“It’s less expensive, easier to maintain and comes with many other benefits to communities,” said Dimple Roy, director of water management, in a May 10 news release.

WHY IT MATTERS: A recent report argues that nature’s water management tools can be used to support their usually much more expensive brick and mortar counterparts.

Natural infrastructure involves turning to nature to meet infrastructure needs. Examples include conserved or restored wetlands for flood mitigation or floating rafts of water plants meant to draw nutrients out of wastewater.

These projects can have additional benefits, according to proponents, like increased biodiversity or watershed health maintenance.

The institute focused on the Prairie provinces as regions where water infrastructure is under threat. Depreciation has surpassed investments by almost $3 billion between 2017 and 2021, it said.

“The impacts of climate change will further strain physical infrastructure systems, in part because investments in infrastructure often fail to account for forecasted climate risks,” the report read.

The institute said natural infrastructure could help bridge that investment gap by providing essential water-related services at a fraction of the cost of traditional ‘grey infrastructure,’ which includes projects such as dams, water treatment plants or pipelines.

“We’re not saying that grey infrastructure shouldn’t be around. But we’re saying that, in a new era of climate impacts, a widening infrastructure gap, we’re just not keeping up,” Roy said in an interview with the Co-operator.

Natural infrastructure could take strain off existing infrastructure, Roy added. For example, a water retention project using natural infrastructure could reduce pressure on municipal culverts.

The report pointed to what the institute defines as effective natural infrastructure. Those projects included Winnipeg’s urban tree canopy, which the report says covers about 17 per cent of the city and provides more than $3.2 million worth of storm water management by intercepting runoff.

Pelly’s Lake, an engineered wetland in southern Manitoba, provides an estimated $2 million annually in clean water and flood protection benefits.

The village of Dunnottar on the shores of Lake Winnipeg has five floating treatment wetlands, which are rafts containing aquatic vegetation that draw excess nutrients and contaminants from the water.

Manitoba’s watershed districts also tend to use small amounts of manufactured infrastructure to complement natural structures, Roy said.

However, much natural infrastructure is small.

“What we’d like to see are these solutions scaled up,” Roy said.

Professional and engineering practices for grey infrastructure are mainstream. The institute would like to see practices for natural infrastructure gain similar wide recognition, according to Roy.

The institute is in the middle of its five-year Natural Infrastructure for Water Solutions project to scale up natural infrastructure on the Prairies. This includes encouraging municipalities to adopt more nature-based infrastructure projects, enabling access to funding and pushing for these types of projects to be supported by all levels of government.

Roy pointed to the province’s GROW Trust as one way Manitoba is leading other Prairie provinces on the matter.

“We’ve seen some government initiative in our jurisdiction, and that’s going to be a bit of a best-practice example for the other jurisdictions that we’re talking about,” she said.

The post Nature-based solutions can shore up crumbling water infrastructure: IISD appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“We have this common problem of pollution. It doesn’t spare anyone,” said Gladys Chigamba, a research scientist at Lilongwe University in Malawi.

Chigamba and three other women from Malawi, Kenya and Tanzania, visited Manitoba through a partnership between the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and the African Centre for Aquatic Research and Education (ACARE).

They visited the Experimental Lakes Area, a “freshwater laboratory” of 58 lakes in northwestern Ontario. They also attended events to network with other scientists and share research.

The Manitoba Co-operator spoke with the four women at an Oct. 6 event at IISD’s offices.

The scientists work on the African Great Lakes in east Africa. The best Manitoba comparison might be Lake Winnipeg, said Pauline Gerrard, deputy director of the Experimental Lakes Area.

Pollution in general is an issue in both places, the women said.

The scientists learned about a project to study the effects of 6PPD-quinone, a chemical found in tires, on rivers and lakes. The chemical wears off tires onto roads and then washes into the water table, they explained. Some said they’d like to test for the chemical.

They also viewed a study on microplastics, which are microscopic bits of plastic that end up in the environment. Researchers are studying the impact of plastics on lake organisms, Gerrard said and Elizabeth Wanderi, from Kenya, said she’d like to study them in her country.

As in Manitoba, eutrophication — huge algae blooms caused by an excess of nutrients in water — is a big problem in the African Great Lakes, the women told the Co-operator.

Agriculture along the lakes and rivers is a big issue, said Wanderi, so nutrient loading is a problem.

In Kenya, a lot of the population is concentrated on the banks of rivers and streams, Wanderi said. They see it as their land, so any laws designed to conserve water are seen as challenges to their property.

The public struggles to understand the need for conservation, said Margret Sinda, from Malawi.

“They don’t understand that if they don’t find fish, it’s because it’s depleting,” she said.

Food insecurity complicates conservation efforts, said Catherine Fridolin, from Tanzania.

“It’s very difficult to go tell those fishermen to stop fishing just because the fish are depleting while they’re dependent on the fish resources for food,” she said.

“if you tell them that this is closed season, it’s very hard for them because it’s like you’re telling them that now they will not have anything to eat,” added Sinda.

Communities must be included in policy making, Fridolin said. The government needs to see how it can help communities while working to manage resources.

Governments also need to put more effort into conservation, said Sinda.

In Malawi, the government funds research but she does not consider it to be enough. A lot of the research depends on donors, which aren’t reliable sources of funding.

The post African freshwater scientists visit Manitoba lakes appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

This ‘natural infrastructure’ is also a viable and cost-effective alternative to traditional — and often much more expensive — built flood protection, such as dams and other water control structures, the report says.

Combating Canada’s Rising Flood Costs: Natural Infrastructure is an Underutilized Option looks at the monetary value of planned and managed networks of natural lands such as forests, wetlands and working landscapes, and their flood-mitigation and other environmental benefits.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and the Waterloo-based Intact Centre on Climate Change partnered with the Canadian insurance sector to release the report.

Canadian insurers point to significant financial losses due to flooding and climate change and extreme weather events, which last year alone saw $1.5 billion forked out to help homeowners and communities cope with their impact.

Manitoba is also now wading into a $950-million class-action lawsuit brought forward by 4,000 residents of four First Nations who lost homes and were forced to evacuate their communities after severe flooding in 2011.

The IISD has been working at ways to quantify and demonstrate how managing natural infrastructure is a solution, said Dimple Roy, director, water policy with the Winnipeg-based think-tank.

“The report demonstrates that natural infrastructure is a viable complement if not alternative to a lot of built infrastructure that’s being thought about today.”

Roy said the idea is not new, “but we’re not yet at a point where we think of investing in this ahead of the much more expensive built infrastructure such as dams or other water-control structures.”

Multiple benefits

This report says natural infrastructure also produces multiple environmental and social benefits, such as cleaner water, carbon sequestration and biodiversity.

“It really shows that natural infrastructure can give us the kind of outcomes we’re looking for, particularly in the context of a changing climate,” Roy said.

The report cites four Canadian case studies showing how the economic value and return on investment from natural infrastructure projects outweighs their costs.

Gibsons, B.C. was the first municipality in the country to use the Municipal Natural Assets Initiative to assess and declare its own natural infrastructure as municipal assets and committing to operate and maintain these in the same way as engineered assets such as storm sewers and roads.

Rather than a $3.5-million engineered project to manage storm water, Gibsons obtains the same benefit from spending $30,000 per year maintaining and monitoring a naturally occurring aquifer and surrounding creeks, ditches and wetlands.

Manitoba example

Pelly’s Lake, a 121-hectare wetland area and water restoration project established at Holland, Man. in 2015 is also included in the report. University of Saskatchewan researchers say that for its $125,000 annual operating costs, it returns benefits of $324,550 in flood attenuation, biomass production, carbon offsets and reduced release of phosphorus and nitrogen. Those numbers don’t account for other benefits such as groundwater recharge, drought resiliency, water for irrigation and improved habitat for waterfowl and songbirds.

Given Manitoba still has many wetlands, there’s no reason why that couldn’t be replicated — and the gains amplified — throughout the rest of Manitoba, said Roy.

“Action needs to be taken not only to restore the many defunct wetlands in our province, but also actively manage those that still exist so they are effective to their full capacity and reduce the drain on finances that flood damage brings.”

The study says the general rule-of-thumb approach to start taking is to “retain what you have, restore what you’ve lost and build what you must.”

Monetize benefits

Roy said it’s important to find ways to compensate landowners for ecological benefits such as clean water, and phosphorus recovery and habitat preservation.

“Because society hasn’t valued clean water that’s been a secondary form of stewardship that many are able to do and many are not. The quantification and monetization of these benefits is really core to this.”

The report says new ways of funding natural infrastructure development and management are also needed. Actions recommended include establishing landowner compensation schemes and models for looking at the links between taking risk off the table and long-term savings.

It also recommends that work begin with municipalities, the new Canada Infrastructure Bank and the financial sector to develop and implement new financial instruments to accelerate natural infrastructure investment and implementation.

A Winnipeg forum on Nov. 14 will bring together various federal and provincial government officials, conservation experts and representatives from the banking and insurance sector to talk over how to enable more natural infrastructure. The two main topics will include the existing and new ways to finance and implement it, how it can be delivering desired outcomes, Roy said.

Emerging carbon markets, phosphorus-recovery markets and new interest from sectors such as insurance are all possible new funding mechanisms, she said.

“There are also conversations with banks and traditional sectors that fund built infrastructure,” she said. “There are many, many different conversations going on.”

The full report can be found online at the International Institute for Sustainable Development website.

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From the science to the already-established industry and future opportunities, Manitoba could be a global leader in the world’s bioeconomy.

That is exactly why the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) has recently released the Manitoba Bioeconomy Atlas, to help Manitobans of all walks and stripes to understand and benefit from an easy-to-access web-based planning tool that drills down and helps map our province’s ample supply of biomass.

“There are over five million tonnes of available biomass produced in our province every year from agriculture, forestry residue, marginal lands and roadside ditches,” said Geoffrey Gunn, who led the project. “Some of this biomass is already being put to good use as livestock bedding and compost, but much of it is wasted and could be used as fuel.”

Biomass ranges from wood and crops to cattails and grasses, and they are a viable and abundant source of renewable energy in the province. They offer a whole host of environmental and economic benefits. Using biomass for energy in place of fossil fuels immediately reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

“An added benefit of harvesting non-traditional biomass such as cattails is the removal of nutrients such as phosphorus, which contribute to algal blooms,” said Gunn. “For example, if we were to remove 22 per cent of crop residue from agricultural fields and 25 per cent of harvestable cattail biomass, we could remove 2,000 to 5,000 tonnes of phosphorus from our landscape — a huge boon for the health of our lakes.”

Through the work and research of IISD experts such as Dr. Richard Grosshans at locations across the province, the organization has studied the ubiquitous cattail plant for nutrient removal and as an energy source that can be mixed with wood to create pellets that heat buildings and barns.

Where there are cattail plants, there tends to be water nearby. The water, at some time, is moving as part of the watershed and the cattails absorb toxic or problem-causing chemicals flowing by.

By definition, biomass includes the earth’s living matter, plants and animals, and the remains of this living matter. Plants store the sun’s energy, providing a simple, renewable energy source. Better yet, the carbon in plants is captured from the atmosphere which reduces our carbon footprint. Unlike coal, which takes millions of years to form, biomass can be grown and replenished like a crop, once or twice in a season.

According to Gunn, the bioeconomy is the segment of the provincial economy that uses renewable products and services from our natural environment. Advances in biofuels, biochemistry and materials science have shown that we can use waste products from agriculture or forestry to supply new industries. These supplies are spread across the Manitoba landscape.

The Manitoba Bioeconomy Atlas presents logistical and economic analysis of the sources that could supply large processing operations in the biofuel, biochemical or biomaterial industries and attract high-tech investment to Manitoba. Gunn says that he has done presentations to key stakeholders and decision makers with the Bioeconomy Atlas to inform people about Manitoba’s large biomass resources, particularly crop residues, marsh plants (such as cattail), and unused limbs and bark from the provincial logging industry. But he also says the atlas has a vital mainstream role to play and he wants to get it into the hands of producers and is brainstorming the best way to do that. Workshops, seminars and webinars are all in the works.

“The Manitoba Bioeconomy Atlas is an online tool, which means it is fully accessible free of charge for the public right now,” said Gunn. “I think we really need to connect with producers at the grassroots level to ensure they understand how this tool can help them benefit with planning and future decisions that they may be faced with around their biomass resources.”

Gunn admits that things in Manitoba are not quite at the stage where producers and land managers can load trucks with biomass and take them off to market as they do with a commodity crop or livestock. The limitations are twofold: 1) limited infrastructure and the few processing facilities that are unable to meet demand for 50,000 tonnes of biomass annually; and 2) minimal mechanisms to link producers to suppliers, and suppliers to consumers.

“Manitoba has tremendous potential to incorporate bioenergy in its growing renewable energy portfolio, as Canada strives to lower greenhouse gas emissions. There’s a big opportunity to reduce energy costs, particularly for rural businesses,” said Gunn. “We want to help people make the right decision for their own situation. Thanks to Growing Forward 2 funding and support from the provincial biomass community, we’ve developed a really powerful, exciting tool to help biomass work for Manitobans and grow a healthy and sustainable economy.”

To access the atlas, and to learn more, visit iisd.org/bioeconomy-atlas.

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Likewise, there were wet spells on the Prairies much more intense than events like 2011’s — a flood we tended to call “unprecedented.”

Neither are unprecedented, say Saskatchewan scientists.

Both extremes have occurred before on the Canadian Prairies and will reoccur — and next time in a climate amplified by global warming, says Dave Sauchyn, a University of Regina professor of geography who shared findings of research done here to gather and study pre-settlement extreme weather events.

The keynote speaker at last week’s Assiniboine River Basin Initiative (ARBI) conference here, he described an analysis of ancient water level data gathered from tree rings samples collected across the Prairies and Northern Great Plains, including 1,000-year old Douglas firs along the eastern slopes of the Rockies and from 300- and 400-year-old burr oaks in the Assiniboine River Valley.

Tree rings show annual growth increments and are indicators of how much water the soil contained during the trees’ growth period, said Sauchyn, adding from their analysis they’ve been able to construct a very long record of weather events on the Prairies, including flows of the Assiniboine River right back to 1493.

What they see are periods of prolonged wet and dry periods exceeding anything experienced since Europeans arrived, he said.

As an example, the analysis shows years like 2011 have happened before.

“The trees capture that wet year of 2011. But if you look back to the early part of the record, there are two years that are equally wet,” he said. “It occurred at least twice in this 500-year record.”

The records are also indicators of intense droughts of yesteryear. For example, during a period in the mid-1700s the Assiniboine River at some junctures was little more than a trickle for at least a decade.

“We find periods of decades… 20 to 25 years… in which every year was dry,” he said. It was during one of these prolonged dry spells in the 1850s and 1860s, when Captain John Palliser came through this region to study its agricultural potential. What he reported was a region of desert-like conditions because he’d passed through here during one of those prolonged dry spells.

“He came through during a 20-year drought,” he said.

What’s ahead?

Where science makes things even more interesting is its predictive capacity too.

Sauchyn also described complex computer simulations that run hydrological and climate models together, and show how global warming could see extreme flooding in some parts of the basin beyond anything experienced to date.

“If we look into the future we can expect water levels unprecedented in terms of our experience with the basin,” he said. “So in other words, don’t be surprised if we get another 2011 or worse.”

In an interview Sauchyn commented that agriculture is “probably the most adaptive and resilient industry we have right now on the Prairies.”

But other conference speakers aren’t so sure, and said entirely new approaches to agriculture will be needed to face the future.

The much-altered Prairies are far less resilient than a century ago, said Michael Thiele, a Manitoba-based biological farm planning consultant, who described cropping practices that can help reverse soil organic matter and carbon losses, and enable soil to once again hold water. Soil sample records dating back to 1897 show soils in places like Yorkton and Salt Coats, Saskatchewan once had anywhere from 13 to 14 per cent organic matter but that’s not the case now, said Thiele.

“Those soils now on average are between two and four per cent organic matter. And soil isn’t holding water the way it used to. What we’ve done over a course of 100 years is we’ve turned soil into dirt.”

Other conference speakers such as Hank Venema, who is chief scientist with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and director of planning for the Prairie Climate Centre (PCC) based in Winnipeg, spoke of the need to create a new class of infrastructure comprised of networked distributive storage systems across the Prairies. He also offered ideas on why investors will be interested to help pay for it.

“In a way it’s like the 21st-century analogue to the work PFRA did, but we’re going to bring a different level of networked engineering to the challenge,” he said.

Sauchyn, Thiele and Venema were among more than a dozen presenters during this fourth annual gathering of ARBI, founded in 2014 in Regina.

Other speakers described the soon-to-be unveiled Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association’s Aquanty hydrosphere model that will support decision-making and water management planning for floods and droughts ahead.

They brought in a lineup of these “timely, interesting and even controversial” messages as part of ARBI’s ongoing effort to support the decision makers in basin water management planning, said ARBI chair Allan Preston.

There were about 100 delegates attending the Regina conference held Feb. 14 and 15.

Preston said he’s confident ARBI continues to make progress. It operates by the adage ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day,’ he said.

“When we started out four years ago there was a degree of hesitancy about what this was all about,” he said. “Now I see almost unanimous support in the room for what we’re trying to do and what we’re trying to accomplish.”

The organization does struggle financially, however.

Preston said he was heartened last week by comments made by the Saskatchewan minister of environment at the gathering, and hopes a near-future meeting with Saskatchewan’s Water Security Agency may see some funding from the province follow.

In his opening remarks Dustin Duncan said “our government values the grassroots approach to water management represented by ARBI.”

“We appreciate that we have representatives from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and North Dakota at the table,” he said.

“It is great to see a high level of engagement in water management discussions across these borders.”

The post No such thing as ‘unprecedented’ weather, delegates at ARBI conference told appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“With the provincial ban on the use of coal for space heating in Manitoba, a good number of Manitoba’s Hutterite colonies have recently upgraded or converted their heating systems from aging coal-burning systems to cleaner biomass boiler heating systems,” says Richard Grosshans, bioeconomy lead for International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)’s water program.

According to Grosshans, some of these biomass systems require processed biomass, such as commercially available fuel pellets. These fuel pellets are stored in a silo and are slowly fed into the building’s boiler system as needed.

Several Manitoba colonies have installed large-scale biomass boiler systems with an adjoining fuel storage building equipped with a “walking floor-type” biomass feed system allowing them to use a variety of bulk biomass fuel such as wood chips, sawdust, shredded cattail and grass, shredded pallets and even demolition waste.

With a hydraulically operated walking floor system the biomass feedstocks (wood chips, sawdust, shredded cattail and grasses) are piled onto the conveyer system and the material is slowly moved or metered into a system of augers that moves the biomass into the boiler system as needed.

• Read more: Renewable energy gaining traction in Manitoba

“Biomass boiler systems are efficient and clean burning and are required to install proper filter systems to prevent particulates and ash to meet provincial emissions standards,” says Grosshans. “These systems are highly automated and for the technology savvy, they can even be operated and monitored via a smartphone application.”

A quick scan around Manitoba indicates there are a variety of biomass boiler systems, feed systems, and fuel sources in use at the province’s many Hutterite colonies. Larger boiler systems with walking floor feed systems can utilize a greater variety of fuel sources, while smaller systems typically need higher-quality wood material.

In the case of some colonies, there is an existing wood manufacturing facility on the colony or nearby the colony, so there is an abundant supply of premium high-quality kiln-dried wood waste and sawdust that is available.

Success brings increased interest from others, and in response to the need for processed fuel pellets, Grosshans says IISD has been collaborating with Greenwald Colony, Biovalco, and the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI) on the BRG Manufacturing fuel pellet facility near Stead, Manitoba.

The IISD has a particular interest in promoting the system’s ability to use the province’s ample and reharvestable supply of cattails for the betterment of Manitoba’s waterways, especially the health of Lake Winnipeg. Via naturally occurring or human-applied source points, agricultural lands are one of many source points that contribute phosphorus to Lake Winnipeg algae blooms.

Cattails prefer to grow on the fringes of waterways as well as ditches that water passes through and these plants are known to absorb phosphorus from the waters around them and store phosphorus in their roots and stalk. The cattail harvest takes the phosphorus out of the watershed system the plants grow and thrive in and into the biomass pellet process for heating. After the pellets are burned, there is still an ability to recycle the phosphorus from the ashes. Meanwhile, the harvested cattail plant regrows from its roots.

“IISD and Biovalco worked with the BRG Manufacturing fuel pellet facility to switch to using wood waste from manufacturing for the production of high-quality fuel pellets,” says Grosshans. “They also developed a premium cattail-wood-grass blended fuel pellet with excellent burn characteristics that can be used in various boiler heating systems.”

To date, the BRG Manufacturing fuel pellet facility has produced over 6,000 tonnes of fuel pellets to generate over 12,000 tonnes of CO2e of offsets through coal replacement fuel switching.

“During the winters of 2015-16 and 2016-17 fuel pellets were used for space heating in larger-scale boiler facilities on several Manitoba Hutterite colonies and at Providence University College, as well as in residential pellet stoves at the Living Prairie Museum and on several farm buildings,” says Grosshans. “Initial results and analysis indicate these pellets produced by the manufacturing plant are a premium fuel blend with excellent burn characteristics, low ash (three per cent), and high-heat energy (19.8 GJ/T).”

During the winter of 2016-17, IISD worked with PAMI, Greenwald Hutterite Colony, and Miami Hutterite Colony to use coarsely shredded cattail bales mixed with shredded wood waste in walking floor-fed biomass systems on the two colonies. This important proof of concept demonstrated using coarsely shredded bales is much more efficient and cost effective than producing processed fuel pellets from baled material such as cattail and grasses.

“As the colonies have made the decision to switch to biomass heating, we have identified many direct added benefits,” says Grosshans. “We are hearing that biomass systems are much more efficient with consistent drier heat and require much-less hourly and day-to-day monitoring of the system. In addition, the lower cost of biomass heating compared to coal allows for better heating and therefore improved ventilation in barn buildings, improving the air quality and health conditions of livestock. ”

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In the eyes of the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association (CFGA), Manitoba has been a standout in its efforts towards forage research and the ideal place to hold this year’s national conference.

“We have been working very closely with the Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association (MFGA) on developing a number of environmental scan type projects, and it has a lot of things happening provincially on the environmental benefits side of the forage sector. We thought it was a really good opportunity to partner up to highlight activities happening both nationally and provincially,” said Cedric MacLeod, executive director of the CFGA.

CFGA will hold its seventh annual national conference, themed “Green and Grass in 2016,” in Winnipeg November 15 to 17.

According to MacLeod, the Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiative (MBFI) research farm, which is located just north of Brandon, was another reason the CFGA was drawn to Manitoba as its host.

“MBFI has really been gaining strength and it is a novel public-private partnership type of applied research model. We feel quite strongly in the model and that it may be a good example for other provinces. We wanted to have a chance to tour that facility and highlight that on the agenda as well,” MacLeod said. “There are certainly other initiatives similar to MBFI on the go across the country but I think at this point, MBFI is the shining example in Canada.”

Attendees will have a chance to tour the MBFI facility during the conference pre-tour, as well as hear from representative, Glenn Friesen from Manitoba Agriculture, during the conference in a session entitled, “Driving Beef and Forage Innovation Right Here at Home.”

At the conference, CFGA also aims to show off the forage sector’s environmental benefits and economical value.

“We really want the attendees to stop for a moment and reflect on the sheer size and value of the sector,” MacLeod said. “We are talking about 70 million acres of crop ground in Canada being dedicated to forages with a $5.09-billion farm gate value, second only to canola and wheat. That is really what we are trying to show off and make sure that forage gets its day in the sun.”

MacLeod says that in many cases the forage sector is undervalued in the Canadian agriculture system because it is largely a supplier industry to the livestock sectors.

“The dairy and beef sectors command a fairly large swath in Canadian agriculture and as a supplier we sometimes accept second fiddle, but we need to make sure we express our value. This is 70 million acres. It is huge and the natural capital that the forage sector provides is immense.”

The conference will include a lineup of speakers from across North America discussing current management practices, export industry development and the environmental value brought to the Canadian economy by the sector.

“We have got a pretty clear focus on the environmental benefits that the sector is bringing, in terms of the carbon storage value, the water filtration and nutrient management, and I think that is something we will be focusing on in the coming years,” MacLeod said.

Event speakers will include Dimple Roy, director of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Trevor Herriot, writer and forage advocate and Douglas Yungblut, an agriculture consultant who will discuss the economics of beef cow grazing versus cash cropping.

The post Showcasing the value of the forage industry appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

In a recent column I pointed out that electric cars are only as green as the fuel used to generate the electricity they consume.

For internal-combustion-powered vehicles, much of the focus has been on trying to reduce carbon emissions by adding ethanol to gasoline and vegetable oil to diesel. These biofuels are sourced mainly from cereal grain and vegetable oil. Ethanol is manufactured by fermenting and distilling grain, while vegetable oil comes mainly from palm trees.

Biofuel has become an enormous global industry, producing some 100 billion litres annually. Mandatory ethanol and vegetable oil standards have been enacted in 64 countries.

But biofuels fail on several fronts.

First we need to correct the popular misconception that burning biofuel produces significantly lower emissions than gasoline or diesel. In reality, there’s little difference. Essentially, all of the hypothesized emission reduction relies on the premise that, since plants consume carbon dioxide to grow, the carbon they remove approximates the carbon released when burned. This is the basis for the biofuel industry’s claim of zero net emissions.

But just as the zero-emissions electric car fallacy ignores the environmental impacts of electricity generation, the zero-emissions biofuel myth ignores the environmental impacts of production. And there’s a lot of evidence that these production impacts cause very serious environmental damage, while exacerbating global food shortages and creating price escalations.

Let’s start with ethanol fuel. The United States and Brazil are by far the largest producers. In the U.S., some five billion bushels of corn are used annually to produce 49 billion litres of ethanol fuel through the same highly energy-intensive fermentation and distillation process used to produce whiskey. That 49 billion litres of ethanol are enough to fill 65 billion standard whiskey bottles.

Multiple studies, including by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, conclude that the fossil fuel used to produce corn ethanol creates essentially the same carbon emissions as the gasoline and diesel displaced.

But that’s only part of the environmental impact. Rising corn prices have led to the draining and tillage of ecologically important wetlands. And increased fertilizer use has sent nutrient-rich run-off into streams and rivers, resulting in weed-choked, oxygen-starved water courses devoid of fish and other aquatic life.

Meanwhile in Brazil, almost one million acres a year of carbon-dioxide-absorbing tropical forest are clear cut and replaced by sugar cane for ethanol production. Studies show that the net effect is about 50 per cent more carbon emissions than by fuelling automobiles with fossil fuels.

Then there’s the food-or-fuel issue. The cereal grain required to produce enough ethanol to fill the fuel tank of an average-size car would feed one person for a year. In 2000, some 70 per cent of global corn imports came from the U.S., but that important global food supply has largely been redirected to ethanol production. So while U.S. Corn Belt farmers buy bigger tractors and more expensive pickups, international food-focused non-governmental organizations such as Oxfam cite biofuels as contributing to food supply shortages and price increases that disproportionately hurt the world’s poor.

What about the environmental impacts of producing palm oil for biodiesel?

Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of palm oil and the island of Borneo, in particular, is a great place to produce it, provided you first burn one of the world’s most important rainforests. A visit to this land is a depressing lesson in the unintended consequences of actions taken by politicians half a world away. I have witnessed the lung-choking smoke as hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of rainforest were burned to create huge industrial palm tree farms. The same scenario is playing out in remote parts of Indonesian Sumatra.

How ironic that decisions aimed at environmental benefit are permanently destroying the lungs of our planet, obliterating the way of life of aboriginals who have lived in harmony with nature for centuries, and wiping out habitat for endangered species like orangutan.

A Natural Geographic article entitled biofuels: The Original Car Fuel, states “Gasoline and diesel are actually ancient biofuels… made from decomposed plants and animals that have been buried in the ground for millions of years.” Trying to replace these ancient biofuels with fuels made from plants grown today is one of mankind’s greatest environmental blunders.

Gwyn Morgan is a retired Canadian energy industry leader and current board member and past CEO of EnCana.

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However, a $1.1-million investment from the federal government has put the Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association (MFGA) on track for developing just that — a multi-faceted modelling platform to predict and monitor the hydrological sensitivity of the Assiniboine River Basin (ARB).

“We believe grasslands and forage crops are a critical part of the solution for future flood- and drought-ravaged areas of the ARB,” said Henry Nelson, MFGA vice-chair and project manager of the hydrology model project. “The hydrology model will showcase proactive solutions for many stakeholders across the ARB for flood and drought mitigation.”

The project will be spearheaded by MFGA, working closely with Aquanty Inc., a hydrological science and research company and IBM, the International Business Machines corporation, to develop a HydroGeoSphere modelling platform that will allow for targeted hydrological analysis and research.

Numerous groups are collaborating on the project, including the Assiniboine River Basin Initiative (ARBI), the Keystone Agriculture Producers (KAP), Manitoba Beef Producers, Agriculture Producers Association of Saskatchewan, Manitoba Conservation Districts Association, Brandon Univer­sity, International Institute for Sustainable Development, the City of Minot, Manitoba Agriculture Services Corporation, the Prairie Improvement Network and a number of other provincial commodity groups.

“This project, to coin a phrase, has the potential to be a game changer in how we collectively address future water management issues ranging from extreme droughts to damaging floods,” said Allan Preston, chair of ARBI. “We can and will do a better job of multi-jurisdictional water management across the entire basin, using a holistic approach engaging all of the players and stakeholders.”

Motivated

Since 2007, federal and provincial governments have dealt with multiple water-related disaster events that have caused unprecedented crop losses, property and infrastructure damage and put a strain on AgriRecovery assistance programs.

On June 13, Agriculture and Agri-Food (AAFC) Minister Lawrence MacAulay announced the million-dollar investment into the project.

“Extreme weather events have created many challenges for Prairie farmers in recent years. We’re committed to working together with the agriculture sector to equip farmers with the tools they need to proactively manage business risks such as these,” MacAulay said.

Nelson said the $1.1 million from AAFC will cover approximately two-thirds of the project costs, with the remaining balance coming from the provincial government and stakeholder contributions.

“Collecting the data is really where the big cost is here and that is why we are appreciative that AAFC has recognized the value of this,” Nelson said. “Manitoba Agriculture is another key supporter in this and it has provided some financial contribution, as well as some in-kind contribution through staff. It has also provided funding to support a post-doctorate fellow that will be situated at Brandon University to work on the model.”

Phase 1

The first phase of the project will run from now until March 31, 2018. Aquanty Inc. will develop the data analytics system that will be run on a high-performance computing system from IBM.

Existing data on the Assiniboine basin, as well as the Qu’Appelle and Souris sub-basins and Birdtail watershed, will be fed into the platform.

“This program takes into account the soil characteristics, topography, surface and soil moisture and the groundwater levels and then it has the capability to determine how the water flows will react in that environment,” Nelson said.

By March 31, 2018, the Hydro­GeoSphere simulation software will be capable of running complex simulations of water movement through surface water and groundwater flow systems.

“In this first phase we are looking at infrastructure and the impact of perennial forages and grasslands on the landscape, with respect to quantities of water as it moves through the basin,” Nelson said.

Simulating scenarios

Nelson says the exciting part of this program is that it allows users to input mitigation theories, see the outcome and determine the best possible solutions without real-life investments.

“Basically, we will be able to look at what is causing downstream flows and then create a few ‘what if’ scenarios to see what the outcomes would be without having to invest anything,” Nelson said. “For instance, you can say, if we changed our infrastructure so that we had a dike or ditch in a certain place, or if we were to change our vegetation, if there were 10 per cent more forages what are the impacts on water management within this basin?”

KAP president, Dan Mazier agrees that the program’s ability to test out ‘what if’ scenarios will be one of the biggest benefits.

“This is going to change the way we plan things. We will be able to monitor and simulate so much more criteria that it is going to fundamentally change the way we look at infrastructure and how we design it. That is where I see the biggest benefit in this project,” Mazier said.

Uncapped potential

According to Nelson, following Phase 1 of the project, MFGA hopes to be able to move into a second phase that uses the tool to examine nutrient management and the impact of different types of management practices.

He said that MFGA aims to collect sound information on the impacts of various farming management practices in order to determine the most beneficial practices for the land and the surrounding watershed.

“There are a lot of ecological goods and services, things that forages and grasslands contribute, that aren’t necessarily recognized in the economy. Things like habitat for biodiversity, for pollinators, carbon sequestrations, benefits on climate change, and soil health,” Nelson said. “Farmers are producing more than just food and this tool is a great opportunity to gather some data to show that.”

Many of the project stakeholders also believe information produced by this project will create more predictability and a better understanding of drought and floods.

“Recent flood events in the basin have severely taxed government resources in addressing claims for compensation,” Preston said, noting the technology developed in the Aquanty project provides more opportunity to study preventive measures, risk mitigation activities, to reduce the need for financial support programs.

The post Federal investment kick-starts Aquanty project appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The 25 recommendations and the supporting appendix report should also make you a little uncomfortable if you think the way we farm in this province is just fine the way it is.

That’s not to say there aren’t some encouraging recommendations, starting with an acknowledgment that governments have a role in helping farmers insure against increased weather risks from climate change. There is also recognition of the need for publicly supported research and extension.

But there is no solace to be found in the findings of two independent studies on how climate change may affect the actuarial soundness of current government programs. Those reviews of the AgriInsurance program were conducted by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

They found “… that the average annual deficit for the program (extent to which payouts exceeded premiums paid by both producers and government) remained similar when the results for the historic period were compared to the future climate change scenarios,” says the appendix report prepared by Darren Swanson of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). “In fact, the deficit declined slightly with climate change, in part owing to lower average yields and therefore slightly lower exposure.”

That’s right, lower average yields.

We all know the danger of using averages as a guide. Some farmers in 2011 suffered “weather whiplash” — too much moisture in the spring and drought later in the year. Overall precipitation may have averaged out, but the effects on farmers’ bottom lines were pretty extreme.

Not surprisingly, this report places the front-line responsibility for adapting to climate change squarely onto farmers and points out that government’s role through insurance is to share risk, not compensate, and that programs should inspire innovation by encouraging best management practices.

We see references to “empowering” farmers to take ownership of their own business risk management. And there is this statement in the appendix report in reference to the 2011 study by the OECD: “Reducing the role of the government in risk management is a first step in allowing proactive approaches to risk management to emerge.”

It points to the New Zealand crop insurance experience: “production intensity, development of new/marginal lands, fertilizer use and cropping of high-risk land all decreased when subsidies were eliminated.” That was considered a good thing.

The supporting documents suggest the biggest risk to governments is to offer programs that mask incentives for farmers to change how they operate in order to reduce their own exposure.

“There is a need to develop and expand alternate cropping options that could counteract adverse climatic conditions. It was noted that uptake has been painfully slow, but there are existing options and existing models for alternate production practices that can mitigate the impact of severe climatic shifts,” the task force reports. “Examples include intercropping, crop rotations that include nitrogen fixation plant species, perennial cereal varieties, and organic production.”

As well, these options are poorly supported within current business risk management programs. “As these options become further advanced and available, business risk management (BRM) programming needs to evolve and support these options; certainly the BRM options must not discourage these new and different production modalities.”

The 2011 OECD study concluded: “The major policy challenge in Canada is to maintain farmers’ incentives to proactively develop risk management strategies and improve the targeting policies to income risk… In most cases, this means that the government should do less rather than more, and do it more simply.”

Hence, the task force recommendation that the province explore the introduction of whole-farm revenue insurance as a replacement for AgriStability. It is seen as a means of reducing program exposure and keeping the premiums farmers pay within reason.

Insurance under a whole-farm approach would be based on the farm’s total revenue, not on a crop-by-crop basis. That is expected to foster diversification, a form of self-insurance.

Considered in their entirety, the recommendations imply that the production culture that has been fostered within agriculture — and heartily embraced by farmers — faces a fundamental shift. It also suggests that the best way for government to help farmers adapt to climate change — is to help a little less.

The post Editorial: A whole-farm approach appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.