Scientific principles are one thing. Encouraging farmers to use them are another — that requires expertise in ‘extension,’ a word which has unfortunately fallen somewhat out of favour. As chronicled in Men Against the Desert, James Gray’s book on the 1930s dust bowl, part of the success of PFRA’s founders lay in their ability to convince farmers to change farmers’ thinking on practices such as black summerfallow. Once the desert was beaten back, PFRA continued to earn farmers’ respect by establishing community pastures and by its expertise in local water projects, including 70,000 farm dugouts built between 1935 and 1960.

With the end of the most severe erosion of the 1930s and the adoption of reduced tillage, there was — and is — some tendency to think that good soil conservation practices have been widely adopted.

The PFRA challenged that notion in 2000 with the release of Prairie Agricultural Landscapes — A Land Resource Review. Its extensive analysis of soil and water health in Prairie crop and forage land was one of the most important but most ignored reports in recent memory.

“PFRA has determined that more than 50 per cent of annually cropped fields are exposed to erosion each year on the Prairies,” the introduction said. “The reduction of fall tillage and summerfallow and the adoption of direct-seeding systems have decreased the period during which soils are exposed to a high erosion risk. However, there remains ample opportunity for erosion to occur.”

Regarding forages, “The survey found that more than half of Prairie rangeland is in less than good condition, with some areas reporting over three-quarters of the land in less than good condition.”

As it is now, the industry was going through one of its periodic “need more value-added” phases and the PAL report was a response to the Canadian Agri-Food Marketing Council’s call for Canada to capture four per cent of global agri-food trade by 2005, composed of 40 per cent primary production and 60 per cent processed goods. The PAL report addressed whether that was sustainable on the Prairies. The answer was clearly no.

That apparently ruffled the feathers of those who had recently added “and Agri-Food” to Agriculture Canada’s title, and it seemed more than a coincidence that PFRA was wound down shortly after. The Liberal government of the time did keep the community pastures, but in 2012 Harper government Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz sold them off, despite opposition from all sides of the political spectrum as well as cattle producers and conservation groups.

It’s been 19 years since the PAL report, and with all the recent hype about precision agriculture, some might think that conservation problems are being solved. That was refuted by testimony to the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry earlier this month.

“Our soil care progress is overstated,” said Ontario farmer Don Lobb, a longtime soil conservation advocate. “During the past decade, we have experienced a return to more tillage. Farm machinery companies have capitalized on recent high crop returns with the flashy promotion of shallow high-speed tillage. This results in accelerated carbon loss to the atmosphere and creates soil instability, which puts water quality at risk. Long-term benefits to soil productivity have not been shown.

“Statistics Canada records show that from 1971 to 2011, just 40 years, soil loss from agriculture claimed 3.9 million hectares, the equivalent of a swath of our very best soil, 7-1/2 kilometres wide, right across Canada.”

Don Lobb was followed by his son David, a soil science professor at the University of Manitoba. He said that while the area of soil being eroded has decreased to 10 per cent from 37 per cent since 1980, yield loss has increased on the remainder.

“The cumulative soil loss… has decreased crop yields from 17 per cent on that 37 per cent of the land in 1971 down to 60 per cent loss on 10 per cent. This indicates a little net improvement in soil productivity in response to adoption of less intensive tillage operations after all that effort.” David Lobb estimated the yield loss from eroded soils at $3 billion per year.

He concluded with “The Government of Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, more specifically, must regain its leadership role in collecting and co-ordinating soils data and related land resource information. This includes employing the national team of permanent staff in areas of soil survey terrain analysis, database management and GIS analysis. This is a role that only federal government can play and it is one that has been completely neglected.”

Let’s put that another way. Bring back the PFRA.

John Morriss is former editor of the Manitoba Co-operator and former editorial director of Glacier FarmMedia.

The post Comment: Bring back the PFRA appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

How will these changes affect the community pastures program, part of what was the federal government’s Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration initiative? Referred to as “Canada’s greatest success story” – the program started in 1935 to deal with the devastation the dust bowl brought to the southern Prairies. It included initiatives to deal with erosion, water access, irrigation and grass management through the Community Pastures Programs. These pastures are found in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba and cover over TWO million acres in total.

• Manitoba putting points system out to pasture

This program gave farmers and ranchers access to valuable public land which benefited from the cattle’s natural grazing behaviour. Pasture managers were trained in soil and water conservation and native plant management and understood the crucial role these processes play in protecting the endangered species that live on these ancient ecosystems. As reported in the Globe and Mail: “As rare and ecologically important as coastal old-growth forest, the PFRA grasslands are listed by the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) as lands that Canada has made a commitment to protect.”

• Community pasture benefits worth over $13 million a year, study says

The Harper government axed the program in 2012, and control of the pastures was ceded to Saskatchewan and Manitoba (Alberta’s were always under provincial control). Although Saskatchewan’s agricultural minister claimed in 2013 that there would be a requirement that the pastures would have to remain whole (no cultivation; no drainage), many were worried about a lack of regulation and enforcement of these stipulations.

Manitoba’s 400,000 acres fell under the control of the provincial government which continued renting them out to patrons under the management of a non-profit organization – the Association of Manitoba Community Pastures (AMCP). Trained pasture managers stayed on staff with the AMCP. The NDP government of the day agreed to support the program, understanding that the pastures help the province fight climate change and protect biodiversity. It pledged over a million dollars to the project.

• Crown land administration to be overhauled

In order to understand the current government’s commitment to ‘modernize’ the program, we have to unpack a couple of the purported improvements highlighted in the consultation backgrounder. The first one concerns “facilitating interprovincial trade, and complying with the principles of the New West Trade Partnership Agreement and the Canadian Free Trade Agreement” (CFTA).

Manitoba signed on to the New West Trade Partnership Agreement soon after the Pallister government took power. Although the agreement ostensibly lowers trade barriers between the provinces, critics argue that such barriers are few and far between and that its primary purpose is to streamline industry, labour and environmental regulations to the lowest possible denominator. The CFTA came into effect in July 2017, also with the promise to harmonize regulations across the country, and with international trade agreements like the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union. Agreements like CETA are notoriously pro-business to the detriment of environmental protection and the interests of dairy and poultry producers.

In the case of the community pastures, regulatory harmonization is a real problem. Saskatchewan recently completely abandoned its community pasture program, stating that “We don’t believe that looking after privately owned cattle is a core function of government.” This statement from Saskatchewan’s agriculture minister demonstrates a lack of understanding of the full purpose of the program, adding to what seems to be a long-running disregard for the prairie ecosystem. A blog by prairie naturalist Trevor Harriet explains that “the Saskatchewan Party has sold 1.1 million acres of Crown lands in the prairie ecozone.” It is not clear how the pastures will be regulated once the province has fully withdrawn.

Talking to Manitoba cattle producers who support the current program revealed that concerns go beyond the loss of environmental stewardship. The stated goal of “removing the previous requirement that applicants had to be Manitoba residents” opens up the possibility that cattle will be shipped in from other provinces, then shipped home for processing, leaving no economic value added for Manitoba.

Changes will also remove the advantage currently given to younger Manitoba producers who need access to Crown lands to build their herds. The modified application process will favour the wealthiest producers who can put in the highest bid, allowing out-of-province producers with deep pockets to elbow out younger producers of more modest means. There are concerns that the desire to “modernize” the program will result in more intensive cattle production that is controlled by big business, and that small producers will fall victim to corporate farming the same way other agricultural producers have.

Finally, these changes fly in the face of economic reasoning. Cattle overproduction is causing prices to fall, but the province is ushering in changes so cattle production can expand. And such expansion could put pressure on less agriculturally productive areas such as marsh and/or scrubland that needs to be protected so it can continue providing important environmental services.

Many worry that changes to the community pastures program will be a variation of a familiar theme: the tragedy of the commons. That becomes clear in reading the March 2018 report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, which concluded that “… community pastures were a policy response in a time of crisis. The pastures provide patrons with tangible benefits to their operations, yet the sustainable management practices used have provided benefits to the wider society. Some of these benefits are only now becoming valued by society through policy: carbon sequestration, for example, was until recently a benefit without clear value, yet in the near future the mitigation potential of pastures and other uncultivated landscapes could reach a broader audience and inform understanding of the complete value of these places.”

Climate change and species extinction represent the greatest crises facing us today. Hopefully Manitoba’s government will show more leadership than Saskatchewan’s, and protect these lands for future generations.

The post A made-in-Manitoba tragedy of the commons appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

He said it was an exercise in frustration bordering on failure until he realized the transition involved more than eliminating tillage from his management tool box. It required changing how he thinks about farming — and a redesign of his whole farming system — before he began to reap the promised benefits.

A team of researchers with University of California Davis recently came to a similar conclusion in a somewhat controversial letter published in Nature magazine challenging whether conservation agriculture can produce enough to feed the world. Its analysis concluded that global yields might actually decrease under widespread zero tillage if it is not part of a farming system that includes residue retention and crop rotation.

Perhaps the first and arguably the most dramatic experience Prairie farmers have had in unlearning what they thought they knew about farming was in the Dirty ’30s. Government extension workers with the newly formed Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) realized that if they were to prevent vast regions of the Prairies from becoming a desert that rivalled the Sahara, they needed to foster a fundamental shift in farmers’ thinking. They salvaged the base for what remains a bustling and highly productive agricultural economy, and was one of the greatest accomplishments in Canadian history.

• More from the Manitoba Co-operator: ‘International Year of Soil’ a big deal for dirt

That era was about putting a stop to wind erosion by ending the practice of deep tillage, particularly on fragile lands that needed to remain under perennial grasses. In the 1980s, it was about reducing tillage even more, at the very least leaving more crop residue covering the fields. The farmers who adopted zero tillage parked their plows forever, substituting with herbicides, specifically glyphosate.

These changes involved varying combinations of environmental necessity and better technology. But with each, the biggest challenge was not the innovation but inspiration — convincing key players from policy-makers to farmers that they had to change their thinking and their farming practices.

Sometimes, the economics made the change more palatable. The fuel and time savings alone made no-till farming attractive, but so did the potential for higher yields and more options for cash crops.

But other developments that will require farmers to change are harder to sell based on economics. For example, the declining effectiveness of herbicides, especially glyphosate. Extension workers have expressed frustration at their inability to convince farmers to take action to avoid herbicide resistance before it shows up in their fields. It comes down to the fact that they are asking farmers to make adjustments that will cost them money and effort up front in order to avoid a problem they don’t yet have, and therefore can’t plug into a cost-benefit ratio. Even the knowledge that the arrival of herbicide-resistant weeds could seriously limit their farming options has had little effect to date.

Now, farmers are being asked to make another psychological leap in their thinking — accepting the notion that soil is more than a growth medium; it is alive, containing more micro-organisms in one shovelful than there are people on Earth.

The year 2015 has been designated by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization as the International Year of Soil. The extra attention on what lies beneath our feet is long overdue.

“Generally speaking, we are not doing such a great job: one-third of our soils have already degraded,” FAO director general José Graziano da Silva said in a statement launching the Year of Soil. “If the current trend continues, the global amount of arable and productive land per person in 2050 will be a quarter of what it was in 1960.”

It can take up to 1,000 years to form one centimetre of topsoil, which can be washed away in an afternoon with one rainstorm.

“I always remember my first soils class in university,” da Silva said. “The professor said that soils were made up of about one-third water, one-third minerals and one-third organic materials. He took these three elements and mixed them in a pan. He showed this to us and said that that was not soil: soil is a living organism.”

Until recently, there’s been a tendency to regard soil as a “growing medium.” Changing that view to one in which soil is seen as a separate living ecosystem may represent as big a change in thinking and practice as the adoption of reduced tillage and herbicides.

The post Editorial: Changing how we think appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

But improved long-term planning for times of excess and drought can reduce our vulnerability to the latter, said speakers at the inaugural Assiniboine River Basin Initiative conference in Regina earlier this month.

“One of the reasons we have so much in the way of flood damage is that we’re kind of stupid in the way we manage flood plains,” said Bob Halliday, board chair with the Partners for the Saskatchewan River Basin, who gave the opening address.

Meeting participants agreed at the November 12-14 meeting to develop a joint approach between Saskatchewan, Manitoba and North Dakota to manage the sub-basins of the Qu’Appelle, Souris (Mouse), and the Assiniboine rivers.

All three areas have experienced massive flooding in 2011 and 2014 that has caused billions of dollars of damages to rural and urban infrastructure.

Resilient

What’s needed long term is a way to make cities and rural landscapes more resilient to these events, said Halliday.

“We cannot assume we can occupy a flood plain willy-nilly and leave somebody else to pay the bills.”

Halliday detailed several key vulnerabilities of the watershed, including the alteration of the original landscape, and the inevitability of more severe weather events to come.

What we’re now facing is a fundamental inability to absorb these weather shocks because we lack the needed infrastructure to mitigate against them, and capacity to plan for them, he said.

He reminded the conference — focused largely on flood-related issues — that inevitably we’ll have the opposite problem to water flowing uncontrollably across the landscape.

We’re not well prepared for this either, he said.

Three years is about the limit of what this region can handle, after which the capability of reservoirs on the Prairies and Northern Great Plains of the U.S. are pretty well tapped out.

(Other speakers at the conference spoke of scientific historical data showing drought has gripped the Prairies for literally decades in pre-settlement times.)

“You can deal with contingency measures for about three years and then it really gets tough,” he said.

“I like to think the best time to talk about drought management and contingency plans is when you don’t have a drought,” he said, adding, “the same could be said about flooding.”

Important gain

Forming the Assiniboine River Basin Initiative (ARBI) is an important gain for a region needing both a framework of laws and policies to manage water as well as broad-based longer-term planning and capacity building, he said.

The end of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, formed during the dust bowl of the 1930s, is nothing less than “an appalling disaster,” he said.

“Where was the PFRA?” was the question Ralph Goodale (MP — Wascana) said he heard repeatedly in the aftermath of severe flooding experienced across southeastern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba.

“For 75 years the PFRA was our ace in the hole,” he said, adding that what’s now missing without it is a coherent plan on a region-wide basis.

The end of the PFRA has reduced both the federal capacity to act on and understand water issues, said Goodale. He said the formation of the ARBI is an opportunity for this level of government to help both fund and facilitate water management efforts.

“Hopefully this can lead to a larger and more successful outcome, not just for the Assiniboine basin, as important as that is, but in the ongoing proper intelligent management of water resources for all the Prairie region,” he said.

The post ‘Disaster by design’ wreaks flood havoc on the Prairies appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Whether the herd is sold or moved, it will be the first time in the centre’s 127-year history without cattle, according to Barb Kristjansson, the regional vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s agricultural union, which represents AAFC technicians and labourers.

“This is cow-calf country,” Kristjansson said in an interview May 16. “And that’s what Brandon does — cow-calf.”

Manitoba has almost 500,000 head of beef cows, the third-largest herd behind Alberta and Saskatchewan, she said.

“You can’t just do research in one area and apply it to the entire West,” Kristjansson said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

May 9 nearly 700 AAFC employees received Workforce Adjustment notices saying either they could lose their jobs or that their positions are being eliminated. Union officials expect in the end 400 staff will be unemployed.

Given notice

Beside the eight in Brandon, 22 AAFC staff under the agricultural union received notices — nine in Winnipeg, two in Morden, one in Dauphin and two in Beausejour. Some work for the Agri-Environment Services Branch, formerly the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA). The two in Morden are in office administration, Kristjansson said.

AAFC says it is streamlining to make it easier for farmers and processors to do business with government.

The research scientist overseeing the work has until next March to decide whether to move to AAFC’s Lacombe Research Centre where beef research continues.

In the meantime, AFFC has to decide what it’s doing with more than 800 head of cattle, Kristjansson said. The herd includes around 350 cows that would normally be undergoing artificial insemination (AI) now. The rest of the animals are calves, yearlings and replacement heifers.

“Their revenue from the beef cattle sales at the centre every year is about $300,000,” she said. “And that money, unlike other government revenue, goes directly back to Brandon to the beef department.

“But that $300,000 goes right out the door again and is all locally spent. They have tendered hay and straw purchases for years.”

Spinoffs

There are thousands of dollars in other spinoffs too, from veterinary services and fuel to equipment purchases, she said.

The cattle are grazed on land unsuitable for annual crop production. Nearby Crown land is also grazed.

Recent work has included improving conception rates with AI, rotational grazing, swath grazing, bale grazing and extended grazing.

One research trial currently underway, in collaboration with the University of Manitoba, involves grazing on different swathed forages. The project was supposed to continue until next year, Kristjansson said.

Research is important to Manitoba’s 8,000 cattle producers, says Cam Dahl, general manager of Manitoba Beef Producers.

“Whether it’s specifically that (Brandon) herd or not, I definitely want to see ongoing research in Manitoba and ongoing demonstration of research in Manitoba so that we know if there are new management practices or new techniques that will function on the ground in Manitoba,” he said. “I’m not quite sure how we do that yet, but that’s something that’s important to ensure happens.”

Partnerships

One option is for Ottawa, provincial governments, universities, the private sector and farm groups to work together to develop new partnerships, said Grains Growers of Canada executive director Richard Phillips.

National Farmers Union president Terry Boehm says the cuts are part of Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz’s plan to kill publicly funded research, so the private sector can take it over and charge farmers for doing it.

At a celebration of the Brandon Centre’s 125th anniversary Aug. 11, 2011 Chris Kennedy, executive assistant to Brandon-Souris MP Merv Tweed, told celebrants the need for agricultural research is at an all-time high.

Tweed was unavailable for an interview.

Kristjansson said she’s disappointed in the MP’s lack of support for the Brandon Research Centre.

“He seems oblivious to what’s happening in his own constituency,” she said.

The post AAFC Brandon beef research cuts condemned appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Almost 700 Agriculture and Agri-Food (AAFC) employees across Canada, including 55 in Manitoba, have been notified their jobs are on the line.

Their unions say the notifications are part of a plan to eliminate an estimated 400 jobs as the federal government tries to cut spending.

The Brandon Research Station’s beef research will be moved to Lacombe, an AAFC communications official confirmed in an email last week. But the official declined to provide specific details about what research will be affected citing “employee privacy.”

“We are consolidating our national science capacity in key locations in line with our efforts to concentrate expertise and use our resources more effectively to generate the science and knowledge needed to advance the industry,” the AAFC official wrote in an email. “Consolidating activities will allow more financial resources to be directed at research and development and less on maintaining herds.

We will continue beef-grazing systems research, with those activities moving from Brandon, Man. to Lacombe, Alta.

There’s no official word on how related manure management and environmental research at Brandon will be affected. However, according to one unconfirmed report, there will be cuts in those programs too.

Calls to the head of Brandon Research Centre and AAFC’s regional director general were not returned.

“We’re very disappointed,” Manitoba Beef Producers’ general manager Cam Dahl said in an interview. “There’s no question about that. Of course research is a significant focus for us.”

The beef producers had funded beef research at the Brandon Centre, he said.

“We do place a great deal of importance on research and we will continue to do so,” Dahl said. “While we’re disappointed — and we are — that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop research in Manitoba. We will look for other ways to do that, whether it be with the Government of Manitoba or the university or other partners we will continue to support that work.”

Because the cuts are part of the federal government’s budget, the beef association is resigned to them, Dahl said.

“We’ll just have to adapt.”

Doug Chorney, president of the Keystone Agricultural Producers, said cutting AAFC staff is inconsistent with the federal-provincial Growing Forward 2 agreement, which is supposed to promote agricultural research and competitiveness.

“I don’t understand this move,” he said in an interview. “We weren’t consulted. It’s news to everybody and seems contradictory to what the government has been saying.”

Under Growing Forward 2 governments cut spending on business risk management programs for farmers to make research a priority, Chorney said.

All organizations change over time, but usually those changes are based on a plan. Farmers don’t know what the plan is, Chorney said.

AAFC says it’s improving service and saving money by reducing 28 programs to three. It’s also reducing layers of management and strengthening market access.

AAFC is focusing its scientific work on core priorities aligned with government priorities.

It could take months before the number of AAFC job cuts is known, union representatives said. Of the 350 AAFC staff who are members of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) and received Workforce Adjustment notices May 9, around 200 are expected to lose their jobs, said PIPSC president Gary Corbett. PIPSC represents AAFC scientists.

Of AAFC staff that are members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) 235 also received Workforce Adjustment notices. PSAC represents AAFC technicians and office staff.

Of the 22 PSAC members working for AAFC in Manitoba, 13 were notified they will lose their jobs, while nine will go through a selection process, said Bob Kingston, PSAC’s national agriculture union president.

“It’s a sad day,” Kingston said. “It seems like anything to do with science or conservation is going to be hit by these guys.”

The cuts are concentrated in AAFC’s Science and Technology and Market and Industry Services branches, PIPSC said in a news release. Affected employees include 144 commerce officers, 79 scientists, 76 information technology specialists, 29 engineers, 14 biologists, five research managers and three procurement officers.

Some of the affected staff are part of the Agricultural Environmental Services Branch, which was what became of PFRA (Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration) when it was rolled into AAFC several years ago.

“I hope the industry starts asking questions because if you look at how Canada got to where it is in agriculture, it’s exactly because of the kind of research that’s being destroyed,” Kingston said.

A year ago, AAFC announced it would close its Cereals Research Centre in Winnipeg mainly because it was too costly to refurbish. An estimated 41 positions were cut, although most of the cereal breeders and plant pathologists are being transferred to Brandon and Morden, respectively.

AAFC also announced a year ago it would sell community pastures and close or sell its shelterbelt tree nursery at Indian Head, Sask.

Ongoing cuts to AAFC have farmers questioning Ottawa’s support for publicly funded research, Chorney said.

“We are streamlining our program delivery and our organization to make it easier for producers and processors to do business with government and deliver results for the sector,” an AFFC communications official wrote in an email.

To that end there has been a 43 and 45 per cent reduction in AAFC travel and conference costs over four years and a 70 per cent reduction in hospitality costs over five years.

The post Hundreds of jobs cut at Agriculture Canada appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The statistics tell the story of the “Dirty ’30s” in Western Canada — miserable yields, negative net farm income and thousands of families forced to pack up and leave their farms. But somehow that quote from Olaf Field in James Gray’s 1964 book Men Against the Desert is even more effective in illustrating just how serious the drought had become.

The book’s title is no exaggeration. In the 1930s, much of Western Canada almost turned into a desert. It would not have been the first time that a long drought combined with poor farming practices had turned productive agricultural land into a permanent desert. That’s been the fate of large areas of the Middle East and North Africa.

It wasn’t the fate of Western Canada. Gray’s 1964 book is essentially a history of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration. The acronym PFRA became so commonly used that many may have forgotten what the third letter stood for — rehabilitation. That’s what Western Canada needed, and it was achieved through hard work, ingenuity, dedication and good science on behalf of both of what we’d today call the public and private sectors. Government scientists and extension workers found and developed plants that could stabilize the drifting soil, and convinced farmers that leaving “trash” on the surface was better than having a perfect black summerfallow. In Prairie barns and machine shops, inventive farmers and blacksmiths perfected the rod weeder and the Noble blade and other tools that allowed better soil management along with weed control.

That heritage continues today through the modern western Canadian equipment manufacturers that continue to perfect the minimum- and zero-tillage equipment that have done so much to conserve Prairie soil. That equipment and the knowledge behind it is now being exported to other areas such as the Former Soviet Union, and it may help them spare the fate that almost befell Western Canada in the 1930s.

Beating back the desert is one of the greatest achievements in the history of Western Canada. It is therefore baffling that Canada would pull its support from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, as it did last week, which ironically was Canada Water Week. It also comes just before National Soil Conservation Week from April 21-27.

The decision was not even communicated by press release and was only discovered on an obscure website. It has now gone well beyond that and has received international coverage, which is giving Canada — and Canadians — a black eye. Already the only country to have pulled out of the Kyoto accord, we have now broken ranks with 193 others on the issue of combating drought in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa. The reason can hardly be the money — a paltry $315,000 per year. All we seem to know is that Foreign Minister John Baird thinks the convention is just a “talkfest.” Well, so is the House of Commons, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile.

Exactly what the desertification convention was accomplishing is hard to know, and we don’t have any inside knowledge. What we do know is that combating desertification is one of the world’s most pressing issues, and it doesn’t make Canada — or Canadian farmers — look good if we’re not part of the battle.

It’s a good bet that neither Minister Baird nor Prime Minister Harper know about the victory in beating back the Prairie desert, but they should. It’s part of what defines rural Western Canada, to which the Conservative Party and this government owe much of its success, if not its very existence.

There is no place in the world that has more knowledge and technology to offer in the battle against desertification. The decision to withdraw from the convention may even go beyond purely humanitarian goals. Canada also has commercial interests in selling conservation tillage equipment and expertise overseas. Given that it comes on the heels of the announcement to disband CIDA and link overseas development to Canadian commercial goals, the withdrawal from the desertification convention is even more baffling.

Those in the farm lobby who have the ear of the government need to make a few phone calls to explain this, and suggest that a face-saving way must to be found to reverse this decision.

The post Fighting more deserts appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA), one of the finest organizations, public or private, in this country’s history (it arguably saved Western Canada from becoming a desert) decided to analyze whether such a goal was possible and sustainable. It assembled a group of civil servants, farmers and academics to produce the Prairie Agricultural Landscapes (PAL) report. It produced an extensive analysis of the health of Prairie soil and water, much of which remains relevant today. The quality of its research was enhanced by something which is all too rare in reports from government and academia — good writing, editing and layout. In other words, it was written in plain English, a fitting complement to the PFRA’s style of delivering applied research that actually worked on the farm.

The PAL report suggested that reaching that export goal might not be quite so sustainable. Perhaps its conclusions were the last straw, as the PFRA was not long after absorbed into Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, merged with other departments and given the soulless name of “Agri-Environment Services Branch.”

The PAL report came to mind when noting the last-ditch petition to request Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz to reverse the decision to terminate the 110-year-old tree program at Indian Head. It would have been one thing had he said something like, “In these times of fiscal restraint, government has to make hard decisions and…”

But no. As he had done with the wheat board, Ritz simply dismissed the tree program as a relic of the past, saying farmers don’t farm like they did 100 years ago and they don’t need shelterbelts to prevent erosion anymore.

Not so fast, said the PAL report.

“Universal adoption of reduced-tillage and low-disturbance seeding systems will not eliminate soil erosion. Soils will still be exposed to high erosion risk after low-residue crops (such as the three-million-acre-plus increase in lentils and soybeans since the PAL report?) drought, disease or excessive straw harvesting. Permanent soil-conservation practices are required to supplement crop-residue management systems. Further work is needed to identify areas which are unsuitable for annual crop production and those areas that should be protected with perennial forages or windbreaks.”

And should we need more evidence of the benefits, we need only check out what’s still on the AAFC website.

“Studies from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and North and South Dakota reveal that fields protected by mature shelterbelts develop an average yield increase of 3-1/2 per cent for wheat and up to 6-1/2 per cent for alfalfa. These figures include land taken out of production for shelterbelt planting and the competition of the shelterbelt with the crop, two factors which can partially offset gains in yield.”

As for livestock, “When planted as shelterbelts, trees can reduce wind velocity, greatly diminishing the effect of cold temperatures on livestock. This can significantly lower stress on animals and, consequently, reduce feed energy requirements. “As for feeding them, “A 20 per cent increase in yields for alfalfa can be expected with the use of shelterbelts.”

And according to the website, the four million trees planted in 2008 will:

•  Sequester 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 by 2058.
•  Protect the equivalent of 1,136 farmyards.
•  Protect 24,000 hectares of cropland.
•  Provide at least $2 million worth of crop benefits.
•  Protect over 265 hectares of wildlife lands.
•  Prevent soil erosion and conserve 4.35 million tonnes of topsoil valued at over $21 million.

That’s pretty impressive, but perhaps planting trees to capture carbon and do all those other things is just not sexy enough these days. Despite claims of fiscal tightening, the Harper government is not shy about issuing press releases about funding new projects. Mr. Ritz has released 19 so far this month, nine of which involve a total of $3.7 million in funding for projects such as hemp processing, tilapia farming, trucking, floraculture and producing plant extracts. And speaking of capturing carbon, that’s one of the benefits claimed in an Oct. 12 announcement of $820,000 to a Calgary company to grow a “useful high-value crop” — algae from engine exhaust.

Interesting idea, but can it capture as much carbon as one year’s planting of boring old trees?

By the way, one of the company’s partners is energy giant Encana. It had $8.5 billion in revenue last year.

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Following graduation, Herb worked for the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA), developing irrigation and water-storage projects. He then spent two years with the Manitoba Department of Agriculture as an extension engineer. In 1953, Herb joined the faculty of agriculture, University of Manitoba, as a professor in the department of agricultural engineering. As head of the department from 1957 to 1967, Herb’s duties included teaching, research, administration, extension and foreign service. He supervised numerous graduate students, many of whom were from international countries. As well, he authored or co-authored 13 scientific papers.

Professor Lapp’s research included experiments in field tillage, seeding methods, grain drying and alternate energy sources. He co-ordinated a major project to determine the feasibility of producing energy from the anaerobic digestion of animal manure. This research, which gained international recognition, led the way to the production and use of ethanol as a fuel in North America.

Working through the Colombo Plan and CIDA, Herb assisted in the development of a new university in Khon Kaen, Thailand, and the establishment of a faculty of agricultural engineering. Besides teaching engineering students, Herb’s responsibilities included teaching English to staff and students; planning and designing buildings, laboratories and a research farm, budgeting, and selecting students for graduate training in Canada.

Herb also worked with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Peru where he established a graduate program at the National Agrarian University in Lima. Having learned to speak Spanish, Herb was able to teach in Peru. Over his long career, Prof. Lapp visited many developing countries where he helped modernize agricultural practices and irrigation techniques. Some of the countries he visited while working on projects for the World Bank, the Colombo Plan, CIDA and FAO included Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Nigeria, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Herb was named a Fellow of the Canadian Society of Agricultural Engineering in 1978 and in 1980 he was given the society’s Maple Leaf Award for outstanding contributions in agricultural engineering in Canada. In 1971, Herb helped found the non-profit Biomass Energy Institute in Winnipeg.

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There’s nothing saying those pastures can’t continue under local management or that trees can’t be produced by private nurseries. Manitoba already has two locally managed community pastures, which appear to be functioning well.

And judging from the bulldozed piles of shelterbelts scattered across the province, there isn’t much desire for trees on the land anyway.

But it’s entirely consistent with the statistical story laid out by the latest Statistics Canada 2011 Census of Agriculture.

The 2011 federal budget, which essentially turns out the lights on the once mighty Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, combined with the latest snapshot on Canadian agriculture exposes some troubling trends on the landscape, trends which may fit the short-term economics driving them, but which don’t respect the lessons previous generations of farmers learned the hard way.

Farmers are becoming fewer and older while their farms are getting larger. Hence the lack of patience for working around shelterbelts.

Between 2006 and 2011, Manitoba saw the sharpest decline in the number of farms in the country and is next only to Saskatchewan in the percentage that farm sizes increased.

The average farm size in Manitoba as of the 2011 census was 1,135 acres, an increase of 13.4 per cent. But of course, in order for some farms to grow, others must disappear, which is exactly what they are doing: 16.7 per cent over the past five years.

The only farm categories in Canada that are growing are the three largest, starting at $500,000 in gross sales to $2 million and over. As can be expected, those farms make up a smaller proportion of the total, but they bring in the most revenue. Of the shrinking smaller categories, the mid-size farms are disappearing the fastest.

But even though more farms are achieving what is now considered an economic scale, the sector is still unable to attract replacement entrepreneurs. The 2011 Census of Agriculture marks the first time the 55-and-over age category represented the highest percentage of total operators.

In 2011, 48.3 per cent of operators were aged 55 or over, compared to 40.7 per cent in 2006. “By contrast, the Labour Force Survey reported that in May 2011, 15.4 per cent of those self-employed in the total labour force were aged 55 years or older,” Statistics Canada says.

Less than 10 per cent of farmers in Canada are under the age of 35 and that proportion is declining.

Some argue that farming is a complicated business that requires years of experience to achieve the necessary scale, but is also clear that with the small to medium-size farms being squeezed out, there will be fewer opportunities for young farmers to grow into the business.

Also notable is the decline of livestock in Canadian agriculture. In 2006, oilseed and grain farms accounted for 26.9 per cent of all farms, while beef farmers accounted for 26.6 per cent. In this latest census, oilseed and grain farms had increased to 30 per cent, while beef had declined to 18.2 per cent.

The number of beef cattle reported for breeding purposes decreased by 22.3 per cent since 2006. The number of farms reporting breeding stock decreased by 25.3 per cent.

We don’t argue the economic reasons for these declines. The meat export business is vastly more vulnerable to trade disruptions and market fluctuations than commodity crops.

Predictably, the land devoted to tame hay and alfalfa decreased by 14 per cent. Pasture lands, the closest thing to natural prairie we have left, are down by four per cent. Woodlands and wetlands decreased by 8.8 per cent.

There is some good news. For the first time with this census, no-till practices, which are less ecologically disruptive, accounted for more than half of all area prepared for seeding across the country, a shift that was caused by a 23.8 per cent increase in the area of land seeded using no-till practices. Overall, 17.1 per cent more farms reported using no-till practices than in 2006. But is having half the land protected good enough?

Another positive is sharply reduced summerfallow, down 40.5 per cent since 2006.

We don’t doubt the economic forces prompting these shifts away from livestock to crop production. But we do question their sustainability.

Livestock plays an important nutrient recycling function in agriculture. Beyond that, land sown to forage is protected from erosion, and typically it is land that is highly vulnerable. Short-term economics and budget balancing exercises aside, we can’t afford to ignore these realities.

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