agricultural productivity may follow if we don’t act.

Prairie grasslands are workhorses, absorbing and storing billions of tonnes of carbon, providing protection from flooding and drought and helping purify our water. These landscapes, spanning much of southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, also play an important role in agriculture. More than 70 per cent of Canada’s agricultural land mass is found across this region.

We rely on the food grown on this land every day — land that is typically converted from natural ecosystems and accompanied by a loss of biodiversity. Across Canada’s Prairie grasslands, less than 20 per cent of these natural habitats remain intact, and more is lost every year.

Recognizing the importance of agriculture to humanity and the potential for better harmony between production and conservation, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework created Target 10 to ensure that areas of agriculture and other productive sectors are managed sustainably.

A recent survey conducted by Abacus on behalf of the Canadian Wildlife Federation suggests that the vast majority (greater than 75 per cent) of Canadians are unfamiliar with our native Prairie ecosystems or that they are one of the most endangered ecosystems on the planet.

Yet, the same study demonstrates that once informed, Canadians are supportive of efforts to conserve what remains. We need to ensure that the significance of our Prairies, and the agricultural stewards who keep these places functional and thriving, remain a secret no longer.

While much can be achieved through more sustainable agricultural practices across the country, the grazing of cattle on our native Prairie grasslands provides Canada with a fortuitous opportunity where food production and biodiversity can be mutually beneficial.

Ranches require large, contiguous blocks of intact grasslands for grazing and contribute significantly to biodiversity conservation in the agricultural context. They make up slightly more than one-third of Canada’s agricultural land use, yet nearly 70 per cent of wildlife found on agricultural lands are found on ranches.

Numerous studies have demonstrated the positive impact that sustainable cattle grazing has on grassland health and the plants and animals that live there. This includes endangered species with specific habitat requirements and many grasses and other plants that thrive in grazed landscapes.

Cows and other large grazing mammals are effective at dispersing seeds long distances, and their dung offers an injection of nutrients into the landscape.

It is crucial that the Nature Conservancy of Canada prioritizes the most effective and efficient conservation opportunities available.

Its work is rooted in an evidence-based decision-making process that incorporates high-quality information from collaborators across the country, representing diverse worldviews and lived experiences, supplemented by the NCC’s open-source spatial analysis toolkit. This process allows us to be sure that our efforts are resulting in durable outcomes and creating resilient landscapes.

The Canadian Prairies are one of the most densely settled areas in Canada, and there is a high degree of overlap between key biodiversity areas and privately owned land in this region. Additionally, 75 per cent of the remaining intact Prairie grasslands exist on private agricultural lands. To achieve durable conservation outcomes requires interested landowners and tools that allow for partnership.

Conservation agreements are an effective mechanism to formalize such partnership: a landowner can remain on their land operating their ranch in a way that is compatible with biodiversity outcomes, and legal restrictions are placed on title that prevent future development or conversion of the ecosystem.

These agreements are built through mutual agreement and trust and have proven to be cost-effective and reliable forms of conservation.

The Waldron Conservation Project exemplifies what good conservation practices can look like.

Composed primarily of native habitat, the Waldron Ranch is an area of incredible diversity, rich history and spectacular scenery. Conservation and productive ranching have always worked together at the Waldron.

To ensure this would be true in perpetuity, the NCC and the Waldron Grazing Co-op agreed in 2013 to the terms of a conservation agreement. In the decade since, the ranch and the NCC’s relationship with the co-op have thrived. The NCC is building on this success with a project at Bob Creek Ranch, an adjacent Prairie grasslands property.

We have one last opportunity on the Prairies to ensure that our grasslands’ plants and animals continue to thrive, thanks to generations of stewardship by the people who have lived in, worked on and cared for these grasslands.

It is imperative that Canadians recognize the significance of this landscape, and the value that these grassland champions have provided to all of us, and that we find ways to ensure such efforts are supported.

In 2024, the NCC launched the Prairie Grasslands Action Plan to conserve 1.2 million acres of Prairie grasslands by 2030. NCC works to protect land with the goal of supporting continued use, whether industry or recreational, in compatibility with conservation principles.

This approach balances promoting livelihoods and recreation while addressing the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.

We all have a role to play in raising awareness of the importance of these places, and we need everyone at the table to help ensure their future so that these working landscapes continue to work for everyone.

Jeremy Hogan is director of prairie grassland conservation with the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Cquesta chief executive officer Michael Ott told the Agri Tech Venture Forum that half the human impact on carbon released to the atmosphere can be accounted for if nature can be made 2.5 per cent more efficient.

Cquesta works with seed researchers and seed companies to put its process into the roots of commercial crops.

“We’re a root architecture modification company, so I can do whatever you want. I can make it skinny or fat or wider, shallow or narrow, deep or whatever,” says Ott.

The company’s quickest route to market is carbon, and roots are the key to greater sequestration.

He says when carbon is moved deeper into the soil, it stays there longer. This addresses the issue of plowing that can move sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere.

“As you go down in the soil, oxygen levels decrease, microbial activity decreases and when that carbon sticks around for a lot longer, so if you’re able to get a low of 30 centimetres, you can see that 80 per cent of that carbon is more than 50 years old.”

The company has licensed nine patents from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, where researchers have been working on gene editing plants. The company is based in Chicago and is building a “plant transformation facility” in St. Louis.

Its goal is to enhance roots at no cost to farmers. Cquesta and its seed company partners will benefit from helping the environment and by selling carbon credits.

“All farmers love deep roots because they basically help tolerate weather inconsistencies,” says Ott.

The challenge for the company is to reach the scale needed to make a profit.

“When farmers are buying seeds, they are buying seeds with six to 10 traits. We want there to be one more trait labelled deep roots slash carbon sequestration that is given to them for free.”

The other major partners are seed companies to which Cquesta plans to licence its technology. Then it plans to get paid for the carbon its root system sequesters and “paying everyone back through the system.”

The company just completed a $6 million funding round. It sees a lot of potential in the large acreage planted to canola in Canada, and that’s why Ott was at the venture forum event in Toronto.

The first product the company will bring to market in two to three years is enhanced roots in cover crops. Then it plans soybeans and canola as its first large acreage crops in three to five years. Other crops like corn will follow in five to seven years, Ott says.

The report, Stemming the Loss of Grasslands in Canada, A Scan of Policy Solutions, said grasslands represent Canada’s largest natural climate change mitigation opportunity, yet each year about 457,000 acres of native and tame grass are lost in the three Prairie provinces.

The report was undertaken by Birds Canada and the Central Grasslands Roadmap Initiative, a collaboration of more than 200 North American organizations including agricultural groups. It could serve as the basis for in-depth analysis of the options, including costs, barriers and implementation feasibility, the report said.

Maintaining grasslands as working landscapes is important for biodiversity and carbon sequestration, the report said. Prairie grasslands are home to more than 60 federally listed species at risk, and a 2019 report found grassland bird populations have dropped by 60 percent since 1970 for the steepest decline of any bird group.

Tammy ver Cauteren, executive director of Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, said the past has shown that efforts focused solely on birds won’t actually save birds.

“We’re starting to shift our thinking from protecting an individual species to conserve an entire landscape,” she said during a webinar to launch the report.

In the United States, people will push hard to include grassland conservation in the next farm bill, she said.

“We have a goal in the next 10 years of restoring, protecting and improving 100 million acres of grasslands.”

That will help stabilize bird populations and reverse declines in pollinators and other species.

Silke Nebel, vice-president of conservation and science at Birds Canada, said the main reason behind grassland loss is that ranching tends to generate lower revenue than cash crops. While she noted that protections such as Grasslands National Park are important, most grassland is privately owned.

Among the nine pathways was the possibility of denying crop insurance to anyone who breaks native grass for crop production.

Nebel said a similar provision exists in the U.S. farm bill. It’s called Sodsaver and is in place in South Dakota, Minnesota and other states in the prairie pothole region.

“Subsidized forage and pasture insurance products do exist but are not fully meeting the needs of ranchers because the payments are triggered too late and because payments are insufficient to cover the true costs,” the report said.

This leaves ranchers more vulnerable to operational risks.

The report suggests ecological goods and services should be included in land assessments to determine market value.

“As long as EG&S remain externalities, our current public policies, business risk management tools, land valuation and land tax mechanisms tend to benefit cropland and further broaden the business risk and revenue gaps between ranching and crop production,” said the report.

Nebel said higher market value of grasslands would make conversion less attractive.

Similar to the no-net-loss policy for wetlands in Manitoba and Alberta, the report said grasslands could benefit from that same policy. It suggests the same should apply when it comes to energy infrastructure on grasslands. There could even be a net gain approach.

“There is a precedent for this in England. Biodiversity net gain is becoming mandatory under a new act as of this summer, which obliges the developers to deliver a biodiversity net gain of 10 per cent,” Nebel said.

Canada’s clean fuel regulations are well intended but have negative consequences for grasslands by increasing the demand for corn, canola and soybean crops, she said.

“We suggest to introduce policies that encourage the use of agricultural waste instead of purpose-raised crops for biofuels,” she said.

The report also calls for reinstatement of the permanent cover program from about 30 years ago as a possible cost-effective way to restore grasslands. And it calls for carbon offset credits for grasslands kept intact and a delay in receiving certification if native grass is broken for organic crop production.

Finally, the report said incorporating suggestions in the document would help Canada meet its 2030 goals under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

That was the takeaway from a panel discussion at the 2024 Canadian Crops Convention in Winnipeg March 6.

Kristjan Hebert was the farmer voice on the panel. He is president and chief executive officer of the Hebert Group and managing partner of Hebert Grain Ventures, a 30,000-acre grain and oilseed operation in southeastern Saskatchewan.

He was joined by Nick Betts, managing director for the Canadian Alliance for Net Zero Agri-Food, a fledgling group consisting of food processors, food retailers and organizations with a mission to promote sustainability of the agri-food sector. Liz Hunt brought the larger corporate perspective as Syngenta’s head of sustainable and responsible business.

Hebert said that when he thinks about climate change and sustainability, it’s intertwined with the success of his business.

“Our legacy statement is to leave the land, financial statements, industry and community in a better state, generation after generation. To me, that’s what sustainability is for our business.”

But farmers can’t bear that entire burden, he said. Industry partners must pitch in.

“In our society, we spend too many hours trying to determine how we solve the problem. We need to focus on who can solve this problem. Who can we get in the room in order to get more good people in the room to solve the problem? Because none of us have time to go by ourselves.”

Hunt said Canadian farmers have a lot to offer.

“Canadian farmers are great farmers and can show the world what great farming looks like,” she said, pointing to the example of no-till farming that is successful, profitable, productive and sustainable.

Betts expanded on that idea.

“We have a huge opportunity to be a leader in the world,” he said. “We have smart farmers. We have smart industry and we have the technology. When you put all of those factors together, there’s an opportunity to demonstrate scale.”

Betts also said there’s a simplicity to Canadian agriculture compared to other big players like China or the United States.

“It’s easier to mobilize. It’s more agile and nimble to be able to demonstrate concepts,” he said. “That gives us the benefit of taking these tools, using them and shaping that rulebook to what we want it to be globally. It’s an opportunity that I don’t think we’ve tapped at all.”

Hebert said Canada has advantages but he worries the country is dropping the ball when it comes to marketing its expertise. Canadian farmers have advanced knowledge of sustainable practices, but the average citizen might not see that.

Hebert was at COP28 last year. Just before the climate conference, a report from the Global Institute for Food Security gave Canada high grades on sustainable food production compared to the rest of the world. Despite that, the Canadian government said nothing about the report at the conference.

“We are producing the lowest emission metric tonnes of crop commodities in the world,” said Hebert, referencing the report.

“So, if you’re focused on global emissions and you’re buying commodities, you should buy them from Canada. And it didn’t even get mentioned. That’s a problem.”

He suggested the government shouldn’t have responsibility for telling agriculture’s story.

“What we need is a partnership between producers and industry to be bold leaders, create the path, create the game and say to the government, ‘we just need a referee,’ because I do not want them to be players in the game,” said Hebert.

Betts pushed back.

“From an incentivization and investment perspective, the stuff that we’re doing around carbon markets and incentivizing market creation is an opportunity that the government has a role in,” he said.

“Towards our goal of net-zero carbon, government has a factor to play, whether it’s municipal, provincial or federal.”

A recent RBC report said greenhouse gas emissions will increase if Canadian farmers maintain current practices. Hebert argued that the discussion must shift its baseline on carbon. Carbon intensity is a better measure than measuring carbon in absolute terms, he said.

“Nowhere in that report did they talk about the carbon that is sequestered in agriculture. We don’t really want to talk about sequestration because we don’t have a simple MRV (measurement, reporting and verification). We hope to have that solved in the near future.”

It’s crucial to establish a value for carbon, panellists agreed.

“If carbon is so valuable, let me have a carbon asset on my statement that I can borrow against and invest in my farm,” said Hebert. “There’s a whole bunch of ways to unlock this value of carbon.”

Betts said agriculture should be viewed as a canvas.

“I’m told the two important things in a painting are the proportion and the perspective,” he said. “Together as an industry, we can paint that picture with those proper proportions and perspectives.”

He agreed that carbon intensity is more useful than absolute carbon because it adds needed perspective.

Hunt highlighted Syngenta’s role in agricultural innovation.

“Whether that’s bringing new crop protection products to market or new seeds, technologies, expanding into biologicals or digital technologies, that’s what we do best,” she said.

Syngenta has a big platform and is a global company with farmers central to the stories it tells.

“Consumers really see farmers as heroes. They believe in farmers and trust farmers,” she said.

“If we lean into that, we can really help to bring those stories to life.”

The funds from Agriculture Canada were announced earlier this month at the University of Manitoba by Winnipeg South-Centre MP Ben Carr on behalf of federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay.

“This is going to be an extremely powerful catalyst for the growth of this industry, which has such an important presence here in the prairie region of Canada,” said Carr.

The funding is tied to Agriculture Canada’s AgriScience program, an initiative under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership. It is divided into two sub-categories. Program funding supports individual products while clusters funding, which includes the Pulse Canada announcement, looks to “mobilize industry, government and academia through partnerships, and address priority national themes and horizontal issues.”

A similar announcement was made under the same program for the canola sector in fall 2023.

For the pulse cluster, funds are expected to bring industry and researchers together on projects that will boost farm production and reduce the environmental footprint.

“They’ll do this through things such as fertility strategies that maximize nitrogen fixation, new higher protein varieties that are more productive and profitable for farmers as well as building disease resistance and resilience against climate change,” said Carr.

“All of this will help to increase profits for farmers and help Canada reach our 2030 and 2050 climate targets.”

Much of that kind of research is taking place at the University of Manitoba. Professor James House, who is also Manitoba’s strategic research chair in sustainable protein, said the funding will help maintain pulse research efforts at the university.

“The funds announced today allow us to continue our collaboration with Dr. Tom Warkentin, a pulse breeder at the University of Saskatchewan, to understand how genetic, agronomic and environmental factors influence both the content and quality of protein found in yellow peas,” said House.

Pulse Canada chair Kevin Auch said announcements like this help maintain Canada’s role as a world leader in sustainable pulse production and export.

“These investments in research from the Government of Canada, matched by our sector, will help enhance our resiliency to meet the growing global demand for sustainably grown, high quality pulses and ingredients while making a positive impact on our environment and economy,” said Auch.

Pulse Canada will add $10 million to the cluster’s pot, bringing total backing to $21 million into 2028.

In a news release accompanying the announcement, MacAulay said the investment would “bring together the top experts in pulse growing and research from across the Prairies to improve the competitiveness and sustainability of the sector for generations to come.”

John Preune, a St. Andrews-area farmer who sits on the board of both the Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers and Pulse Canada, said the new funding is crucial for the industry.

“The investments will help mitigate the challenges presented by climate change by enhancing drought tolerance in crops, tackling diseases like root rot, and increasing the uptake of pulses across Canada to help sequester carbon,” he said, adding the joint industry-government contributions will send an important message to Canadian and global markets.

“Today’s customers are increasingly interested in where their food comes from and who’s producing it and how it’s produced,” he said. “And Canada’s pulse industry has an excellent story to tell. Canadian pulses are among the world’s most sustainable protein sources of the world.”

Preune pointed to recent data that suggests the nitrogen-fixing traits of pulses combined with modern agriculture practices could allow Canada’s pulse industry to eliminate 3.6 million tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide annually.

“That’s equivalent to taking 1.1 million cars off the road for an entire year,” said Preune. “There’s no doubt that, through collaboration, we can go further, faster and together ensure the long-term viability and economic and environmental success of Canada’s pulse sector.”

Researchers may soon be able to measure and verify carbon sequestration more accurately and easily from above, said Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia.

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Advances in drone and satellite technology could allow farmers to finally be paid for an essential service that is often overlooked in the conversation about greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, she said.

“Once that’s possible, that is a revenue possibility,” she told about 500 delegates at the recent CrossRoads Crop Conference in Calgary. “And that’s the one that all of your industry associations have to carefully watch because right now in Canada, we are kind of a leader in this.

“There’s a lot of talk about creating a market, so there would literally be a carbon exchange with a carbon coin. You guys are sequestering carbon. You should get paid for doing that.”

However, Newman warned that producers will likely have to fight for it as everyone tries to get their share of the pie.

“A lot of this was driven by the Westons, the McCains, the Loblaws of the world, and the key to it all … is unlocking that measurement.”

She spoke as part of the conference’s opening keynote address, titled Agriculture Innovation – Examining the Future of Food Production. Newman said she expects it will take five years at most before farmers can directly measure carbon sequestration from above rather than using the current cumbersome and laborious methods.

“Now, of course, we can measure carbon in the ground, but you’ve got to dig a hole, and that’s not practical,” she said during an interview. “And so, we’re looking at drone applications, satellite applications, and using computer models to estimate. There’s a lot of companies trying to crack this holy grail of measurement and verification.”

Advanced mathematical models could allow farmers to tweak their practices by estimating the impact of different strategies to sequester carbon, she told the conference.

“And I would urge the farmers I’ve worked with to start to benchmark carbon and their carbon emissions, adopt best practices, note down everything they’re already doing, keep the receipts to get ready for this market because it will come to us.”

The grain and pulse sectors, or almost any type of broad-acre farming, represent one of the few industries that are sequestering more carbon than they emit, said Newman during the interview. Canada’s agriculture industry is well placed to make the most of this advantage because it is one of few in the world operating at a large scale in terms of acreage and the ability to improve sequestration.

“They can sell that offset to an industry say, like the oilsands, and there actually are soft calculations, and it’s all guesswork right now still, that the prairie farmers produce more sequestering than the oilsands produced emissions, so it balances out.

“And you can have a transfer of funds going from the consumer back to the farmer who’s actually putting the carbon away for you, and you put a price on that.”

Newman told the conference that advances in technology are about to affect farming in other ways. Precision fermentation is already creating food products sold at grocery store chains in the United States, including a low-calorie ice cream made with dairy proteins that are brewed much like beer.

“The link here, this fits directly in an area I call protein conversion where we take waste starches, waste products, anything in the grain and pulse realm maybe that we can’t sell one year or something, we convert it into proteins through precision fermentation.”

The Prairies are a natural place to scale up precision fermentation because farmers already grow the feedstock, said Newman.

“So, the Alberta sugar beet industry, it’s a natural fit, but most importantly, you can use starch, which is a waste product. In many cases, you can also feed grain into this (feedstock), and it’s why we feel Canada has an advantage.”

She expects precision fermentation will be operating at scale in Western Canada within five years.

“There’s some very large groups on the Prairies looking at how to leverage oil and gas technology to build large-scale plants to do this.”

Precision fermentation falls under the umbrella of cellular agriculture, which aims to create animal products from non-animal feedstocks, said Newman. Although demand is soaring for animal products because Asia, India and Africa are increasing their protein consumption, it will be hard to scale up production by only using traditional methods of raising cattle.

“(Canada’s) got lots of places to grow beef here, and we do, but the world wants more than we can produce, and currently 40 percent of the Earth’s non-glaciated land surface is already used for agriculture, so it’s hard to expand.”