The Hill Times | Farmers in Canada are on the front lines of climate change
November 21, 2019
The time to work with farmers on climate action is now. Our jobs depend on it.
By Julia Palmer, Kim Delaney and Jane Rabinowicz
FIRST PUBLISHED by The Hill Times: Nov. 18, 2019 | See original article here.
For many Canadian farmers, the focus on climate change in the recent election campaigns missed the mark.
Climate change was front and centre, as it should be. It’s the biggest threat we face as a country. And while there was plenty of talk about what we should be doing to mitigate its impacts—from clean energy and carbon tax to flood protection and tree planting—there was hardly a mention of what it means to the people who feed the nation: Canada’s farmers.
Farmers are on the front line of climate change. This puts good farming jobs at risk. Whether it’s cattle ranching in Alberta or cash cropping in Ontario, farmers are worried about their future. This means Canadians who depend on farmers to put food on the table should be worried too.
Family farms are the backbone of Canada’s agricultural sector. In 2011, almost 150,000 farms were sole proprietorships or family corporations. Farming has always been a challenge, but there was some predictability in the challenge. Due in large part to climate change, this is no longer the case. We can no longer rely on the seasonal averages in rainfall and temperature that previous generations of farmers depended on to determine when to plant their crops or where to graze their stock. The new normal is abnormal.
On its website, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada offers a glass-half-full outlook on agriculture by suggesting that a warming climate might be good for some Canadian farmers, because it could increase the length of the growing season and increase the survival rates of young livestock.
But it also points out the potential for significant negative impacts including the increased intensity and frequency of droughts and violent storms, resulting in lower crop yields, reduced milk production and the loss of livestock.
From where we stand, these impacts on farming operations are already happening. Most farmers have experienced unseasonal snowstorms and soaking rain at the wrong time of year, or micro-events where a drought cripples a farming community, but leaves others, just a stone’s throw away, with normal rainfall.
But while gloom may prevail for some farmers, it certainly doesn’t mean doom. There are initiatives underway to not only help the farming community cope with climate change, but also help us put in place solutions to mitigate it on a broader scale.
On the prairies, cattle ranchers are preserving grazing lands, which are in effect Canada’s version of the Amazon rainforest—a huge carbon sink and unique habitat for birds and other wildlife.
In Manitoba, the provincial government’s recently announced Growing Outcomes in Watersheds (GROW) Program will provide a $52-million endowment that should generate $2-million to $3-million annually for Manitoba farmers to protect and enhance the environment on their land.
Across the country, the National Farmers’ Union is working to identify ways to reduce farm and food system greenhouse gas emissions and is keen to share its knowledge and experience with policy makers.
And since 2013, farmers have been working with SeedChange and its partners to develop locally-adapted crop varieties that adjust more easily to changing conditions and require fewer emission-producing inputs in order to grow.
These are important initiatives—and there are many more—that can help farmers make their farms more resilient and protect their livelihoods. But until farmers are seen as both allies and stakeholders in the fight against climate change, not enough will get done.
Canada’s farmers are resilient and hard-working. They wouldn’t be farming if they didn’t care about the crucial role agriculture can play in building a better Canada. But there’s a thin line between success and failure on the farm, and climate change is a wildcard that’s a threat to all of us.
The time to work with farmers on climate action is now. Our jobs depend on it.
Julia Palmer is a cattle rancher in Waterton, Alta.
Kim Delaney is an organic seed producer in Palmerston, Ont.
Jane Rabinowicz is executive director of SeedChange.