When Rick Rutherford starts to plan his crop, he begins at the end – the end of the last growing season, that is.

The Grosse Isle-area seed grower and owner-operator of Rutherford Farms sits down, current year’s yield map in hand, with agronomist Dave Ives of Enns Brothers to plan for the following spring.

“It’s the report card,” Rutherford said at a recent 4R event organized by the Enterprise and Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative (EMILI). “It tells us exactly how we’ve done that year, and what’s happened in the field.”

Why it matters: Emissions reductions could be an economic win, cutting-edge farmers say.

Combining the yield map with more than a decade’s worth of field data, augmented with EMILI’s sensors, weather stations and field imagery, Rutherford and Ives drill into what the year’s numbers mean for their plan next year.

“We’re like detectives, poring over the data,” Ives told tour participants.

Setting goals

Rutherford says the most important question is how uniform the yield is. If it varies just a little bit across the field, it likely means there’s a similar soil fertility picture below the surface.

“If it’s uniform, we’ll soil sample uniformly,” Rutherford said. “If it’s variable, we’ll break it up into zones and soil sample that way.”

Once the soil sampling is complete, they can zone the fields. That process doesn’t have to be onerous, attendees heard, and is frequently based on the simple visual cues found in yield maps, zone soil test results and other available visual imagery.

“We’ve drawn the zone maps by hand sometimes,” Rutherford said.

The goal is to match available residual nitrogen to crop need. For example, the target for wheat and canola is 180 pounds an acre. If one portion tests at 120 pounds available per acre, that part of the field will get a 60-pound top up. Another portion that’s at 50 pounds of residual N would get 130 pounds.

“That’s going to be a lot more efficient than just putting a blanket 120 pounds on everything,” Rutherford said.

In the end, he hopes to build a farm that’s environmentally sustainable, but more importantly, is also economically sustainable.

“That’s the bottom line for me,” he said.

Equipment

A key element on the operation is a John Deere DB 60 planter, which allows Rutherford to apply up to five products at variable rates.

“That drill has a lot of capability to split up nutrient applications as we want,” said Ives.

Virtually all the farm’s nitrogen is incorporated at time of planting and from two main sources, anhydrous ammonia and coated urea, at varying rates. The anhydrous is applied deep enough to ensure it’s captured within the soil, and the coated urea also prevents off-gassing.

Myth busters

The two have spent a significant amount of time “ground truthing” established best practices, often with surprising results. For example, they’re seeding wheat at a much lower rate today than a few years ago and they’re making money doing it.

While conventional wisdom says seeding rate should be around two and a half or three bushels an acre, the farm is now seeding at a bushel and a half per acre. The result is a stand that puts its energy into producing seed rather than lush vegetative growth, Rutherford said, and the farm has been seeing about $50 more return per acre.

“We’ve pretty much found the sweet spot seeding rate for wheat,” Ives said.

That better bottom line comes from a variety of factors, including lower seed costs and skipping the application of a growth regulator.

Added up, the savings more than justify the price of the advanced planter, Rutherford said.

“If you’re saving 10 per cent on 7,000 or 8,000 acres, that really starts to add up.”

Digging deep

Another stop on the tour featured former provincial soil specialist John Heard, who delved into all the leaks in the nutrient cycle. He said understanding key points can help farmers plug those leaks and gain efficiency in the process.

“I’m pretty humble about trying to tell farmers in Manitoba how to manage their farms. Most farmers are already doing these things and if they’re not, there’s generally a really good reason for it.”

Those reasons are often economic, he noted, including reluctance to adopt more expensive coated nitrogen sources and lack of availability for more advanced equipment.

Heard said one key danger zone is surface-applied UAN, especially on wet soils that are losing moisture, and high-pH soils.

“We can lose quite a bit right here over the course of a few warm days,” he warned.

Mitchell Timmerman, Manitoba Agriculture agri-ecosystems specialist, joined Heard at the tour station, which had a six-foot-deep soil pit to showcase the soil profile and demonstrate how that profile affects nutrient management in the field above.

“This is the poorly drained Osborne clay,” Timmerman said, from the bottom of his soil pit. “It’s a cousin to the well-drained Red River clay, with a slight difference in topography.”

That slight difference makes it harder to manage and more prone to nutrient loss, Timmerman said. Add a pH that hovers around eight, and it’s a challenging place to manage nutrients.

Closely watched

EMILI has been conducting research at Rutherford Farms since 2019, but it formalized the partnership in fall 2022. It is now building a permanent facility on the farm.

Danielle Bérard, Innovation Farms manager, says the decade of data collection by Rutherford, starting in 2014, is one reason the research is possible.

“That data has been invaluable,” she said.

Now the group is taking field surveillance to another level. They’ve got eight Pessl weather stations with soil probes installed on the 5,500-acre operation and are using satellite, NDVI and drone imagery to augment them.

Innovation Farms is ultimately planned as a showcase destination and proving ground for emerging agriculture technology, one that answers basic and practical farmer questions.

“When I talk to farmers, they want to know two things,” Bérard said. “They want to know ‘what does it cost?’ and ‘how does it work on my neighbour’s field?’”

Rutherford said the trials are all done at field scale with commercial equipment, which is key to making the work relatable to farmers.

“I said right from the start, I didn’t want to be a research farm,” he said. “That’s what we are, of course, but it’s not a lot of small plots and stakes. It’s all on a field scale and stored in an app.”

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Professor Rob Currie, head of the school’s department of entomology, is exploring the use of carbon dioxide to help mitigate mite infestations. The elevator pitch behind the treatment is that varroa mites have a higher sensitivity to CO2 than honeybees, and exposure to high levels can kill the mites without harming the bees.

Currie and his team set out to test this hypothesis in an overwintering facility.

Why it matters: Manitoba beekeepers have reported higher than normal mite counts in the last few years, leading to concerns that common chemical controls may no longer be working as well as they used to.

Varroa mites are small, oval-shaped parasites that infest honeybee colonies. The pests attach themselves to adult honeybees or their larvae, pierce the bee’s exoskeleton and feed on their hemolymph (blood). This weakens the bees and shortens their lifespans. Varroa mites also spread viruses that can infect the colony.

Varroa mites became a problem for beekeepers in the 1990s and were initially kept under control through chemical treatments, but the pests began to develop resistance.

“Apivar is basically the best treatment that we have right now,” said Derek Micholson, a crop production extension apiarist with Manitoba Agriculture.

Apivar has been around for more than 10 years and has held up much better than its predecessors. However, data suggests that its effectiveness is waning.

“Within the last couple of years, there have been more and more beekeepers that have been reporting that this product may not be working as well as it has in the past,” Micholson said. “We’ve started doing resistance testing [for Apivar], and in many of the tests, it still works very well, but in some of the tests, we’ve seen that the efficacy is quite low.”

The product can still be used as part of an overall integrated pest management strategy, he added. Using organic acids like formic acid or oxalic acid, for example, are preferred non-chemical means to control varroa mites.

Micholson expressed interested in whether CO2 can be added to the toolbox, and he’s looking forward to the results of Currie’s trials.

Those trials, which are in their fourth year, have seen ups and downs. In the first two years (2019-20 and 2020-21), CO2 levels were controlled by reducing ventilation without adding additional CO2. The first year provided solid results.

“We saw the colonies that came out of the treatment had kind of larger cluster sizes and reduced mite levels, and it looked quite good,” said Currie.

However, in the second year, mite levels were too low to gather useful data.

In the third year, researchers boosted CO2 levels by placing dry ice in the rooms and allowing it to sublimate.

“We were looking at figuring out how CO2 could affect things like mite mortality, spring mite levels and spring colony health, and we also wanted to look at how dose and duration of treatment affected those things,” Masters student Sara LaValley said during a March 7 presentation on the project.

The experiment was done in the overwintering building at the university. Four small rooms were set up with ventilation similar to a typical commercial overwintering building. One room was used as a control, and the other three were treated with CO2 by adding coolers filled with dry ice.

The experiment employed two different doses, either 20 or 40 kilograms per week, and two different durations, either two or four weeks.

In the fall, they measured overall colony health levels, virus levels and colony size. Over the winter, they monitored CO2 levels and bee and mite mortality. Come spring, they repeated the colony health measurements done in the fall. Unfortunately, overwinter conditions did not support good data collection.

“That was the disaster year for Manitoba, where the province had 57 per cent mortality in the colonies,” said Currie.

The research wasn’t spared. All but five of the 84 colonies didn’t survive the winter. There were also problems with leaky seals, largely a result of mice chewing through the plastic barriers. That caused CO2 levels to be lower than desired.

With all those problems, especially massive colony loss, little could be gleaned from the data.

In terms of mite mortality, it looked like the low-dose, low-duration treatment was most effective. And it appeared bee survival was also better under those conditions.

“There might be something to that,” said LaValley. “But with such a low number actually surviving, it’s impossible to say.”

Final year

The fourth year of the study is underway. Several steps were taken to address the shortcomings of the previous year, including treating half the hives with oxalic acid to improve the chances of colony survival. So far, initial data indicates that spring results may be more useful.

“I’m kind of anxiously awaiting to see the results this year and see what the bees look like when they come into the building,” Currie said.

The most beekeepers can hope for from this treatment is for it to become part of the overall strategy for controlling varroa mites, he added. The technique did not prevent that massive colony loss in its third year, and he said it’s clear CO2 won’t put an end to the varroa mite crisis.

“It’s not going to be the saviour of everything, but I think it does look very promising in terms of a very low-cost way of providing an additional measure for helping beekeepers keep varroa mites under control.”

Currie said the method might be ready for commercial use very soon.

“What we’re doing now is just trying to figure out what levels of CO2 are optimal to get the most mite kill without killing bees,” he said.

Good results this spring could help figure that out. But there are bureaucratic hurdles to get over first.

“Technically speaking, whenever you have any sort of chemical or other control measure you’re using as a way of controlling a pest, it has to be registered through PMRA [Pest Management Regulatory Agency],” said Currie.

“After we’ve dotted all the I’s and crossed all the T’s, that would probably put it in the realm of four or five years before it can be implemented.”

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Despite this, carbon capture technologies have been labelled as a distraction from supporting renewable energies and as extending the life of the oil and gas industry. But this is a technology we cannot ignore.

It concentrates carbon dioxide from various streams, including combustion stacks, industrial processes and air, and either makes use of the carbon dioxide or stores it away. I research the technical development of carbon capture and previously oversaw Carbon Management Canada, and have come to understand these technologies.

Mitigation — finding ways to avoid the worst effects of the climate emergency — is a hugely complex problem. The problem itself is multi-faceted, value laden and carries uncertainty. There is no silver bullet.

In order to deal with complex problems, we need to apply non-linear thinking and be adaptive and learn. Given the urgent need to decarbonize, we need renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels to produce electricity. But this will take time, and it is here, through this transition period, that we can look to this technical solution.

We also need CCUS to decarbonize heavy industries such as cement and steel, which account for about 10 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. Using renewable energy won’t affect their emissions much because carbon dioxide is released during the process, and not through combustion.

Time matters in the race to decarbonization. Fortunately, CCUS technologies are no longer a curiosity or experimental.

Canada has successfully demonstrated this at Boundary Dam, a coal-fired power station near Estevan, Sask. The technology is based on a liquid that absorbs carbon dioxide from emissions and lets the other gases through, and then releases pure carbon dioxide into another stream, allowing it to be captured and stored.

Over the past seven years, this demonstration project — the world’s first — has provided much information about capturing carbon dioxide from a coal-powered plant, and has become a benchmark for technology developers. Researchers like myself learned that a liquid sorbent (the substance that absorbs the carbon dioxide molecules) requires large amounts of energy for regeneration (compared to solid sorbents) and degrades over time, releasing toxic chemicals.

Identifying challenges like these — and proposing solutions — is how technological breakthroughs evolve. This project also demonstrated how carbon dioxide can be safely stored and monitored in geological formations.

The small CCUS steps taken almost a decade ago are now being followed by a flurry of innovative technologies whose commercial deployment can be measured in months or in a few years.

The cost of carbon capture reflects the capital cost of building the system, concentrating the incoming carbon dioxide stream and providing the energy required to purify the carbon dioxide stream. As technologies develop and more versions are adopted, the cost of carbon dioxide capture and conversion will decrease.

However, they will remain costly even with the best of scenarios. If we want to add value to carbon dioxide, thermodynamics tell us that it will inevitably require energy — and energy has a cost.

Just as we, as a society, have come to accept paying for the proper handling of our solid wastes, industry must accept paying for the proper handling of its carbon dioxide emissions. Clearly, we can no longer expect to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 C without considerable commitment of funds and political will.

Critics may say that we are gambling with unproven technologies, but many of these technologies are far from unproven. Yes, many are being challenged through their scale-up, but this is typical of any new technology in any industry.

We have now entered the all-hands-on-deck phase to quickly mitigate the devastating effects of the climate emergency.

Let’s shift the narrative on CCUS and reduce carbon emissions with all the available tools.

Naoko Ellis is a professor in chemical engineering, University of British Columbia.

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Federated Co-operatives announced Thursday it had signed a memo of understanding with Calgary-based ‘clean energy’ company Whitecap Resources, in which the latter company will store and use carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions captured from Federated Co-op’s fuel plants.

The two companies’ planned operating agreement calls for emissions captured from the Co-op Refinery Complex at Regina — and from the Co-op Ethanol Complex (CEC) wnear Belle Plaine, about 40 km west of Regina — to be transported to and stored at Whitecap’s unit south of Weyburn for later use.

Whitecap’s Weyburn unit is billed as “the single largest anthropogenic carbon sequestration project in the world,” having so far captured over 36 million tonnes of CO2.

The deal calls for FCL to “fund, construct and operate” facilities at its Regina and Belle Plaine plants that would capture almost 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year for transport to Weyburn.

FCL, in its release, didn’t give a price tag for its project but Reuters on Thursday quoted the co-operative’s total spend at about $510 million.

FCL said it expects its carbon capture facility at Belle Plaine to be completed in 2024, and commissioning at the Regina refinery starting in 2026.

That said, “final investment decisions” on FCL’s projects will need “clarification” on climate change regulations and incentive programs “that support our transition to the low carbon economy.”

“Today’s announcement firmly positions Saskatchewan as a world leader in innovative carbon capture technology and is just the beginning of significant private investment opportunities in the CO2 sequestration value chain,” provincial Energy and Resources Minister Bronwyn Eyre said in FCL’s release.

“This proposed project will include CO2-enhanced oil recovery, which lowers GHG emissions by 82 per cent compared to traditional extraction methods while increasing production.”

The Weyburn unit Whitecap now owns was discovered in the 1950s and produces mainly light oil. “Waterflood” operations followed in the 1960s and CO2-enhanced oil recovery began in 2000.

“The transition to a low-carbon economy is one of the largest, but most necessary, shifts we’ll have to make in our long history,” FCL CEO Scott Banda said in the same release.

“Carbon capture and the work we’re doing with Whitecap is just one of multiple paths we’re exploring as part of a strategic plan to integrate sustainable solutions into our operations to improve environmental performance.”

Federated Co-op’s CEC, known as Terra Grain Fuels up until March this year, has operated since 2008, came to FCL in 2019 and today produces about 150 million litres of ethanol per year for blending at the Regina fuel refinery, along with 130,000 tonnes of dried distillers’ grains (DDGs) for livestock.

The Belle Plaine CEC’s ethanol feedstocks include about 350,000 tonnes per year of wheat and other “starch-rich” crops such as corn, rye and triticale bought from about 400 Prairie farmers. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Natural gas prices have spiked this year as economies reopened from COVID-19 lockdowns and high demand for liquefied natural gas in Asia pushed down supplies to Europe, sending shockwaves through industries reliant on the energy source.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a byproduct of the fertilizer industry — Britain’s main source of CO2 — where natural gas is the biggest input cost. Industrial gas companies, including Linde, Air Liquide and Air Products and Chemicals, get their CO2 mainly from fertilizer plants.

The natural gas price surge has forced some fertilizer plants to shut in recent weeks, leading to a shortage of CO2 used to put the fizz into beer and sodas and stun poultry and pigs before slaughter.

As CO2 stocks dwindled, Britain struck a deal with U.S. company CF Industries, which supplies some 60 per cent of Britain’s CO2, to restart production at two plants which were shut because they had become unprofitable due to the gas price rise.

“We need the market to adjust, the food industry knows there’s going to be a sharp rise in the cost of carbon dioxide,” Environment Secretary George Eustice told Sky News.

It would have to accept that the price of CO2 would rise sharply, to around 1,000 pounds (C$1,739) a tonne from 200 pounds a tonne, Eustice said, adding: “So a big, sharp rise.”

The three-week support for CF would cost “many millions, possibly tens of millions but it’s to underpin some of those fixed costs,” Eustice said.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government was giving CF the difference between its total production costs and what it receives from the sale of CO2.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, who also serves as energy minister, told lawmakers he was confident the country could also secure other sources of the gas.

It was not immediately clear how the state intervention by one of Europe’s most traditionally laissez-faire governments would affect the price of fertilizer — another key cost for food producers — and whether or not it would stoke demands from other energy-heavy industries for similar state support.

Christmas shortages?

Ministers, including Johnson, have repeatedly brushed aside suggestions there could be shortages of traditional Christmas fare such as roast turkey, though some suppliers have warned of them.

Kwarteng has said there would be no return to the 1970s when Britain was plagued by power cuts that made the economy the “sick man of Europe,” with three-day working weeks and people unable to heat their homes.

Eustice said without the deal some of Britain’s meat and poultry processors would have run out of CO2 within days.

“We know that if we did not act, then by this weekend or certainly by the early part of next week, some of the poultry processing plants would need to close,” he added.

He said the impact on food prices would be negligible.

But the boss of supermarket Iceland said the temporary arrangement would not solve the food industry’s problems.

“A three-week deal won’t save Christmas,” said managing director Richard Walker. “And certainly won’t resolve the issue in the long term.”

The British Poultry Council welcomed the deal but said the industry was still facing huge pressures from labour shortages and estimated Christmas turkey production will be down by 20 per cent this year.

Similarly the British Meat Processors Association expressed “huge relief.”

“We are focused on re-establishing (CO2) supplies before Friday this week which is when around 25 per cent of pork production was in danger of shutting down,” it said.

Britain’s Food and Drink Federation said there will still be shortages of some products though they will not be as bad as previously feared, while the British Soft Drinks Association warned it would take up to two weeks before production from CF made any positive impact on market conditions.

Marks + Spencer, which typically sells one in four fresh turkeys consumed in the United Kingdom at Christmas, struck a more optimistic note, saying it was confident of full supply.

Britain’s opposition Labour party said the government needed to explain the contingency plans in place in case the C02 issues are not resolved in three weeks.

— Reporting for Reuters by Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton and James Davey; additional reporting by Nigel Hunt and Elizabeth Piper.

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A jump in gas prices has forced several domestic energy suppliers out of business and has shut fertilizer plants that also make CO2 as a byproduct of their production process.

The CO2 gas is used to stun animals before slaughter, in the vacuum packing of food products to extend their shelf life, and to put the fizz into beer, cider and soft drinks. CO2’s solid form is dry ice, which is used in food deliveries.

The CO2 crisis has compounded an acute shortage of truck drivers in the U.K., which has been blamed on the impact of COVID-19 and Brexit.

“My members are saying anything between five, 10 and 15 days supply (remain),” Nick Allen of the British Meat Processors Association told Sky News.

With no CO2 a meat processor cannot operate, he said.

“The animals have to stay on farm. They’ll cause farmers on the farm huge animal welfare problems and British pork and British poultry will disappear off the shelves,” Allen said.

“We’re two weeks away from seeing some real impacts on the shelves,” he said, adding that poultry could start disappearing even sooner.

Retailers hit

Allen said the government was working hard to try and resolve the issue and might be able to persuade a U.K. fertilizer producer to restart its plant.

The crisis is also having a more immediate impact.

Online supermarket group Ocado said it had temporarily reduced the number of lines it is able to deliver from its frozen range. Dry ice is used to keep items frozen during delivery.

Shares in processor Cranswick, whose products include fresh pork and chicken and gourmet sausages, were down 2.7 per cent after CEO Adam Couch said production could be halted.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC), which represents retailers including the major supermarket groups, said the CO2 shortage had compounded existing pressures on production and distribution.

“… it is vital that government takes immediate action to prioritize suppliers and avoid significant disruption to food supplies,” said Andrew Opie, the BRC’s director of food and sustainability.

Britain’s National Farmers Union said it was concerned about the shortages of fertilizer and CO2.

“We’re aware of the added strain this puts on a food supply chain already under significant pressure due to lack of labour,” said NFU vice-president Tom Bradshaw.

Foreign office minister James Cleverly said the government was looking to address short-term shortages.

“We will ensure that we are able to put food on the table, obviously that is a real priority,” he told Sky News.

Britain’s big four supermarket groups — market leader Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons — had no immediate comment.

— James Davey reports for Reuters from London, England.

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Wheat futures followed in mid-day trading, as investors squared up their positions ahead of Thursday’s world agriculture supply and demand estimates (WASDE) report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The most-active corn futures contract on the Chicago Board of Trade settled 1-1/2 cents lower at $3.30 a bushel (all figures US$).

CBOT soybean futures closed 1/4 cent down at $8.54-1/2 a bushel, while wheat futures fell one cent to close at $5.48-1/4 a bushel.

The market mostly factored in strong U.S. wheat production, said traders, after USDA reported better-than-expected crop conditions on Monday, rating 62 per cent of the crop as good-to-excellent. The report beat analyst expectations that only 56 per cent of winter wheat would achieve the rating.

The big mover of the day was corn — with the coronavirus panic causing pain for the ethanol sector, a significant market for U.S. corn.

A slew of U.S. ethanol plants have shut down as fuel demand collapsed due to the coronavirus outbreak, and meatpackers have been hit by a worrying side-effect: less carbon dioxide is now available to chill beef, poultry and pork.

“We’re down 33 per cent for the year in production and record stockpiles of ethanol. And that doesn’t count the plant that closed yesterday, or will close today or next week,” said Karl Setzer, commodity risk analyst for AgriVisor. “It’s definitely a bleak outlook for corn right now.”

Crude oil futures rebounded on Wednesday, lifted by hopes that a meeting between OPEC members and allied producers on Thursday will trigger output cuts to shore up prices amid the coronavirus pandemic.

But that lift could not overcome worries about ethanol’s demand destruction, market analysts said.

“You have to do something for the demand for corn domestically to pick up, or somebody steps in and buys something in a big way on the export business,” said Mark Schultz, chief market analyst at Northstar Commodity. “I just don’t see that happening.”

Some traders are also questioning China’s appetite for U.S. soybeans.

China released 500,000 tons of soybeans from state reserves on Tuesday, as rain delays slowed shipments from Brazil. That is despite a Phase One trade deal between China and the U.S, that promised a slew of U.S. agricultural exports, including soybeans.

— Reporting for Reuters by Christopher Walljasper in Chicago; additional reporting by P.J. Huffstutter, Naveen Thukral and Sybille de La Hamaide.

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Notably, some varieties of rice seemed to react differently to increased levels of CO2, say the study’s authors, showing relatively smaller decreases in nutritional value.

The finding that rice’s nutritional quality can suffer as atmospheric CO2 concentrations increase has notable implications for populations in regions that rely on rice for primary nutrition. Rice is the primary food source for more than two billion people around the world, a key source of protein and vitamins.

Experts interested in the effects of human-caused changes on agriculture crops like rice have typically focused their studies on effects on agricultural production. However, how climate change affects crops’ dietary quality has received little attention.

With this in mind, researcher Chunwu Zhu and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted multi-year free-air CO2 enrichment experiments, in which pipes were placed around a specific plot of crop-land to control the CO2 level.

They did this work in Japan and China to observe the effects of anticipated end-of-century CO2 concentrations on 18 varieties of rice. They confirmed declines in protein, iron and zinc, as well as consistent declines in vitamin B, in all varieties, under increases of this greenhouse gas.

The greatest impact and risk of such a result, say the authors of the paper recently published in the online journal Science Advances, will be to countries consuming the most rice with the lowest GDP.

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“I hope you’ll see beyond urgency to the emergency we face if we do not act in a timely and effective manner to protect our prosperity in face of hydrologic climatic change,” said Robert Sandford, the EPCOR chair on water security with the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health in an address to the third annual conference of the Assiniboine River Basin Initiative (ARBI) held in Minot, N.D., Nov. 8 and 9.

Sandford spoke of the pending impacts of climate change in 2014 in Virden during formative meetings of the multi-jurisdictional organization. It was a somewhat skeptical audience he recalls.

“The risk economically I noted then was that the people of the region won’t be able to afford to deal with disasters and also simultaneously address their causes,” he said.

But many at the time “couldn’t see where they lived” what he was talking about when he described this part of Canada crossing into a completely different hydrological cycle.

The flood events of 2014, which turned large parts of the Assiniboine River Basin into a surreal landscape of swamp and submerged farmland, and ultimately cost $1.5 billion in damages, changed many minds.

The need to tackle this issue has only intensified since then, Sandford said in his Minot address earlier this month.

Quick pace

What we’re seeing is the hydrology of the entire Western Canada now accelerating at an even faster pace than recognized, with rapid-pace glacial melt in the Canadian Rockies and the intensification of atmospheric conditions or what scientists call “aerial rivers,” which are vast swaths of hundreds and even thousands of miles wide holding more water as global temperatures bump up.

The loss of hydrologic stationarity — or the previously used approaches based on precipitation patterns of the past expected to remain stable into the future — is going to make the future water planning even more problematic, Sandford said.

Stationarity is no longer a practical or even legally defensible method for designing water management systems, he said.

“The old maps and old methods no longer work,” he said. “This is one of the reasons forecasters were unable to predict what happened in 2014.”

And if this loss of stationarity may seem merely conceptual to some, the scientist warns its effects will hit home harder and be felt far sooner than we expect. More frequent and intense weather events, algal blooms now plaguing Lake Winnipeg and showing up in many hundreds more lakes, and mounting costs from damage getting beyond what we can afford are the impacts, he said.

“The Canadian West will be changed by this as much as by settlement in a decade,” he said.

Urgency

Since the Virden (2014) conference, climate scientists have also determined that existing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are now sufficient to cause unacceptable warming, resulting in hydro-climatic change accelerating even faster than the most extreme projections. We now have permanently crossed the 400 ppm atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration thresholds.

“And we’re on our way within a decade to probably 4.21 ppm, which many climate scientists hold to be the ceiling beyond which its going to be hard to control this warming,” Sandford said.

“What this means is we no longer have a carbon budget to burn through before we cross the threshold of irreversible change. We’re already there.”

In terms of hydro-climatic change “2050 is the new 2100 and 2030 is the new 2050,” he added.

Sandford said later in an interview what also underlies the urgency to adapt is that we’ve been very slow jursidictionally to start to respond to these changes.

“We still have a lot of jurisdictionality and territoriality,” he said. “It’s hard to standardize practices and actions across so many jurisdictions in some of these states and provinces.”

It’s pointing to a need for another Green Revolution, he said at the conclusion of his Minot address. Only this time it will need to focus not only on increasing productivity, but on soil health as a means of mitigating and adapting to climate change.

The scientist said he believes the Assiniboine River Basin Initiative is well positioned to play a key role in this.

“This basin could very well be a leader in that revolution,” he said. “That revolution can start here. The pieces are all here. ”

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Canadian farmers already have to cope with a tough climate, says Robin Speer, WCWGA executive director.

“They’re already producing more food while using less land, water and fuel per bushel,” Speer said.

New crop varieties, fertilizers and production practices have boosted production, already giving the sector an impressive track record of improvement in recent years.

“But Canadian farmers are worried a carbon tax will undercut their ability to compete with farmers around the world without actually protecting the environment,” he said.

• Read more: KAP takes proactive stance on carbon pricing

Ron Bonnett, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, said it’s essential that Canada move in step with the United States in adopting measures to fight climate change.

“If we end up with a carbon cost different than our competitors, the agri-food sector will be in trouble,” he said.

The CFA and its members are discussing how to respond to carbon tax proposals.

“We know action has to be taken but there’s such a mix of proposals coming forward,” Bonnett said.

One point farm groups need to make is that agriculture deserves credit for all the steps it has taken to reduce its carbon footprint.

“We’ve made tremendous changes to increase production while reducing our emissions,” Bonnett said.

There are steps governments could take to help such as supporting methane digesters for livestock operations and giving farmers credit for the carbon sink capability of their land.

“The key item is for governments to be careful about not leaving us at a competitive disadvantage,” he said.

Speer points out that American and Australian farmers won’t be hit with a carbon tax. In fact Australia tried and discarded one.

“The climate matters to farmers – a timely rain or an early frost can be the difference between staying afloat or handing the farm over to the bank after a foreclosure,” he said. “But farmers are worried that carbon taxes will threaten their way of life without protecting the environment.”

He notes a John Deere S690 combine has a fuel tank that holds 1,155 litres. British Columbia is charging a carbon tax of 7.7 cents per litre of diesel.

“That means farmers would pay $89 in carbon taxes per fill during harvest, and it requires many tanks of fuel to take off millions of tonnes of grain every year,” Speer said.

He also cautions against simply exempting farmers from a carbon tax. While British Columbia has done that, farmers’ livelihoods would remain at risk.

If farmers are exempted, someone else will have to bear a disproportionate burden to meet emission reduction targets. The Manitoba government estimates that agriculture accounts for 30 per cent of that province’s greenhouse gas emissions. “Exempting agriculture would force others to reduce more emissions and that affects farmers,” he said.

For example, agriculture depends on nitrogen fertilizer, which is energy intensive to produce.

“Canadian fertilizer producers work hard to minimize emissions, but a carbon tax would force them to raise prices,” Speer said. “That would force Canadian farmers to make a difficult decision: Pay a higher price for Canadian fertilizers or buy them from other countries? And again, how would it help the environment to put Canadian fertilizer plants out of business while plants in other countries expand?”

Marc Lee, an economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says that since B.C. implemented a carbon tax, its greenhouse gas emissions have risen every year.

“Since 2010, B.C.’s GHG emissions have increased every year,” he said. “As of 2013, they are up 4.3 per cent above 2010 levels. To be truly effective, carbon taxes will need to be much higher than B.C.’s current rates.”

So paying 7.7 cents in tax per litre of diesel isn’t enough to reduce emissions, Speer says.

“Canada accounts for 1.6 per cent of global emissions,” Speer said. “How high would Canada’s carbon tax have to be to have a practical impact, especially if other countries aren’t imposing carbon taxes on their people?”

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