Agriculture Archives - Alberta Views

Should Canada approve lab-grown meat?

Yadira Tejeda-Saldana and Alice Driver — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 15:55:26 +0000

Yadira Tejeda-Saldana Says Yes

Director of responsible research & innovation, Canada, New Harvest

With the global population projected to reach 10 billion by 2050, and with natural resources finite, creating sustainable food solutions is critical. This challenge, however, presents an opportunity to innovate and enhance food production through technologies such as cellular agriculture, which uses cells from animals, plants or even microbes (like those for brewing beer) to produce food, including animal-cell-derived meat. Innovation can help feed a growing population by complementing traditional agriculture. While much attention focuses on “lab-grown meat,” cellular agriculture also produces other products, such as cocoa, coffee or vanilla. Their manufacture can be in facilities or integrated into local rural operations, making them familiar and scalable, like yogurt.

Canada’s abundant resources and strong agricultural legacy position us to have a domestic cellular agriculture sector with 86,000 jobs and worth $7.5-billion by 2030. Under certain scenarios, cellular agriculture could improve efficiency and reduce environmental pressures—for example, using less land and creating fewer GHG emissions in meat production. Cell-derived food won’t replace traditional ways but will work with conventional farming to diversify production and strengthen rural resilience. This is crucial, as climate change is already harming farmers and ranchers. A study cited by Farm Credit Canada estimates droughts, floods and storms could lead to $3-billion in agricultural losses between 2022 and 2050. While cellular agriculture still depends on farm inputs, it could help farmers adapt by creating new revenue streams, e.g., converting damaged crops into feedstock for cell-based production.

Canada strongly depends on agri-food trade. We export over 50 per cent of our agricultural production and import roughly 30 per cent of our food and beverages. Global conflicts and trade issues can disrupt this supply chain, emphasizing the urgency of strengthening national food and economic security. This is a call to action for producers, researchers, innovators and consumers to collaborate to build greater resilience. Cellular agriculture can contribute by leveraging cutting-edge technology to boost the efficiency of local food production.

Farms could integrate cellular agriculture alongside crops and livestock, transforming otherwise wasted materials into cell-based products or value-added inputs. By-products from canola or pea processing, for instance, can be repurposed to culture animal cells for meat, advancing a circular economy and reducing reliance on single export markets (e.g., 65 per cent of canola meal goes to the US). This would boost autonomy and jobs and diversify revenue across the agricultural value chain, the way craft brewing and distilling revitalize local economies.

Our choice today is whether to allow cellular agriculture to flourish here or simply observe its benefits from afar. Canada has long been known for high-quality, safe agricultural products. By embracing cellular agriculture we can maintain that reputation while putting ourselves at the forefront of sustainable change. By approving cell-derived meat, we will ensure a thriving agricultural sector for generations to come.

Alice Driver Says No

Author of The Life and Death of the American Worker

When I think of meat and of how invested society is in continuing to subsidize and eat meat, I think of Tender is the Flesh, by Argentinian novelist Agustina Bazterrica. In this dystopian tale, a virus has contaminated all animal meat, and so companies begin to raise humans for slaughter. While that might seem unrelated to lab-grown meat, both proposals represent a future in which societies recognize problems with conventional meat and invest immense resources in creating novel sources of meat that are troubling in their own way.

What do we mean by lab-grown meat A company extracts cells from a live animal, then grows these at scale in a stainless-steel bioreactor. As the Government of Canada puts it, “The resulting tissues are intended to be used—for example, baked, grilled etc.—like any other food ingredient.” Singapore, Israel, Australia and the US have approved some lab-grown meats for human consumption on a limited scale; Canada has not.

The same global companies that invented modern factory farming, Tyson Foods and Cargill, are now investing in the companies that are producing lab-grown meat. In other words, companies that have caused immense environmental damage and worsened labour standards across the world are now part of the new protein technologies. What companies such as Tyson and Cargill have successfully bet on in the past is that most consumers don’t care how their meat is produced, how it tastes or what harms it creates. With lab meat, these companies are making the same bet.

They are also marketing lab meat to more conscious consumers, calling it the “future of food” and environmentally friendly. This claim, however, merits skepticism. A 2023 study published in ACS Food Science & Technology, for example, suggests that lab meat’s carbon footprint is potentially much worse than that of beef, based on a life-cycle assessment of the energy used and GHGs emitted at all stages of production. The biopharmaceutical industry generally—and the “broth” in which lab meat is grown specifically—is energy-intensive.

But even if in the long term lab-grown meat proves slightly less damaging to the environment than conventional meat, will it matter Industry projects lab-grown meat will cost the consumer $6–$12 per pound. Independent studies estimate a cost of $17–$23. In this scenario, lab-grown meat, unless it’s subsidized, is unlikely to be the future of food for most of us.

To eat meat is a morally and ethically complicated choice involving animal welfare, workers’ well-being, the environment and human health. Lab-grown meat involves various nuances of these same issues. Big Tech’s solutions are dubious: a vision of a future with an abundance of meat products that do no harm. And if Canada approves lab meat, it risks replicating the factory-farm model, with its tiny number of multinationals dominating the domestic market and food supply. “If we took that money away from Big Meat,” counters food journalist Alicia Kennedy, “there’s so much we can do on smaller scales to make sure food is equitably grown and equitably accessed, and nutritional needs are met along with cultural needs.”

Yadira Tejeda-Saldana responds to Alice Driver

Alice Driver MAKES A compelling argument about the potential of cell-derived meat to perpetuate the flaws of factory farming, and I share her concerns. I’d argue, however, that nowadays companies can still count on most consumers not caring about how their meat is produced, how it tastes or the harm it causes. A 2025 Canadian report indicates that more than 50 per cent of Canadian consumers are concerned about health risks, nutritional value, pesticides and preservative levels in their food. It’s also well documented that rising food prices affect shopping habits. Although consumers are open to purchasing locally produced, healthier or higher quality food, budget constraints are undermining their willingness to improve their food choices. The same report shows that 77 per cent of Canadians are concerned about climate change, with a majority shifting their dietary habits to reduce their impact. Canadians also seek deeper insights into the food they buy, with more than 50 per cent reporting that they look for sustainability information through social media or traditional media.

I’d also agree with Driver that it’s debatable whether cell-derived meat can be more environmentally friendly than conventional meat. Life-cycle assessment studies show a wide range of potential outcomes, which are highly dependent on production assumptions, scale and energy sources. The main challenge is that no mass-production facility currently exists, so projections remain speculative. But the study that Driver cites was widely misrepresented by journalists. That study assumes growth-culture media inputs will be “highly refined,” similar to those used in the biopharmaceutical industry. This refinement is the primary reason why the global-warming potential of cell-derived meat was said to be substantially higher than that of conventional beef. But while highly refined inputs were typical in the early stages of research into cell-derived meat, it’s unlikely large-scale production will rely on such costly inputs. In fact, several companies and researchers are developing less refined food-grade media formulations to lower costs and improve the environmental footprint of cell-derived meat. For instance, they’re exploring agricultural by-products, such as canola meal, as affordable replacements.

We’re developing ways to lower costs and improve the environmental footprint of cell-derived meat.

And even if Driver were correct that the cost of cell-based meat is higher than that of conventional meat, this is a common pattern for new products, especially when manufactured at a small scale. Computers and cell phones were initially very expensive and inaccessible to most people. Scientific and technological advancements have now enabled most people to have them. Pineapples were once rare and expensive for many people. Thanks to ships, refrigeration, canning technology and breeding advancements, however, pineapples can now be found in supermarkets worldwide at an affordable price.

The first burger made using cell-derived technology was estimated to have cost $330,000. Driver’s referenced prices of $6–$12 and $17–$23 per pound already represent a significant decrease from the early days. The industry is focused on addressing scaling-up challenges to make the product more affordable still.

I align with Driver’s views on the moral and ethical issues surrounding meat consumption. It’s all quite nuanced. Food isn’t merely a product; it’s deeply interconnected with cultures, traditions and lifestyles. Accordingly we need to ensure that new food technologies account for this. As a food scientist and avid food lover, I believe in responsibly using technology to address pressing global challenges. Emerging technologies such as cellular agriculture shouldn’t be viewed as a silver bullet or as a trap set by Big Tech. Rather they’re tools that must be governed judiciously. In Canada the cellular agriculture industry remains small, providing ample opportunities to apply lessons from factory farming regarding labour, equity and consolidation. The ecosystem is in development, enabling broad engagement from diverse groups. Canadian researchers recognize this: a project at the University of the Fraser Valley is exploring the social impacts of cellular agriculture and developing guidelines to embed justice from the outset so that the benefits of cellular agriculture reach rural communities, workers and Indigenous stewards.

We should think globally but act locally. With current economic models faltering and the federal government encouraging middle powers such as Canada to develop resilient, homegrown supply chains, opportunities are emerging. Cellular agriculture has the potential to retool our food system without repeating past mistakes. My team at New Harvest is actively pursuing this idea, welcoming grassroots partnerships with diverse communities willing to build a fairer future from the ground up.

Alice Driver responds to Yadira Tejeda-Saldana

It is true that the global population is projected to reach 10 billion by 2050 and that natural resources are finite. I do, however, question why we, as a society, continue to equate sustainability with meat, which, whether factory-farmed or lab-grown, is one of the most energy-intensive foods on the planet to produce. I am interested in exploring the philosophy of meat and the implications of continuing to invest heavily in the consumption of animal flesh. The base assumption of the argument to produce lab-grown meat is that meat is the way to meet the caloric needs of the future population. In a 2025 interview, however, Stanford food and agriculture expert David Lobell said that lab-grown meat probably wouldn’t have a significant impact on food sustainability “anytime soon enough to really matter…”

While it’s true that innovation can help feed a growing population, why is innovation defined as cell-grown meat Climate change is already harming farmers and ranchers, but an honest discussion would involve acknowledging the environmental impact of all forms of meat. A 2023 UC Davis study found that “the global-warming potential of lab-based meat using these purified media is 4 to 25 times greater than the average for retail beef.” Edward Spang, an associate professor of food science and technology and one of the authors of the study, wrote, “Our findings suggest that cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef. It’s not a panacea.”

Canadians are already some of the most voracious meat-eaters in the world. The easiest, most cost-effective and most direct way for Canadians to address climate change and shrink their ecological footprint would be to reduce their meat consumption, not substitute one form of energy-intensive meat for another.

Scientists have shown that a plant-rich diet that includes only moderate meat consumption could prevent 40,000 early deaths per day by 2050 and cut in half the food-related emissions driving global heating. But we’d need to start right away. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, which has been shattering heat records in 2026, and where the growing number of heat deaths has been covered by The New York Times. The effects of climate change affect us all, and we need to look first to the simple changes, such as eating less meat, that could profoundly help the earth and our own health.

A more sustainable future could involve foods such as crickets, mealworms, algae and seaweed. Sure, people might recoil at the “strangeness” of such foods. But I often wonder why it’s easier for society to invest over $3-billion in meat grown in stainless steel vats than for us to seriously discuss alternative proteins, vegetarianism or veganism. And it’s not like Canadians would be starting from scratch. According to a 2025 study, 7.6 per cent of Canadians are already vegetarian, and 4.6 per cent are vegan.

We should reduce meat eating, not substitute one form of energy-intensive meat for another.

I also question to what extent cellular agriculture could help beleaguered farmers create new revenue streams, because cell culture systems are extremely sensitive. For example, damaged crops couldn’t be used in a lab environment if they had mycotoxins (from mould contamination), chemical contamination or pathogenic microbes. While Canada has abundant natural resources, the lab-grown meat industry has yet to demonstrate that it will reduce environmental pressures on even a small scale, let alone a large one.

And yet I recognize that protein is currently a cultural obsession being used to market everything from popcorn to Doritos. Global meat-packing companies, many of which are also investing in lab-grown meat, wield significant political influence, especially in the US. In 2025 The New York Times declared “Meat is back, on plates and in politics,” citing the influence of the Make America Healthy Again movement, which includes members of the Trump administration such as Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The far-right movement across the globe, including Canadian author Jordan Peterson, has embraced and promoted the carnivore diet.

There is a way to discuss cellular agriculture that recognizes its limitations. The lab-grown meat industry has proven it can attract investment, and it would certainly be a way for Canada to create jobs in a new industry. However, the industry hasn’t proven that it’s at the forefront of sustainable change, nor that it’s the food of the future. It is an expensive, energy-intensive biopharma-derived food product that, at current costs, would be unaffordable to most of the world’s population. We’d be wise to direct our energy elsewhere.

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Should We Keep Agricultural Supply Management?

Phil Mount and Danny Le Roy — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 10:00:58 +0000

phil mount Says YES

National Farmers Union VP of policy

Canada’s supply management system supports viable family-scale farming and has had widespread support from Canadian consumers for my entire lifetime. Yet lately it has faced a stream of ideologically motivated criticism bent on tearing the system apart. Mostly these critics try to convince Canadians that we should value the abstract, ephemeral concept of “free trade” over a stable supply of perishable staple foods from local farms.

Rather than “Should Canada keep agricultural supply management?” the question should be “Why would anyone ever consider dismantling supply management?” For 50 years, supply management in Canada—a system of production quotas, cost-of-production pricing and import controls—has proven, time and again, to be the envy of family-scale farmers around the world. It’s also the envy of consumers in countries where essentials such as milk and eggs are subject to price volatility, erratic supplies and seasonal shortages. And in this time of US threats, supply management is a shining example of real Canadian food sovereignty in action.

Supply management allows family farms to earn a modest, reasonable livelihood, retaining a fair proportion of the farm-gate price—unlike most other agricultural sectors in Canada, where, for 30 years, the farmer’s share of food prices has been declining dramatically. The latest National Farmers Union research shows that—outside of supply-managed sectors—the trend has only worsened since COVID. But under supply management, the farmer’s share is based on their cost of production, which delivers a fair return that allows farms to plan and invest in the future. New entrant programs in each of Canada’s supply-managed sectors (dairy, poultry, eggs) attract young farmers to the industry and support farm succession.

Supply management protects farms from consolidation and bankruptcy far better than the “free market” does—and without the need for significant direct annual subsidies. This stability allows our farms to remain family-scaled, against global trends. The average dairy farm in Canada has 105 cows; prairie provinces average 190. Today two-thirds of all milk production in the US is on farms with more than 1,000 cows. The scale of these massive farms, in endless pursuit of efficiency, brings its own problems, including heavy reliance on low-paid migrant labour, vast amounts of animal waste to be managed, and bigger impacts from animal health issues. Culling large US flocks in response to avian influenza, for example, limited the supply and more than doubled the price of eggs in the US in early 2023, and again in early 2025.

With Canadian farmers invested in providing safe, secure, local products, the supply management system ensures that critical perishable staples are constantly available to consumers at reasonable prices, well regulated, and produced with ever-improving environmental and animal welfare outcomes. And above all, the system provides stability for farm families and communities. This uniquely Canadian system has delivered a resilient food supply for half a century. It is the solution. So why are some people trying to make it into a problem?

danny le roy Says No

University of Lethbridge associate professor of economics

For its advocates, supply management isn’t about economic rationality. Its purpose is to use the apparatus of the state to control production, marketing and trade for advocates’ own self-benefit.

For decades, supply management has meant rising prices and incomes in Canada for producers of milk, poultry and eggs. But it comes with costs that compound with time. Supply management stifles individual Canadians from realizing their self-interest as consumers—eggs, poultry and dairy products cost more, and smaller amounts are available than would be without supply management. Many agribusinesses now depend financially on supply management. These issues prompt nasty conflicts—among farmers, consumers, even around the dinner table.

Supply management is a hindrance to trade (in the widest sense of the word). It limits Canadians who want to import dairy, poultry or egg products from abroad. As it reduces the volume of trade, it increases costs to the importer and reduces the return to the exporter. This doesn’t make people richer; it makes them poorer—here in Canada and elsewhere.

High domestic prices for dairy, poultry and eggs hurt Canadians, particularly the poor, who spend a larger portion of their income on food. Lower-income consumers consequently spend less on everything else. Purveyors of other goods and services sell less than they would otherwise, or sell at lower prices, or both, and generate lower revenues.

Production quotas that restrict supply—a key pillar of supply management—hinder new producers wanting to enter the industry, as well as existing producers, who must purchase additional quota to expand their enterprise. There’s no larger financial barrier to expanding an agri-business than the cost of quota. And producers forgo the benefit of using productive assets they otherwise would have acquired.

Supply restrictions are also a hindrance to producers wishing to differentiate their output to satisfy specific consumers. The sale of raw milk to any buyer but a provincial milk marketing board, for example, is a federal crime punishable by up to three years in prison. While it’s legal to drink raw milk, Canada is the only G7 country that prohibits its private distribution and sale. In Europe raw milk can be bought at a vending machine.

phil mount responds to danny le roy

For three decades I’ve been responding to the harshest critics of supply management—almost all of them with no farm background, and motivated by ideology. This experience has proven useful especially as “truthiness” has become an inescapable part of the media landscape. What does truthiness look like It can be a suggestion that two things are related, or that one directly causes the other, when in fact it isn’t so. Something said with such certainty that it sounds like it should make sense—until you learn the facts.

Take, for example, “The sale of raw milk to any buyer but a provincial milk marketing board… is a federal crime punishable by up to three years in prison.” Prohibitions on the sale of raw milk have a long history in Canada, due to concerns over food-borne illnesses. In 1938 Ontario was first to implement compulsory milk pasteurization. This was a quarter-century before that province brought in supply management. The federal government mandated pasteurization in 1991. The regulation of raw milk remains under the purview of Health Canada. All of this holds true with or without supply management. The point is therefore irrelevant.

Then there’s this: “For decades, supply management has meant rising prices and incomes in Canada for producers of milk, poultry and eggs.” In fact, for decades inflation has contributed to “rising prices and incomes” for farmers, and this is true whether or not these farmers are in supply-managed sectors. Meanwhile the costs of production (seed, electricity, equipment, interest payments) have also risen for decades. Under supply management, farmers have rationally agreed to carefully control their production of essential perishable staple foods, and, in exchange, the rest of us agree that those farmers should receive a price that mirrors the rising costs of production, based on a continually updated survey of farms across the country. Incredibly fair.

We get a stable supply of important perishable staple foods in exchange for a fair return to farmers.

Agricultural producers in other sectors in Canada don’t have the protection of supply management, and for them the last 50 years have been a tale of market booms and busts, “price-taking” from fewer and fewer buyers, and a never-ending treadmill of expansion and more debt. At the same time, rising prices from input and service suppliers add to the costs of production, swallowing an ever-greater share of these farmers’ gross incomes, adding to even more farm debt, forcing farmers to rely on off-farm income and driving most of their children out of farming. None of this is hypothetical. It is well documented. And has been for decades.

Jurisdictions that did away with supply management, as Australia did with dairy in 2000, have learned the real costs of “free trade.” The latest USDA Global Agricultural Information Network report on Australia shows that “between 2002 and 2024, the national milking herd shrank by 39 per cent… the number of dairy farms declined by 71 per cent, … milk production fell by 25 per cent … [and] average herd size increased by about 70 per cent.” The hypothetical benefits of “free trade” continue to shimmer on the horizon. But with “dairy deserts” now appearing in Australia, feed costs spiking due to drought, global oversupply depressing international dairy commodity prices, and Australian processors choosing to rely on cheap imports, the hypothesis is floundering.

The last 30 years in the US have seen a dramatic loss of small and mid-sized farms, and concentration of chickens, eggs and dairy onto megafarms. Research shows more dairy megafarms are injecting their cows with synthetic hormones, and more consistently receive government subsidies. A catastrophic 2023 crash in milk prices led to $1.3-billion in direct government payments to US dairy farmers. The “free market” boom-bust-subsidy model works just fine for megafarms in the US.

The bottom line is supply management in Canada is an agreement that continues to provide a stable supply of perishable staple foods to all of us, in all regions, in exchange for a fair return to farmers, with no government payments required. To protect that guaranteed, stable, high-quality supply, we’ve agreed to keep strong controls on the massive volumes that would spill over our borders. These consumer and farmer protections are more important than ever, as megafarms decimate mid-sized farms (that’s all we have in Canada!) and increase strain on water, volatility of domestic and global markets, and the reliance on precarious migrant farm workers.

Fortunately, Canadian consumers, farmers, legislators and policymakers continue to ignore the criticisms from an ideologically motivated elite with no skin in the game, and continue their reasonable and rational support of our uniquely Canadian pledge to protect food sovereignty: supply management.

Danny le roy responds to phil mount

I’m grateful for the CHANCE to answer the question “Why would anyone ever consider dismantling supply management?” This system of production quotas, import controls and high prices not only fails to achieve its intended outcome, it harms everyone in Canada, including the people it purports to help. Supply management has created and compounded inefficiencies, increased the cost of food to Canadians and spawned a litany of unintended consequences.

Policy reforms elsewhere are illustrative. In the 1980s Australia began to address the negative effects of supply management. In 2000 the program was deregulated. State authorities that had set prices and managed supply were abolished. Consumer milk prices fell while raw milk prices rose from the efficiency gains throughout the industry. More recently, deregulation has driven productivity gains in the UK and EU as well.

Canadians, however, continue to be deprived of the benefits conferred by unfettered competition. The number of farms governed by supply management here has fallen faster than those that aren’t. In 1971 supply management was implemented for milk first in Ontario and Quebec and then in other provinces. That year, 145,318 farms reported dairy cattle out of 366,128 farms. Of the 189,900 farms in Canada today, only 9,048 reported milk shipments last year. Egg and poultry farms total 4,500. Less than 8 per cent of farms in Canada produce supply-managed commodities. Almost without exception, the only entrants in supply-managed industries are now family inheritors or people who sold farms in Europe and bought farms here. Supply management hasn’t prevented concentration of primary production; it has encouraged it.

Supply management not only fails to achieve its intended outcome, it harms people it aims to help.

Some critics of supply management are indeed ideologically motivated. But correctly identifying the logical implications of government policy isn’t a product of ideology but of deductive reasoning.

Free trade among people isn’t an abstract concept. It’s the crux of our daily existence, and it can be impeded. We constantly sacrifice things we value to obtain things we value more. Each person aims to improve their situation; otherwise trade can’t occur peacefully for mutual benefit.

With this in mind, one wonders which consumers are “envious” of supply management. The policy purposefully restricts production. Manufactured scarcity then increases prices. Consumers have less access to local goods and services and those from other jurisdictions. Trump-era tariffs do likewise. The higher prices US importers must pay compromises their productivity. The cascading impacts reveal the complexity and interconnectedness of the agrifood system and the consequences of disrupting the spontaneous order and creative power of free markets.

Trump’s tariffs expose the importance of individual freedom, voluntary co-operation and the division of labour in driving prosperity. The most cogent response for us, then, would be to remove all trade barriers in Canada, from regulations limiting movement of products between provinces to, yes, import taxes on supply-managed goods.

Farmers’ falling share of the consumer dollar has nothing to do with supply management. It’s the result of all the value-added activity in transforming commodities into consumer goods. Farmers don’t produce food; they produce a primary product which after transportation, processing, storing, wholesaling, advertising, retailing, preparing and serving ultimately becomes food. The farmer’s share has fallen as consumers get wealthier and spend less of their disposable income on food. Not having to spend so much on food is a sign of prosperity, as it allows more consumption of every other good or service.

It’s often argued supply management is needed because milk, poultry and eggs are perishable. Not only does this fail to describe why supply management for these commodities isn’t legislated in all other countries, it fails to explain why it doesn’t exist for products that are even more perishable. Consider freshly cut flowers. Not one petal on this planet is produced and marketed through a national supply management policy.

And if production quotas, pricing based on production costs, and trade restrictions are so great, why limit them to a few commodities Why not expand them to all goods and services Supply management for every person! Restrict production of every good and service. Set prices for everything and enforce them by administrative dictate. A policy causing more poverty is difficult to conceive.

Canada’s supply management model is not the envy of family-scale farmers around the world, nor of consumers. The evidence is overwhelming: supply management has no place in a free and prosperous society. The familiar blue cow logo on our dairy products isn’t innocuous. It is the mark of sanctioned oppression.

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Farewell to a Farm

Terry Fong — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 09:30:05 +0000

If you have ever eaten chicken in Alberta over the last three decades, you’ve probably had one of my birds. I started chicken farming back in 1997, when I decided my life needed a new direction. I have never regretted my decision. I may have complained about it occasionally, as farmers are wont to do, but I never wished I had chosen a different career.

Why chicken farming I was raised on a farm, but I disliked it when I was younger and couldn’t wait to leave. Then, as a university student in the mid- to late-1980s, I worked at a poultry processing plant during the summers. It wasn’t glamorous, but I found it interesting—not so much what I was assigned to do (basically standing at a trough and deciding whether a chicken was “grade A” or “utility”), but rather watching all the huge trucks loaded with thousands of live chickens as they rolled into the plant in the wee hours of the morning. By afternoon those chickens were processed and making their way into restaurants and stores throughout Alberta.

After university I spent several years working at jobs I didn’t like—and probably wasn’t very good at. The morning commute and spending eight hours behind a desk did not appeal to me. So, possessing a limited knowledge of how chickens are grown, and a fairly decent credit score, I became a poultry farmer. Throughout my farming career I’ve striven to be the best producer I possibly could, and the birds I’ve supplied to my processor have been regarded as a superior product, raised with an unwavering commitment to humane treatment and respect for the environment.

Unfortunately, however, my tenure as a farmer is drawing to a close.

A chick in 2025

When I started farming, I promised myself I would not deviate from my values regarding animal welfare. For 27 years I cared for and respected my birds to the best of my ability. It’s something I’m very proud of. As with any intensive livestock production, the potential for abuse is always present. Due to the sheer concentration of livestock housed together, a minority of farmers may consider individual animals as nothing more than payable weight, and the most efficient method of operating a farm is to concentrate on the total kilograms out the door. I’ve always considered this method of production both harmful and unethical. Fortunately, many of my fellow livestock producers, whether in poultry or other meat animals, do not raise their animals in this manner. But it would be foolish to claim abuses don’t occur.

I promised myself I would not deviate from my values regarding animal welfare.

I received my first cycle of chickens in the fall of 1997, when approximately 30,000 four-hour-old baby chicks were delivered to my farm early one morning. And I had to learn quickly how to care for them. Yes, I was aware they needed to be fed and watered and kept at a temperature of 35°C, but I soon discovered there was much more involved than subsistence and temperature. Lighting programs needed to be followed. There were protocols to minimize disease and bacterial infections. Environmental conditions such as humidity and air quality had to be constantly monitored. Different feed rations needed to be introduced at different times throughout the growing cycle. And most importantly, constant supervision was required to maintain the health and comfort of the birds. For me, this meant being in the barns several times a day, walking through the flock and tending to the birds’ specific needs. Nearly 40 days later, I was introduced to how the birds were shipped to the processor. A specialized crew loaded the grown chickens onto trucks, and they were then transported to the plant. After the birds were gone, I learned how to clean and disinfect the barns to prepare for a new cycle. All told, it was an intensive eight weeks. Then it started all over again.

After nearly 30 years, I’m still learning. Poultry farming has never remained static. Over the years I’ve seen many changes, most of them beneficial. Chick quality has improved due to better selective breeding. Chickens can now gain weight more quickly with fewer inputs than before, causing less stress on the bird itself and leaving more time for the farmer to clean and maintain the facilities. Resistance to diseases and infections has improved and has afforded consumers a choice to purchase chicken products grown without the use of antibiotics.

Growing facilities have also changed throughout the years. My four barns are 6,000 square feet each, for a total of 24,000 square feet. Producers are now building individual barns that are well over 50,000 square feet with high ceilings and massive exhaust fans for improved cooling and environmental conditions, making them much more efficient. Even loading practices have changed when it’s time to send the chickens away for processing. Not too long ago chickens were caught by their legs, taken outside and loaded by the handful into specialized trucks. Today, sections of crates are brought into the barns and the chickens are loaded much more humanely.

Most importantly, at least to me, several federally and provincially mandated rules have been introduced that target bird welfare. When I started farming, growers could put as many chicks in a barn as they wanted. This often led to overcrowded conditions as the birds matured. Now the number of chicks is restricted, allowing the birds a mandated amount of room as they grow. All poultry farmers are now also required to have a yearly audit performed, ensuring facilities provide a safe and humane environment for the chickens to mature. Detailed record-keeping is a component of these audits, the grower having to provide documentation of such items as feeds used and medication administered. Even processors have had to adapt to these ongoing changes, such as providing adequate care while the chickens are shipped to their facilities and minimizing the amount of stress the chickens might experience during processing. Fortunately, many growers have welcomed these changes.

Poultry farming in Canada is based on a supply-managed quota system. Quota needs to be purchased before a farmer can become a commercial producer. Currently, chicken quota must be obtained from another producer. In the past, production quota has also been released by marketing boards if the demand for poultry products has increased.

A quota unit is basically a predetermined measurement of weight, in this instance kilograms. The more quota units owned, the more kilograms a producer can grow. Each province is allocated a number of kilograms per cycle, and in Alberta approximately 250 farmers produce the province’s allowable kilograms based on the number of quota units they own. Farmers who overproduce are subject to both a monetary fine and a reduction of producible kilograms the following year. Discouraging overproduction ensures there isn’t a glut of product in the marketplace, which would lead to a softening of wholesale prices.

This quota system is sometimes maligned, usually because of misinformation presented by Canadian-based but foreign-owned (mostly US) media outlets that claim US production is far more beneficial to Canadian consumers than domestic production. However, it has ensured Canadian producers receive a fair price for their efforts and capital costs while offering a safe, affordable and accessible product without overproduction. And unlike the production of poultry in the United States, which is controlled by five major processors, the market isn’t subsidized with billions of taxpayer dollars. In any Canadian supply-managed industry, the consumer isn’t paying for foodstuffs twice, once through tax dollars and again at the till. American poultry farmers are also not independent producers, instead operating under contract to large conglomerates. The processor owns the chickens, feed mills, hatcheries, transportation lines and veterinary supplies. A chicken farmer in the US is merely a caretaker. Several legal challenges over the years have attempted to give US farmers more input into their farm production to ensure bird welfare and profitability.

In Canada, contrary to some media outlets—such as US hedge-fund-owned Postmedia, which regularly runs opinion pieces critical of supply management—poultry farmers do not dictate the price of chicken at the retail level. Farm gate prices, however, are negotiated among industry partners, and adjusted each period. As of late 2024, the farm gate price paid by the processor to the farmer was $2.16 per kilogram. If a farmer produces a spec weight, usually 2.35 kilograms per chicken, the farmer is paid $5.08. From this the farmer deducts chick and feed costs. After deducting these costs, the average return is currently about 80 cents per kilogram, or approximately $1.88 per 2.35-kilogram chicken. But chick and feed costs don’t represent the true cost of production. The farmer also needs to pay for such inputs as electricity, natural gas, water, insurance, maintenance, labour and catching and loading services, as well as equipment and mortgage costs. Factoring all that in, the only way to remain profitable is to raise chickens on a large scale, hopefully without any bird illnesses or mechanical failures.

In short, poultry farming isn’t much different from other types of farming: large capital expenses combined with long days, and returns often influenced by circumstances not of your own making. When it’s time to leave, you sell your assets, pay your recapture on those assets, and your taxes, and hopefully have enough left to retire.

The only way to remain profitable is to raise chickens on a large scale.

Poultry farming has been good to me. My commute is a short walk of about 150 metres to the closest barn. I love being my own boss, knowing that success or failure often depends on my own actions. I feel proud knowing my commitment to animal welfare is recognized by many within the industry. The part of farming I enjoyed the most, however, was having a loyal dog named Princeton at my side while we did chores together. For 17 years we were inseparable, and over time the farm became his as much as it was mine. Eventually I renamed the place Black Dog Farms Inc. to recognize Princeton’s contribution. He passed away a few years ago, and although I still enjoy farming very much, I feel a profound emptiness while I work around the farm. I do really miss him.

When Princeton passed, I promised him I would carry on. I believe he would be proud of how the farm continues to operate. I also believe he would understand I probably won’t be able to continue too much longer.

As much as I love my profession, it is a tremendous amount of work and responsibility. Except for when Princeton was alive, I’ve farmed alone. My days are at least 12 hours long—usually longer. When the birds are in the barns, I usually walk among them at least six times a day. When I’m not in the barns, I’m hauling chicken feed, maintaining and repairing the barns or performing general upkeep on the property. I never sleep more than four hours at a time, knowing I need to go out to the barns for another welfare check. The worst times are during extreme cold, when I’m very much aware that mechanical failures can have huge consequences. Exhaust fans, boilers, furnaces, water pumps, circulating fans, air intakes and supportive equipment all need to be monitored and maintained. Going up to the barns at 3:00 a.m. in –35°C weather to scrape condensation off exhaust fan flaps isn’t the most enjoyable task. Even when things are running smoothly, it’s often not possible to leave the farm, knowing that any mechanical mishap could lead to the death of tens of thousands of chickens.

I guess with all of this work I’ve worn myself out. I’m told I need new hips and knees, surgeries I’ve delayed because of my commitment to the farm. A couple other health issues need to be resolved immediately. And admittedly, at now nearly 60 years of age, I’m tired. Tasks I performed with such enthusiasm and vigour when I was younger have become more difficult. I used to be able to stay up all night loading chickens onto trucks, grab a coffee and then start washing barns. Working 48 hours straight to clean the barns wasn’t a problem, especially if I wanted to take a few days for myself to camp with Princeton or go on a short motorcycle trip. Now I’m often wondering how much longer the day will last.

I’ll watch the catching crew as they leave, knowing I’ll never see any of them again.

But it’s not just my own body that has led to my upcoming departure. I’m concerned about what I perceive to be attitude shifts that are detrimental to how I grow chickens. Animal welfare is very important to me, and I have never deviated from my chosen growing practices. There are three major poultry processors in Alberta, but I’ve supplied chickens to only one of them for my entire farming career, and I purchase my baby chicks from them as well. For most of that time I’ve worked closely with a gentleman named John, who represents my processor. John has always accommodated my approach to animal welfare. He may not have always agreed with me, but we have usually found a compromise between farmer and processor. If I’ve wanted to ship my birds at a particular time to avoid stresses on them, he has tried to accommodate me. In extreme heat during the summer, we have worked together to find a solution to make sure my birds arrive at the plant safely. John sends particular truck drivers and catching personnel to my farm to alleviate any concerns I have during the ship-out process. I’ve had a number of surgeries over the last couple of years, and John has worked with me to change my placement or ship-out dates to allow me to overcome my health concerns.

Each of us has looked after our respective interests, but we have always been able to find common ground. That’s rare in this day and age, when people are making decisions with little accountability, and experience seems to have been replaced with unpractised knowledge. I now deal with industry people who have never seen the inside of a chicken barn. Or if they have, the next chicken they grow will be their first. Proposed changes at the processing level, such as no longer having control over the catching crews that load my chickens onto the trucks, also concerns me. Many of these changes have made me uncomfortable, knowing that my concerns about animal welfare may be the responsibilities of people who have little experience in animal husbandry.

John retires at the end of next year. I will not continue to grow chickens knowing that my concerns might not be addressed. None of this is to say the industry I have been proud to be a part of for so many years isn’t sympathetic to my concerns. It is, for the most part, but I now accept that my voice isn’t as heard as it once was. I’m a relatively small farm, and some of my concerns may no longer be addressed in an industry that has to rely on scale and big production numbers to be profitable.

Terry Fong with newly placed chicks in one of the four barns at Black Dog Farms in February 2025.

One evening towards the end of 2025, large trucks will roll into my yard to pick up my mature chickens. A specialized catching crew will be waiting in the shop. We’ll probably start loading birds in the very early morning while it’s still dark. As I’ve always done, and somewhat of a rarity in the chicken industry, I’ll watch nearly every bird being loaded into the crates to ensure no hardships are inflicted on them. The crates will be loaded onto the waiting trucks, which will soon leave in the order they arrived.

After about four hours the last truck will drive away and the catching crew will return to the shop to change into their street clothes and then leave for another farm. I’ll watch the last truck and the crew as they leave, knowing I’ll never see any of them again. I’ll walk into each of my barns and stand in the emptiness left behind. Eighteen exhaust fans will be turned off and fall silent, never to be heard again. I’ll look at the rows of water and feed lines, 550 metres and 275 metres respectively, that will never provide water and feed again. The boilers and blast furnaces will never again need to maintain temperatures of up to 36°C, as they diligently have for nearly three decades. My barns can rest.

In the days that follow, the manure will be moved out and hauled away. As I do at the end of every cycle, I’ll put on my wetsuit and spend a few days washing the interior of each barn until it gleams. The water and feed lines will be immaculate, and the walls and ceilings will be spotless. I’ll then repair anything that may have broken during the growing period and the ship-out. Why do all this work when the barns will now remain silent for the rest of their lives Because it’s the right thing to do. My barns provided me with the means to safely care for and raise my chickens. They will be left in the same condition they were in when I started farming so many years ago. I owe that to them.

As for me, I guess I’ll move on to another chapter in my life. But whatever happens in the future, I’ll always consider myself a farmer. It has been an honour to raise these birds. What you’ve consumed from my farm was grown in a safe manner where animal welfare was paramount. Remember to always question and explore where your food comes from, whatever type of food that may be. Food production is consumer driven, as it should be, and knowing where our food comes from and how it’s been grown, whether plant- or protein-based, is everyone’s responsibility. Doing this will ensure that whatever ends up on the dinner table is not only high quality but has been properly and humanely grown.

Terry Fong is the owner of Black Dog Farms and the author of Princeton: A Love Story (2020) and Princeton: My Remarkable Journey (2024), both from Corner Tree Press.

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Read more from the archive “Can Organic Food Feed the World?” July/August 2023.

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Damming the Rivers

Alex McCuaig — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 19:59:46 +0000

When Captain John Palliser’s mid-19th-century expedition mapped out western Canada for European settlement, southeastern Alberta was a stark landscape. Drought had gripped the area. The parched shortgrass prairie, dotted with cactus and sagebrush and the occasional cottonwood grove along the rivers, appeared ill-suited for agriculture.

Today the region, encompassing much of the South Saskatchewan River basin, is known as Palliser’s Triangle. It runs roughly from its westernmost point near Cardston, north to the confluence of the Red Deer and South Saskatchewan rivers near Oyen, before dipping south to Swift Current, Saskatchewan. And it has a lot of agriculture. This is because the drought that Palliser experienced abated and the region bloomed, as did settlers’ hopes of cultivating crops in the area. Palliser’s report, the first major survey of southeastern Alberta, was dismissed as pessimistic.

That change of perspective was just the first in a cycle in Alberta over the past 125 years, pushed along by dry years and wet years. People in Palliser’s Triangle have regularly had to manage drought or flooding, trying to smooth out the peaks and valleys of water supply. And for over a century now, the solution to flood and drought alike in the region has always been the same—build more irrigation infrastructure.

The Canadian Pacific Railway, having acquired much of the land in Palliser’s Triangle as part of a deal to build a transnational rail line, saw the potential to bring water to lands thought too barren to cultivate for food. It developed the province’s first large irrigation system, hoping to maximize its capacity to ship agricultural products east and transport European settlers and goods west. The CPR system began in 1903 with the construction of a weir at Calgary to divert water from the Bow River to the Chestermere Reservoir. The Bassano Dam, built in 1910, and an extensive network of canals allowed thousands more acres to be irrigated. Southern Alberta soon had one of the most extensive irrigation networks on the continent.

The CPR wasn’t wrong. The combination of a hot, dry climate and available water transformed the region. But today many Albertans are questioning whether further expansion of irrigation infrastructure is a good idea.

The first significant pushback to building more irrigation infrastructure in Alberta came from opponents of the Oldman Dam. Spurred by the 1984 drought in southern Alberta, Premier Peter Lougheed had commissioned a dam at the confluence of the Oldman and the Crowsnest rivers, just north of Pincher Creek. It would create the largest irrigation reservoir in the province. The Piikani Nation, where headgates were to feed a canal network west and north of Lethbridge, fought the project in the courts and on the land. The advocacy group Friends of the Oldman River was launched as well, alarmed that an environmental assessment hadn’t been done for the reservoir and dam.

After a court decision in December 1987 allowed construction of the dam to continue, an emergency debate was held in the legislature. “One of the most justifiable complaints about this project has been that the public—and when we’re talking about $350-million of taxpayers’ money, that means every taxpayer in the province—has not been given ample opportunity to voice their concerns,” said Edmonton-Glengarry MLA John Younie (NDP) in the legislature. “Those objections [are] both economic and environmental.”

Fred Bradley, MLA for Pincher Creek (PC), argued that the future of southern Alberta was at stake. “If we don’t have sufficient storage in the whole South Saskatchewan system, including the Oldman, there’ll be limits to development in the Bow River basin and the Red Deer River basin,” he told the legislature. By this Bradley meant that economic opportunities in those regions could be reduced if Saskatchewan didn’t receive its allotted water under a 1969 interprovincial agreement that dictates how much water must flow across the provincial boundary near Medicine Hat.

In May 1992, after the Oldman Dam was completed, a court-ordered environmental examination recommended that the dam be decommissioned, concluding “the environmental, social and economic costs of the project” exceeded its economic benefits. The Alberta government ignored the report.

Nearly four decades later, the arguments for and against more dams in the South Saskatchewan basin are much the same. People discuss the role of infrastructure in preventing flooding, mitigating drought and creating water security (for both Alberta and our neighbours), and question whether the benefits outweigh the financial and environmental costs.

The reservoir created by the Oldman Dam, for example, hasn’t always ensured water security. In December 2023 the province had 51 active water shortage advisories as drought gripped southern Alberta. In mid-August 2023 the MD of Pincher Creek saw its intake pipe exposed as water levels in the Oldman Reservoir dropped precipitously. The town had to truck drinking water in. That was also the situation for the rural municipality in 2016. Nor has the Oldman Dam always provided security to irrigators whose canals are fed by its reservoir. The initial water allotment for local farmers to begin the 2024 growing season was half the annual average.

But there have been undeniable economic benefits. Since the Oldman Dam opened, the number of irrigated acres in Lethbridge Northern Irrigation District has risen by more than 60 per cent. Irrigation has prompted a boom all along the Highway 3 corridor from Lethbridge to Medicine Hat, now an agri-food hub that processes potatoes and sugar beets grown using irrigation. The corridor includes greenhouses that fill Alberta’s grocery stores with tomatoes and cucumbers, while lentils, beans and peas flow through to international markets. The beef industry is also dependent on irrigation to supply feed crops and power “feedlot alley,” just outside Fort Macleod. Feedlots generate $1.6-billion in farm receipts in Lethbridge County alone.

According to a 2021 report by the Alberta Irrigation Districts Association (AIDA), irrigated acreage collectively represents less than 4.5 per cent of all cultivated land in Alberta’s 13 irrigation districts but produces more than a quarter of the province’s agri-food GDP.

Everyone can agree that the winter of 2023–2024 wasn’t the first time southeastern Alberta has experienced drought. Where people disagree is in what we should do about it.

Earlier this year AIDA released a report on the future of water management in southern Alberta. “The Adaptation Roadmap for the South Saskatchewan River Basin” recommends a multi-option build-out over 20 years involving more infrastructure, including a new dam on the Bow River just south of Brooks, another upstream near Cochrane, a third on the Red Deer River east of that city and a fourth on the upper Belly River, along the western edge of the Kainai Nation, southwest of Lethbridge.

The report also proposes a new off-stream reservoir—one supplied by a canal or pipe—along the Red Deer River south of Oyen to provide irrigation to the Special Areas, three sparsely populated municipalities atop Palliser’s Triangle. The Special Areas were constituted by the province in response to the mass abandonment of the area during the 1930s Dustbowl, and they have remained under provincial governance ever since. Irrigation could transform the region.

The AIDA report is currently being evaluated by the province. Budget 2023 allocated $5-million to study the feasibility of the Eyremore Dam near Brooks, with a report due in spring 2025.

Richard Phillips, general manager of the Bow River Irrigation District, is likewise bullish on building more infrastructure. He says AIDA’s report balances the needs of southern Alberta’s irrigators against those of municipalities while creating more resilience against not only water-supply variations consistent with historical trends but also those predicted by climate change modelling.

Phillips is also the chair of Irrigating Alberta, a consortium of 10 irrigation districts set up to manage the nearly $1-billion that has been allocated to the Alberta Irrigation Modernization (AIM) program. AIM, announced in 2021, is the province’s largest-ever one-time investment in irrigation. The districts themselves are contributing $163-million. More than $407-million will come from the Canada Infrastructure Bank, with the province contributing the remaining $245-million. The 56 projects covered under AIM—including four new off-stream reservoirs—have the potential to increase Alberta’s irrigated area by 84,000 hectares.

Phillips says demand is high for expanding irrigation, but he argues new infrastructure won’t lead to more water being used. In the past, “expansion of irrigation districts has been based on [creating] efficiencies …both on-farm improvements and district improvements,” says Phillips. “We’ve more than doubled the irrigated area since the 1970s but we truly don’t use any more water than we did then.”

In 1976 southern Alberta’s 320,000 hectares of irrigated land was using 2.1 billion m² of water annually. As of 2022 some 600,000 hectares in Alberta were being irrigated using 2 billion m² of water. A 2015 report prepared for irrigators, “Economic Value of Irrigation in Alberta,” says water efficiency in Alberta almost doubled from 1965 to 2010, largely through the use of more-precise irrigation systems.

Now, much of the AIM funding will be allocated to converting open canals to pipelines. This is projected to reduce the estimated 10 per cent of a southern Alberta canal’s water that is currently lost to evaporation.

But water needs vary year to year. A flash drought in 2017 and a prolonged one across western Canada in 2021 saw irrigation districts divert more water than was typical. In wet years such as 2010 through 2015, districts diverted far less. So new infrastructure in Alberta would be about “taking a long-term view… to improve water management for both wet extremes and dry extremes and everything in between,” says Phillips.

Just as with Alberta’s last major drought, which lasted from 2001 into the spring of 2002, the end of 2023 going into 2024 saw an El Niño weather pattern dry up southern Alberta before transitioning into a more neutral pattern. After shrinking alarmingly over the winter, reservoirs in Phillips’s district and the neighbouring Eastern Irrigation District, which draw water from the Bow, were near or above normal levels heading into the growing season.

The “solution” to flood and drought alike has always been the same—build more irrigation infrastructure.

Asked why more infrastructure is needed if Alberta has managed to weather two major droughts in the past quarter century, as well as several extremely dry years, Phillips pointed to the situation faced earlier this year by irrigators who rely on the Oldman system. Going into 2024 the Oldman Dam reservoir was at its second-lowest level ever—drier only in the spring of 2002. The St. Mary Reservoir, whose namesake river feeds into the Oldman downstream of the dam, began this year nearly empty. That situation led to an initial halving of the normal water allotment for St. Mary River Irrigation District farmers, down to eight inches.

“It was a very different picture there,” says Phillips. “This Roadmap (report) isn’t just about the Bow but the whole South Saskatchewan. Many recommendations will improve the Oldman and its tributaries as well.”

And the Roadmap isn’t just about irrigation, says Phillips; it will also develop resilience for flood and drought management. Indeed the report (and nearly every similar one commissioned by the province in the past two decades) says a changing climate is the main reason to build more water infrastructure. “If climate-change models are accurate—and time will tell—we’d expect to see more extreme cycles of flood and drought,” said Phillips. “We’ve seen some pretty crazy things in recent years… Last year we had a good snowpack in the mountains, but it all came down a full month before you would expect to see it. If that continues, it just becomes so much more important to be able to capture the water when it’s available.”

Southeastern Alberta saw record flooding events in 2010 caused by overflowing creeks running off the Cypress Hills. That was only a prelude to the swamping of communities along the Bow and the Elbow rivers in 2013, including downtown Calgary. Says Phillips: “This Roadmap is about adapting to highly variable water supply so we can still have the water we need, regardless of what the weather is looking like.”

Do the benefits outweigh the costs The Oldman reservoir hasn’t always ensured water security.

But just as they were in the 1980s during construction of the Oldman Dam, the benefits and drawbacks of more dams and reservoirs are open to debate. Biologist Lorne Fitch has been vocal in his opposition to more such infrastructure in Alberta. Fitch worked with Alberta Fish and Wildlife for 35 years before teaching at the University of Calgary and co-founding the riparian stewardship organization Cows and Fish.

“We have seriously overallocated water diversion flows in all of the southern regions,” he says. “As a consequence, many river sections aren’t functioning ecologically anymore. Fish populations have declined, riparian cottonwood communities have suffered, and so the overall impact of irrigation on our rivers has been profoundly negative.”

The Alberta government, despite its enthusiasm for irrigation, doesn’t dispute Fitch’s assessment of the state of wildlife. It announced at the start of a recent and ongoing fisheries engagement process that “native trout populations across the east slopes of Alberta have experienced severe declines in population size and distribution.” A 2018 U of C research paper shows that the population of rainbow trout in the Bow River, for example, shrank by as much as 50 per cent from 2003 to 2013 (Fitch wasn’t one of the study’s authors). This finding was corroborated by Alberta Environment field samples in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

The moratorium the government enacted in 2006 on issuing new water licences in the South Saskatchewan River basin eased some pressure on the environment, says Fitch. But he argues the move didn’t come in time. The amount of water that has already been allocated, he says, can, in a bad year, exceed the supply. “The reality is, the volume that has been licensed may, in some years, exceed the flow in our rivers. The past hasn’t been a good template for the future.”

In 1988 Alberta’s irrigation districts used their full water allocation on the South Saskatchewan River basin. Between that year and the 2006 moratorium, a half-billion more cubic metres of water was allocated from the basin. Collectively Alberta’s irrigation districts today comprise by far the largest water-licence holder in the province.

Moreover, new dams and reservoirs could put pressure on the shortgrass prairie, as the financial allure of cultivating native grasslands might prove too tempting to ignore. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has called the Great Plains “the world’s most endangered ecosystem,” with more than 50 per cent of it converted to crops and much of the rest intensively grazed.

While Fitch isn’t against all developments that impact water—whether irrigation, industrial expansion or resource extraction—he says there doesn’t appear to be much will in Alberta for exploring how much is too much. “We’ve failed to recognize limits and thresholds. The more we cross those lines in the sand, the less resilient we are to changes—and climate change is going to be a big factor, a wrench in the works.” If our environment is already overextended because of our inability to respect ecological limits, he says, “we’re in serious trouble.”

Fitch is critical of the AIDA’s Roadmap report, calling it a product of the “irrigation lobby.” He describes the 19th-century economic theory known as the “Jevons paradox,” whereby technology increases the efficiency of a resource and lowers costs, which in turn further drives demand and ultimately increases overall use of the resource. And, indeed, greater efficiencies haven’t appreciably reduced the overall amount of water used by Alberta irrigators.

In the driest parts of winter 2023–2024, Fitch said the common refrain from farmers, politicians and “the man on the street” was that they hoped more snow and rain would save southern Alberta from drought. “The problem is, hope isn’t a strategy,” he says. “It’s an acquiescence to doing nothing or doing the wrong things. And that’s why we need a better, overarching, objective review of how we manage water.”

A key part of such a review, he explained, would be to help more Albertans understand how logging on the Eastern Slopes of the Rockies is limiting forests’ ability to act as a sponge. Healthy forests slow the release of runoff in times of both drought and flooding. “But the larger the footprint of logging, the greater the runoff…. We’ve subjected the sponge to too much pressure, and the headwaters can’t hold as much anymore. It runs off so much faster, as we’re giving it many more conduits, with roads and cutlines and off-highway vehicle trails.”

Fitch said what he’d like to see is more objective oversight of water management in the province, considering all resource development and its impacts on the environment along with land-use planning. “We have to be a lot smarter about this stuff.”

Fitch isn’t alone in his criticism. Retired agronomist Ross Mackenzie, who worked for Alberta Agriculture for nearly four decades, primarily as a research scientist, believes better on-farm water management and soil-moisture monitoring could make a bigger difference than digging more dams and reservoirs.

“Typically, a cereal crop such as wheat, barley or canola… most years you only need to put on 10 to 13 inches—roughly, depending on precipitation—of irrigation water,” he says. Despite this, he says, irrigation districts commonly provide up to 18 inches per field. Mackenzie remembers working with a farmer in 2023 in the Eastern Irrigation District who was facing the possibility of seeing his 12-inch allocation reduced during a particularly dry spring and early summer. But strict on-farm management proved more could be done with less, he says, with that farm garnering average or above average yields just through improved water use. “He was very careful how much water he put on each field and then reallocated to other fields, particularly silage corn, which was important for the (cattle) feeding operation.”

Mackenzie is critical of Alberta Agriculture for cutting its funding for staff to help irrigation farmers improve such water management techniques. “We have one irrigation extension person that works out of Brooks, but obviously he can’t speak to all farmers across 1.7 million acres of irrigated land. One person can’t do it all.”

Mackenzie also says irrigation districts haven’t picked up the slack left by the province. “Irrigation districts aren’t promoting using good management; they’re just screaming ‘We need more dams, more reservoirs for more water.’ In most years, we’ve had ample water.” A typical year, he notes, sees most districts use 60 per cent of the water available to them, with only some of them nearing 80 per cent of their water licence. “Most irrigation districts in the past 50 years have never used their full allocation. [Then] they have a couple of dry years, low snowpack in the mountains, and they’re saying they need more reservoirs. Most of the time, we don’t,” he says. “We just need to manage our water very carefully and we can do quite nicely.”

In fact, between 1987 and 2020, the average annual water use by irrigation districts comprised 53 per cent of their licences.

The Oldman Reservoir: Spurred by the 1984 drought, Peter Lougheed commissioned a dam at the confluence of the Oldman and the Crowsnest rivers. It remains Alberta’s largest irrigation reservoir.

Looking westward, in December 2023, over a part of the Oldman Reservoir that normally would be under water. Going into 2024 the reservoir was at its second-lowest level ever—drier only in the spring of 2002.

Mackenzie questions the need for the Eyremore Dam, which would be downstream of diversions for the Eastern, Bow River and Western irrigation districts. “All it would do is hold water to make sure (Alberta) is meeting its allocation to Saskatchewan to give them their fair share of water… We have to ask ourselves: for the one time in 20 years or once in 10 years that we’re a little bit short of water, do we really need to be building new dams?”

Mackenzie adds that money is another precious resource in short supply—and that the Eyremore Dam is expected to cost more than $1-billion.

Similarly, Dwayne Rogness, director of the South East Alberta Watershed Alliance (SEAWA), one of province’s 11 watershed planning and advisory councils, says he’d like to see more drought-resistant crop rotations. “Why aren’t we promoting a more drought-tolerant rotation?” he says. “Irrigators want to have row crops in their rotation, but when there’s only so much water, you need to think about adapting and being resilient (at the farm level).”

Rogness was an agricultural fieldman for Lethbridge and Warner counties for over 17 years prior to joining SEAWA, and grew up farming near Lake Diefenbaker in Saskatchewan (which lake was itself created in 1967 by damming the South Saskatchewan and the Qu’Appelle rivers). He says farmers and ranchers across Palliser’s Triangle are already capable of adapting to drought. “We take what the Bow and Oldman rivers give us. We make the best of all those (upstream) situations,” he says. “In all honesty, in the SEAWA watershed, someplace every year is under drought conditions.”

We need more drought-resistant crops. “When there’s only so much water you need to adapt.”

He likewise praises irrigation districts for developing efficiencies in their systems. But he, like Fitch and Mackenzie, doesn’t necessarily share their vision for the future. “Does that mean we add more irrigation?” he says. “I’m not sure.” SEAWA, he adds, is focused not on technological solutions to water shortages, but on natural initiatives, including replanting native species such as cottonwoods, sagebrush and wheatgrass in riparian ecosystems, promoting water conservation, and raising awareness of the role of biodiversity in overall watershed health.

For Richard Phillips, back at the Bow River Irrigation District, the answer is clear. Building more river infrastructure—more dams and reservoirs—will help prevent flooding while making southern Alberta better able to deal with drought. It will help irrigators too, of course, almost as a bonus. And most importantly, he says, building more infrastructure will constitute a recognition that providing a safe water supply to Albertans is a priority. “Districts have demonstrated time and time again that when water is short, people come first,” he says. He cites multiple declarations by districts to that effect. “Irrigation expansion isn’t a threat to water supply for towns, cities, people anywhere.”

Originally from Calgary, Alex McCuaig has been a journalist in southeastern Alberta for more than 15 years, working at the Brooks Bulletin, Medicine Hat News and Western Producer.

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Read more from the archive “More Irrigation, Fewer Farms” June 2021.

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Bringing Back the Alberta Bouquet

Adrienne Mason — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 20:26:01 +0000

When Heather Henson snips a stem of lisianthus—think a rose-like flower layered with flamenco skirt ruffles—from her garden in July, she’s picking a flower with solid provenance. At the end of January, on a day with a low just shy of –11°C, the Cold Lake flower farmer planted 4,000 seeds to grow this lisianthus and others. She then tended the notoriously finicky crop, checking daily as she moved the trays from heat mats and grow lights into a small greenhouse on her deck and ultimately to a large polytunnel on her farm until it was harvested six or seven months on. From seed to the day the bloom was cut, Henson knows every step of this beauty’s story. For her, that’s everything. “You can get flowers from me, or you could go buy stuff that’s sprayed and flown in at the grocery store,” she says. The fact that her flowers are easy on the planet is a “bonus” for a lot of her customers, she says. But for her “it’s the whole point.”

Henson started her flower farming business in 2013, first growing in her yard and then adding a half-acre farm in 2017. Back then, next to nobody was focusing on locally grown cut flowers, she says, and for advice she found two farmers in Saskatchewan. Now “there are oodles.” Other than large commercial growers, the cut flower industry isn’t well tracked by provincial or federal agriculture—“When I do my taxes I still have to circle ‘other’ when it comes to crops,” Henson explains—but a meetup of flower farmers in central Alberta last winter had over 50 participants. The business of flower farming, particularly small-scale producers growing for a hyper-local market, is on the rise in the province and is creating an alternative to traditional floristry, an industry that relies almost solely on imports.

The flourishing of businesses providing Alberta-grown blooms direct to local consumers is a revival of sorts. In 1906, for instance, Walter Ramsay left his job as a school principal and took a chance on plants. He erected nine massive greenhouses, each about three-quarters the length of a curling rink, in what is now downtown Edmonton, and grew roses, carnations and chrysanthemums to supply his flower shop.

The business of flower farming, particularly small producers growing for a hyper-local market, is on the rise in the province.

And at Blackfalds, near Red Deer, Central Alberta Greenhouses covered eight acres, growing flowers to supply its seven flower shops. Started by Walter and Myrtle Good in the 1930s, the family-run retail–grower operation passed through three generations and survived for over 70 years. Kim Wickwire, a recently retired horticulture instructor at Olds College, worked at one of the company’s retail shops in the late 1980s and recalls that most of their flowers, including “some of the best roses,” came direct from the farm.

Wickwire taught the floriculture courses at Olds College starting in 1989, drawing on her experience in growing and selling flowers and in floral design (creating arrangements). The college’s horticulture program was started in 1963 by Buck Godwin, who included curricula to support Alberta’s floral industry. Godwin tested annuals and perennials for field and greenhouse cultivation and was always on the lookout for foliage, including grains or shrubs such as pussywillow, that could add interest to arrangements. He was well known for his dried flowers and grasses, and perfected techniques to maintain colour and form, which he recorded in the manual Alberta Supernaturals. After retirement, Godwin cultivated his own farm and supplied fresh and dried flowers to florists throughout western Canada. This included sales on the farm, explains Wickwire: “Florists wanted fresh, and were more than willing to come out to Olds from Calgary, Red Deer or wherever, weekly.”

Ramsay, the Goods and Godwin, as well as various other growers providing cut flowers throughout the 1900s and into the early 2000s, showed that Alberta farms could supply the floral industry for at least part of the year. But—like a child plucking petals one by one from a daisy in a game of you-love-me, you-love-me-not—a parade of cumulative changes over the past decades has largely sent floriculture, quite literally, south.

Imported flowers have been part of floriculture almost since the first commercial flower shops opened. Ramsay brought some stock from other suppliers to his Edmonton shop. In Canada, flowers delivered from BC and Ontario extended the season for florists and added variety. (Those provinces are still the biggest producers of cut flowers in Canada.) These were bolstered over time by imports from California, Florida and the Netherlands. But flowers were still considered a luxury, and the cost reflected that. Wickwire says you only need to look at wedding bouquets. Her mother, married in 1948, had a bouquet of tule with just a few carnations. “It was all ribbon,” she says. “[Bouquets] still had flowers, but they were dear.”

Not long after that wedding, changes that impact how we get much of our goods—and what we expect to pay for them—accelerated. Expansive highway networks, refrigerated trucks and improved air travel meant that flowers could be shipped from greater distances. The floral industry added more players: flower brokers, wholesalers, shipping experts and more, with attendant infrastructure such as massive refrigerated warehouses.

While flowers from South America were part of the floral industry even as far back as the 1980s, in 1991 the US government enacted the Andean Trade Preference Act, which encouraged South American farmers to develop viable alternatives to coca cultivation and cocaine production. This move was followed by various trade agreements, including the 2011 Canada–Colombia Free Trade Agreement that saw tariffs on various products, including cut flowers, reduced or eliminated. Today about 30 to 35 fully loaded flights per day leave Bogotá, en route to Miami, the flower distribution hub in North America. From there, they’re flown or trucked to wholesalers across North America. In 2021 Canada imported $123-million in cut flowers, of which about 70 per cent came from Colombia and Ecuador, with the US and the Netherlands making up the bulk of the rest.

The movement of a large chunk of the industry to South America, where days are long and labour is cheap, makes it almost impossible for Canadian growers to compete. Local production of the “big three”—carnations, roses and chrysanthemums, popular for their longevity and their variety of colours and forms—went into free fall. Carnations were the first to go. They all come from South America now, says Jill Langille of Pacific Coast Floral Wholesale.

Rosalie Wesenberg, whose grandparents started Central Alberta Greenhouses, saw the change first-hand. She remembers when her family stopped growing carnations in the late 1970s. Eventually they had to import the flower from Colombia to supply their own shops. They stuck with roses the longest, but finally took the last acre out of production in 2004. The entry of grocery stores into the cut flower market was the coup de grâce for many local growers. Grocery stores have power because of volume, says Langille, adding that they’ll book their roses for Valentine’s two years in advance to get a fixed price. Today, Canada has just one large commercial rose grower: Eurosa Farms on Vancouver Island.

Wading into the bleak landscape of flower farming could seem like folly given how the last half-century has gone. But a new wave of growers in Alberta are betting they can carve a niche in the traditional flower market with their fresh, seasonal, specialty “slow flowers.” They can offer more-delicate products, like sweet peas, that don’t travel well, and there’s the bonus of supporting small, mostly women-owned businesses and infusing energy into rural communities, agriculture and agritourism.

Henson first got her inspiration while living in Belgium, where her husband was posted. “People there spend a chunk of change on fresh flowers every week,” she says, “and I was fascinated by this.” She started buying weekly flowers too, and loved how they changed seasonally—hyacinths and tulips only in the spring, for instance. Back home in Cold Lake she missed these flowers and wondered if there might be a market for seasonal blooms. There was, and her business now offers bouquet subscriptions and elaborate dried flower and foliage bouquets that extend her season. She avoids using dyes, paints or bleaches, uses no preservatives, and grows the flowers without pesticides or herbicides. When they’ve reached the end of their natural life, she encourages tossing them in the compost.

Henson shares her thoughts on the sustainable flower-farming business with her friend Clara Qualizza of Meadow & Thicket Farm Flowers in Wildwood (an hour west of Edmonton) in their The Sustainable Flowers Podcast. She knows that most people don’t want to know the back story of every bloom, but she’ll grab opportunities here and there, in social media and personal conversations, to inject the message that ethics, not just aesthetics, can be part of flower purchasing decisions.

Growers in Alberta are carving a niche in the traditional market with their seasonal “slow flowers.”

Kristen Primrose, of Primrose Lane Farm, near Cardston, takes a similar approach. Farming near Waterton Lakes National Park gives Primrose and her husband, who also raise Highland cattle on their 130 acres, an added sense of responsibility. They make all their own compost, practise “no till” to preserve soil integrity and use trees and wind fences to harvest snow. Their goal is to plant 100 trees or bushes a year to help stave off drought, filling their ponds and creating “a little microclimate of nature,” Primrose says. She has a subscription bouquet service, does the occasional wedding—specializing in elopements—and hosts U-pick days and workshops. These in-person events provide opportunities to share her commitment to seasonality and sustainability.

Many of Alberta’s new flower farmers are serving as one-stop shops for consumers by providing floral design as well. Moira MacKinnon of Edmonton’s Love & Fantasy Flowers came to the industry as a florist, but her early exposure was disheartening. “Right away I kind of knew that something wasn’t right,” she says, noting the “tons of [floral] foam”—the single-use plastic foam that’s ubiquitous in the industry—and heavily packaged imports. But serendipity knocked, and she was able to move to her grandparents’ large suburban house, where she dug up the lawn and planted flowers. She quickly grew her business, which now includes a one-acre farm just west of Edmonton, and started by biking her flowers to farmers markets in a trailer tricked out to look like a chuckwagon. The chuckwagon and market sales are retired—her business model is now flower subscriptions, weddings and other events, and workshops. But still she’s aiming to overcome the industry’s big stumbling block: putting locally grown flowers into the hands of florists.

Even if a florist is philosophically interested in bypassing traditional floristry chains for even a fraction of their flowers, it’s tough practically. They currently have access to massive wholesalers with the click of a mouse. And they need flowers in volume and that meet standards such as stem length. To address these challenges, MacKinnon piloted the Cooperative Flower Network in 2023, which linked 11 Edmonton-area growers with 30 buyers. CFN sets product standards, and, by pooling flowers, can provide florists with the volume they need at a central location for once-a-week purchasing. Year one was so successful that MacKinnon is considering two more hubs in central Alberta and in Calgary.

They’re largely self-taught because there’s “not a lot of information out there for cold-climate growers.”

This sort of co-operation is a theme that echoes through the nascent industry. Growers reach out to fellow growers and share knowledge over coffee or through workshops, and scour the library and internet for resources, but they’re largely self-taught. “There’s not a lot of information out there for cold-climate growers,” says Primrose. The floriculture part of the horticulture program at Olds College, notes Wickwire, was cut in the mid-1990s amid declining government funding.

Luckily for Alberta farmers they have one of Canada’s leading advocates for the industry right here at home. Creating a sustainable floristry culture in the province and across North America is the fuel that fires Becky Feasby, a Calgary-based farmer–florist who’s operated Prairie Girl Flowers since 2018.

Like MacKinnon, Feasby got her first exposure to the industry through traditional floral design. She started a course but couldn’t stomach to finish it. “I saw that a class of about six students would fill two bins of garbage,” she says, adding that there was no effort to use alternatives to floral foam, to compost foliage or to recycle anything. She began searching for a better way.

An online search led her to the Slow Flowers Society, spearheaded by Seattle, Washington-based Debra Prinzing. Feasby was emboldened by seeing that others shared her view that floristry could use modernization. She’s since become a leader in sustainable floristry in Canada. To meet the need for education, Feasby started the annual Sustainable Flowers Workshop in Calgary in 2019, with courses for growers and florists alike that tackle the three pillars of sustainability: environmental, social and economic.

Feasby cares and thinks deeply about floristry, giving the industry the scrutiny she thinks it deserves, given that flowers are so pervasive in people’s lives. She’s currently working on her masters in sustainability at Harvard University, comparing the environmental and social costs of growing roses in North and South America, weighing the nuances such as the carbon costs of heating and cooling greenhouses in colder climates against places where such inputs aren’t necessary.

She’s encouraged by the interest in locally grown, sustainable flowers. She says she knows the people driving it in Alberta are smart and committed and want to see things get done, but she’s also ever vigilant about ways the industry could be co-opted. Her workshops and social media posts challenge what sustainability means in the floral space, questioning the ethics of wild foraging, for instance, or of using invasive species in designs. She also advocates for making the industry more inclusive.

At the end of June, Prinzing, with Feasby’s encouragement and help, will bring the Slow Flowers Summit to Banff, the first time this three-day event—with its workshops and presentations on sustainable floristry—will be held outside the US. That it will come to Canada and have a full slate of Canadian presenters is testament to the flourishing industry here. MacKinnon and the Cooperative Flower Network will supply the workshops and demonstrations, delivering buckets of seasonal fresh flowers and foliage from the farms of Alberta growers, just a few hours from field to vase.

Adrienne Mason’s most recent book is Whales to the Rescue (Kids Can Press, 2022). She helped launch Hakai Magazine.

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Should We Ban Rodeo

Camille Labchuk and Aritha van Herk — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 18:37:16 +0000

camille labchuk says YES

The animal rights lawyer and executive director of Animal Justice

It’s clear that using animals for entertainment is rapidly becoming unacceptable. This explains why the Ringling Bros. circus, famous for its elephant shows, was forced to abandon animal acts altogether. Shifting societal attitudes were also behind Canada’s groundbreaking new law that bans keeping whales and dolphins in captivity and outlaws using them in performances for the entertainment of spectators.

What of rodeo Rodeo events are a spectacle of suffering, offering fleeting entertainment yet causing serious fear, trauma and even death to the animals who are goaded into performing. That’s why rodeo should be the next frontier in the quest to treat animals with the kindness and respect they deserve.

The details of the events vary, but at its core rodeo necessitates cruelty and inhumane treatment of the animals who are conscripted into the “sport.” Animals are coerced into running or bucking through fear and often pain. Take, for example, tie-down roping, where a terrified calf, just months old, is chased down by a rider on horseback in front of thousands of loudly cheering fans. The calf is stopped in its tracks by a rope yanked tight around its throat, thrown down by the human competitor, and then has its legs roughly bound with rope while lying helpless in the dirt. It’s heartbreaking to imagine the terror the confused calf must experience.

The element of fear in rodeo is especially problematic for cows, calves and horses that are forced to compete, because they are prey animals. They are wired to be nervous, flighty and hyper-alert to protect themselves from predators. Renowned animal behaviourist Temple Grandin has even gone so far as to say the experience of fear for these sensitive animals is likely more unbearable than physical pain.

Worse still, animals used in rodeo are often killed. Well over 100 animals have been killed at the Calgary Stampede alone, many of them horses which are killed after suffering injuries in the notoriously dangerous chuckwagon races. The high-profile Stampede offers a snapshot of the harm inflicted on animals, but additional horses and cows are injured or killed at smaller events and during practice. For instance, last summer a horse was killed in Manitoba after breaking a leg in a bronc riding event, where a rider has to stay atop a horse that is induced to buck by a painful flank strap. Shockingly the event had no veterinarian on hand, nor euthanasia supplies.

The good news is that polling shows a steady decline in public support for using animals in rodeos, with over two-thirds of Canadians against the cruel practice. Even in the western provinces, a majority are opposed. There’s a growing feeling that using animals for abusive and deadly forms of entertainment is no longer acceptable. It’s less a question of whether we should ban rodeo than of when. It’s only a matter of time before the public, the courts and legislators will force rodeo into the pages of our history books, alongside elephant acts and orca shows.

aritha van herk says no

The author of many books, including Mavericks and Stampede and the Westness of West

Ban Rodeo Not a good idea. The enthusiasm for banning (ban books, ban TikTok, ban abortion) has overtaken civil discourse, reflected in the questionable conduct of those sporting signs expressing desire for sexual impertinence with politicians they despise. Banning rodeo would introduce another polarizing contretemps into increasingly weaponized cultural conflicts. Far better to engage in discussion.

A reflection of the agricultural settler tradition, imbued with the history of mutually beneficial connections between husbandry and survival, rodeo is more ambiguous than a spectator sport. From its Latin root rotare, meaning to rotate, to the Spanish rodear (to surround), rodeo comes around every year to remind us of the dangers of erasing the past. While the Calgary Stampede gets the most intense inspection, rodeos are celebrated across the west, from Brooks to Rockyford, from Wood Mountain to Brandon, from Tisdale to Writing-on-Stone. These are community gatherings, a chance to meet neighbours and newcomers alike, but not picnics looking for a stretch of grass without ants. Animals are key, even more so than their human sidekicks. With events focusing on timed competitions around riding, roping and human/animal coordination, stamina and strength, rodeos demonstrate how people and animals have worked together and challenged one another. And no sport is more scrutinized to ensure humane standards. (If only we followed such rules in our daily encounters.)

The desire to ban arises from a belief that rodeo animals suffer pain and damage, and the events display humans against animals. Such a view, rooted in a contemporary doctrine of antagonism, locates human/animal conjunction as pet ownership. It fails to recognize an important aspect: rodeo showcases humans working with animals. The “entertainment” label implies that the events are rough, deadly. (I blame this assumption on hockey, which is indeed man against man—with sticks.)

Our contemporary myopia about animals reflects an ignorance most noticeable in our attitude toward work, a resistance to getting our hands dirty. We think agriculture is machine-based; we want our food processed into meat analogues; we believe the ancient collaboration between living beings is more petting zoo than survival. In fact, plants and animals together have affected biodiversity and extinction, with much to teach us about change and adaptation.

The human/animal bond is an old one, and, yes, in rodeo, rules should and do change, ensuring that both human and animal suffer as little as possible. No one, least of all working ranch hands, wants to inflict pain or damage on the animals that shape their livelihood. They are correlative athletes.

Like the rodeo horses stamping their feet, eager to compete, every working dog team I saw in the Arctic was happy, much happier than any border collie stuck in an apartment or straining at the end of a leash.

camille labchuk responds to aritha van herk

Aritha van Herk’s defence of rodeo plays up three main themes: that rodeo is part of a proud tradition and community heritage (we’ve always done it); that using animals for rodeo somehow showcases a human/animal bond or symbiotic relationship (they like it); and that rodeo has strong humane standards (it doesn’t hurt).

Let’s start with the heritage, commonly used as the first line of defence to justify socially unacceptable practices, especially abusive spectacles such as rodeo, bullfighting or circuses. Celebrating heritage can be valuable and unifying, but when a tradition is based on domination and offends modern moral values, playing the history card is not a compelling reason to repeat the sins of the past. I shudder to imagine a world where instead of banning child marriage or conversion therapy, we simply engage in “dialogue” about it. This dialogue already exists when it comes to rodeo, a clear matter of controversy. But public discussion hasn’t prevented animals from being hurt and killed every year in these spectacles.

It’s also worth taking a close look at the heritage claim, because modern rodeo events have less to do with western heritage than many people assume. The Calgary Stampede was founded by an American vaudeville and Wild West show performer, who invented chuckwagon racing in 1923. Marketing teams package rodeo as western heritage, but the truth is that events such as bull riding and steer wrestling are far from “authentic” (cows and horses don’t naturally or willingly perform rodeo tricks) and have been distorted to provide high-stakes entertainment.

Celebrations of community heritage and culture can and do exist without rodeo. Most Calgary Stampede attendees already don’t patronize the rodeo ring—they show up for the fun outfits (who doesn’t love a good cowboy hat and boots?), the pancake breakfasts, the music and the rides. Eliminating rodeo would actually strengthen community celebrations by making them more inclusive, because the rodeo events wouldn’t alienate those people who aren’t comfortable watching sensitive horses and cows being coerced into performing.

“Heritage” is commonly used as the first line of defence to justify socially unacceptable practices.

Let’s turn now to the unsupportable idea that rodeo reflects some sort of symbiotic relationship where animals and humans work together and challenge each other. At its core, rodeo is a one-way, exploitative relationship of domination. It’s about showing ways that humans can control and coerce sensitive animals such as horses, calves and cows. Let’s not forget what rodeo is ultimately about: bravado for profit in the form of cash prizes. Rodeos offer huge prize money to the competitors that emerge victorious, and the Calgary Stampede was considered the second-richest rodeo on the continent in 2023.

The one-sidedness of rodeo competitions becomes apparent when you consider the details of how animals are forced to perform. Horses and cows are relatively tame animals that don’t naturally buck, flee or run race tracks, so they must be physically provoked to perform so cowboys can appear to “tame” them to look brave. Rodeos employ a variety of tools to torment animals, including a flank strap used in saddle bronc riding, affixed tightly around a horse’s hind quarters. Unbearably uncomfortable, horses will buck vigorously to escape this torture.

Flank straps can be used in bull riding too, and in a 2018 bull riding event in Chilliwack, the Vancouver Humane Society (VHS) documented a competitor holding an electric prod just before a bull was coerced into the ring—these prods can be used to zap an animal to force them to charge out of the chute and start performing for the crowds. In 2022 a team member of a bronc rider competitor repeatedly hit a horse in the face after she resisted leaving the chute at the Calgary Stampede. He faced no legal accountability.

All of this should make clear that rodeo events are not humane and are not better scrutinized, as van Herk asserts, than our own daily encounters. I have yet to meet anyone in my daily life who has attempted to make me flee while they throw a rope around my neck and jerk me to the ground like a baby cow in calf roping.

The truth is that pain and suffering are inherent to rodeo, and so is death. The death toll at the Calgary Stampede is well documented, particularly at the chuckwagon races. According to statistics compiled by the VHS, over 100 animals have died at the Stampede since 1986. While we have less documentation about smaller rodeos and rodeo training, the lethal impact of rodeo is clear.

The undeniable arc of social progress has been toward providing more protections and more respect to vulnerable groups and individuals, and this includes animals. We’re in the midst of a moral revolution on the use of animals in entertainment in particular, and it’s only a matter of time before our laws catch up and make rodeo a memory best left in the past.

aritha van herk responds to camille labchuk

Camille Labchuk calls Rodeo “a spectacle of suffering… causing serious fear, trauma and even death to the animals who are goaded into performing.” It’s entirely appropriate that wild animals shouldn’t be confined for human entertainment, but they occupy a different sphere than domesticated animals, which play a synergistic role in human and ecological relationships. And the declaration that “rodeo necessitates cruelty and inhumane treatment” is inaccurate. Let’s face facts.

Animals in rodeos are owned by people invested in their care and management; rodeo is where husbandry’s culture, context and history come together. And organizers are held to high standards. The regulations in Alberta’s Animal Protection Act are monitored by various humane societies; they ensure “codes of best practices” are met and veterinarians are on site. Rodeos also welcome researchers working to better understand animal behaviour.

Labchuk says these animals experience a life of deprivation and injury. Fact: the 500 horses who are part of the Stampede’s “Born to Buck” program roam 23,000 acres of open grassland. Every year 200 of them compete in rodeos—eight seconds, no more than 15 times a year, for a total of two minutes.

Labchuk quotes renowned animal behaviourist Temple Grandin on how “the experience of fear for these sensitive animals is likely more unbearable than physical pain.” But this quote is selective. Grandin visited the Stampede in 2011 specifically to look at animal welfare. “I was very pleased with what I saw with the bulls,” she told media. “I went right down there behind the chutes, they’re just as calm as they can be, while they’re putting all the tack on them.… I watched those bulls go out and start bucking… they were not afraid… Also, contrary to popular belief, bucking straps do not go on bulls’ privates, they go around the waist and it’s just a sudden novel stimulus… I was extremely pleased with what I saw with the bulls and the horses.”

Grandin continues: “I’m glad [the Stampede] passed a rule on calf-roping so that they’re not jerking the calf down. That is really good.” Fact: Jerking a calf disqualifies the competitor.

The declaration that “rodeo necessitates cruelty and inhumane treatment” is inaccurate.

Asked what she thinks of rodeo, Grandin responds: “[It] can be done with a good level of welfare. I’m very pleased with the fact that Calgary Stampede has been a leader on having an animal welfare committee… with a trained animal welfare auditor auditing all events. They’ve been serious about bringing about change. I am interested in reforming things, not getting rid of them.”

Rodeos are a way people can learn (a little at least) about animals, agriculture and food. Grandin says “We’ve got a population now totally removed from animals, totally removed from practical things. People don’t know.” She’s right. Too many think that meat comes on plastic trays and that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. We’ve eaten so much processed junk that we don’t understand the origins of food. We refuse to recognize our connection to and, yes, our consumption of animals, preferring a sanitized world where discomfort is erased. We ignore the environmental toll exacted by soybeans (intensively grown; high water needs), nutritional yeast (sugarcane and beets replacing indigenous crops) or other niche ingredients modified to make humans feel virtuous about what they chew and swallow.

Fact: Every year at rodeos, horses die. No one pretends otherwise, but no one wants it to happen. Racehorses are overbred for a single trait, speed, which leads to weak cannon bones and broken legs. In North America 20,000 thoroughbreds are born every year. Half end up in abattoirs because they’re not fast enough. But “failed” racehorses are often bought by chuckwagon teams. Too big or heavy to win on the track, they find a new lease on life. If chuckwagon races were eradicated, an estimated 3,000 more rejected racehorses would be slaughtered or shipped overseas for horsemeat. (And chuckwagon horses enjoy a life that anyone would envy.)

Finally, culture. Rodeos may invite cowboy cosplay, but they also acknowledge history and tradition, the west’s transformation from buffalo to beef. Beyond entertainment, they showcase working animals as athletes and play a critical role in helping everyone better understand the interaction between people and livestock. Rodeo has no interest in cruelty. Why hurt your animal collaborators Like those who want to ban books without having read them, many wishing to ban rodeo have never seen an event, visited a barn or even touched an animal, let alone mucked out a stall or carried a pail of water.

Let’s ban sugary cereals and ketchup; let’s ban plastic bags and handguns. They do far more harm to humans and animals than rodeo does. The best aspect of rodeo is eliciting curiosity. Let’s not ban that.

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The Real Dirt

Paula Simons — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 15:24:08 +0000

In Alberta we now begin most public events with a land acknowledgment: a pointed, sometimes powerful reminder that our province lies on the traditional territory of the Indigenous nations who first called this place home. I begin this column with a different kind of land acknowledgment. I want to acknowledge the actual land on which we sit, the soil that gives life to our boreal forests, our prairie grasslands, our crops, our gardens. I want us to acknowledge the fragile, essential layer of topsoil which is Alberta’s greatest natural resource.

Canada is huge. But only about 5–7 per cent of our land mass is prime agricultural land, suitable for cultivation. Of that, one third is found in Alberta: 20 million hectares in total. Mountains in the west and muskeg in the northeast mean a good chunk of Alberta isn’t available for agriculture. That didn’t stop some 52,000 hectares of prime agricultural land from being taken out of production from 2011 to 2020, primarily to make way for urban infrastructure and housing developments.

We’re paving over our topsoil. Not only that, we’re polluting it, poisoning it, overworking it, compacting it and letting it blow away. We may think we have plenty of dirt. Most of us take it for granted, or worry more about water or air quality than the quality of the earth beneath our feet. But the rich topsoil, the good stuff where our crops and trees root, is a relatively thin layer.

And once it is degraded, it’s not just crops that suffer. Healthy soil helps filter, purify and store water. It’s more resistant to drought and erosion, better able to absorb water in floods. It’s a natural carbon sink, essential to our efforts to slow the impact of climate change. And soil is home to more than 25 per cent of the planet’s biodiversity, with over 40,000 different organisms in a gram of healthy, living soil, organisms essential to the biogeochemical processes that make all life on earth possible.

Only about 5–7 per cent of Canada’s land mass is suitable for cultivation. Of that, one-third is in Alberta.

At the very moment this column lands on newsstands and in mailboxes, the Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry is due to release a major study of soil health in Canada and of the importance of healthy soil to carbon sequestration. For the better part of two years our committee heard from hundreds of expert witnesses: farmers and agronomists, forestry professors and geologists, microbiologists and ranchers, environmental groups and financiers trying to create viable carbon markets, horticulturalists and First Nations advocates, large-scale composters and fertilizer companies. We attended soil health conferences. We toured farms and ranches in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta, visited the University of Guelph, the University of Saskatchewan and Olds College. We dug deep, plowed through documents, put our boots on the ground, and got the real dirt.

We learned that prairie farmers and ranchers have been leaders in adopting innovative regenerative techniques—they’ve stopped tilling their fields, started intercropping by planting two different crops in the same field, turned marginal cropland back to pasture for livestock, adopted strategic rotational grazing, or used precision soil mapping to reduce use of nitrogen fertilizers. But we also learned that more needs to be done to reward early adopters for taking chances and to incentivize the late adopters to enter the game.

We learned that most provinces, including Alberta, are lagging in soil research, despite exciting innovations in soil mapping technology. We learned that no central body brings together soil research and data from across the country so that Canadian academics and agriculturalists can learn from each other. We learned that attempts to create viable carbon markets haven’t yet borne fruit. And we learned some deeply disturbing things about climate threats posed by melting permafrost and health threats posed by hydrocarbon, heavy metal and microplastic poisoning of our soil.

Our report presents recommendations to the government for action. But we’re not interested in producing a dull soil sermon that gathers dust on a ministerial shelf. We hope our report will be a call to action not just for farmers and ranchers but for all Canadians. We want to inspire everybody who cares about having a healthy, affordable, sustainable food supply, everyone who cares about healthy forests and grasslands, everyone who cares about mitigating the impacts of climate change. Albertans are stewards of some of the most vital, valuable soil in the world. We all play a part in protecting and preserving it.

Once, we understood the debt we owed. The name of Adam, the Bible’s first man, comes from the Hebrew word for soil. The word human itself comes from the Latin word humus, or earth. The Cree, though, have legends of their own, about a great flood, and a brave little muskrat who dove down deep into the waters, and made his way to the surface with a fistful of soil from which to form the land anew. What we, as humans, need now is to find the courage and determination of that indefatigable muskrat, to hang on tight to the soil that gives us all life.

Paula Simons is an independent senator and the deputy chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.

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Can Organic Farming Feed the World?

Jeff Tkach and Darrin Qualman — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 09:00:49 +0000

Jeff Tkach says yes

Chief Impact Officer of the Rodale Institute

The global food system underwent a radical shift after the Second World War: synthetic chemical inputs became the new normal in agriculture. That change may eventually lead to catastrophe. We need to transition the world’s farms to regenerative organic agricultural models, which maintain and improve soil health, increase the nutrient quality of foods, produce larger crop yields during extreme weather events and have the potential to reverse climate change through carbon sequestration. Future generations can then secure access to abundant food sources on the land they inherit from us.

Research shows that 30 per cent of the world’s arable land has become unproductive in the past 40 years due to soil degradation, mostly caused by unsustainable conventional farming practices. Estimates are that by 2050, soil erosion may reduce crop yields by up to 10 per cent, the equivalent of removing millions of acres of land from production. This reduction in the world’s agricultural land could coincide with dramatic growth in global population. The UN estimates that by 2050 the world’s population will reach 9.7 billion.

Obviously we can’t afford to lose farmable land as billions of people who need nourishment are added to the global roster.

Research also shows that regenerative organic farming is the path forward. Rodale Institute, the US-based research institution I help lead, has for 75 years conducted groundbreaking research on agricultural practices. Our Farming Systems Trial, the longest-running side-by-side comparison of organic and conventional grain growing in North America, measures the differences in soil health, crop yields, energy efficiency, water use and contamination and nutrient density of crops. The trial’s decades-long research reveals that organic systems produce comparable yields to conventional ones after a five-year transition period, are more resistant to floods, use 45 per cent less non-renewable energy and release 40 per cent fewer carbon emissions.

Critically, our research finds that organic systems during droughts produce yields up to 40 per cent larger than conventional ones. Transitioning Canadian farms to regenerative organic practices could help protect farmers from the kind of hardship they faced in 2021’s drought, which shrank Canada’s field crop production by more than 30 per cent. That was just one of many recent extreme weather events across the globe that reveal the agricultural status quo to be unsustainable.

Conventional farming practices degrade soil quality. By contrast, regenerative organic farming builds healthy soil through enhanced soil organic carbon, which allows soil to absorb more rain and retain moisture during droughts. Research has consistently proven that regenerative organic farming is a resilient and reliable model for food production, largely because it works with the earth and natural cycles. It’s about time we stop fighting nature.

Darrin Qualman says no

Director of Climate Crisis Policy and Action at the National Farmers’ Union

Can organic agriculture feed our world No. Organic agriculture cannot produce the tonnage of grains, oilseeds, vegetables, fruit, meat, dairy and other products we are currently producing. Leaving aside pesticide use, nitrogen flows would be inadequate. Leading experts in global nitrogen flows (including Jan Erisman and Vaclav Smil) calculate that pre-industrial/natural flows of nitrogen would be enough to produce only about half of current agricultural tonnage. Though rarely noted, humans, largely via fossil-fuelled Haber–Bosch nitrogen fertilizer factories, have tripled the tonnage of nitrogen flowing across Earth’s land surface and through its plants. Via nitrogen fertilizer, we have supercharged and supersized our food systems.

Moreover, the necessary nitrogen fertilizer inflows are, at least partly, necessitated by nitrogen outflows. We push nitrogen in—to our fields, crops, food supplies and dining tables—but also through. That expanded food tonnage and the nitrogen it carries mostly flows through us and continues on via our toilets and sewer systems and, in far too many cases, is carried by our rivers to deep ocean burial or is released to the atmosphere in reactive forms, where it wreaks havoc: destroying ozone, driving warming, creating smog or acidifying rain. We may wish for organic agriculture’s production-without-fertilizers, but that ignores our very real megatonne outflows.

So, organic agriculture cannot match current production tonnage. But it’s worth looking at what we’re doing with that tonnage. Currently we turn huge portions of our fertilizer-expanded food supply into biofuels for cars and trucks to power billions of kilometres of often unnecessary commuting. We plan to expand that biofuel production for cars and jets and perhaps even cruise ships. In addition to the hundreds of millions of tonnes of food we burn, we waste many millions more—about 40 per cent of our food in Canada and 30 per cent worldwide. We turn still millions more tonnes into colas, pop tarts, sugary cereals and other over-processed and nutritionally disfigured foods that drive obesity and ill health. We push most of our crop tonnage into livestock systems that inefficiently turn 5–10 calories in grain into one calorie in meat. (Grazing systems can be very positive and sustainable, but grain feeding is unavoidably inefficient.) We devote tens of millions of acres to growing cotton for fast fashion. Some propose that we use foodland to grow biomaterials to replace petroleum plastics. And soon we may begin planting biofuel crops for use in electricity generation. Our demands upon the land seem unlimited. In no way can organic production systems—without fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers and petrochemicals—produce this massive output tonnage.

What if we made better choices, proliferated improved diets, respected limits and incorporated intelligent restraint Perhaps organic agriculture could feed that world. But it can’t feed ours.

Jeff Tkach responds to Darrin Qualman

Darrin Qualman said it all in his conclusion: organic agriculture can feed a world that makes better choices.

Industries that exploit and degrade the environment, like those that use tens of millions of acres of cotton for cheap, trendy clothing production, are clearly unsustainable. Some fast-fashion brands have already picked up on this. As a global community, we must recognize that we cannot continue to devote vital natural resources to what are essentially enterprises of waste. The earth won’t tolerate it for much longer.

Need an example Agricultural pollution from conventional farming methods is a large contributor to the approximately 6,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the dead zone’s hypoxic waters kill fish, crabs and other marine life. And the department draws a direct link between the dead zone and nitrogen fertilizer and recommends a reduction in the latter’s use. In 2002 the agency even wrote: “Because two-thirds of the nitrogen in the Mississippi River comes from use of fertilizer and manure on agricultural lands, reducing agricultural nitrogen is a major component of the strategy for controlling the hypoxic zone.”

Is a marginal increase in corn yields on large conventional farms in the American Midwest worth the literal downstream effects—thousands of square miles of ocean that can’t support life I don’t think so.

40 years of research shows organic is a resilient, reliable model that produces comparable yields.

The USDA isn’t the only American agency with concerning statistics on modern farming. The United States Environmental Protection Agency estimates that agriculture currently accounts for 11 per cent of total US greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, Canada’s government estimates that between 1990 and 2020 greenhouse gas emissions from Canadian agriculture grew by 33 per cent. The US and Canada could make a significant dent in emissions figures if both countries transitioned more farms to organic, which method releases 40 per cent fewer GHG emissions. And both countries should begin transitioning farms now. With our global climate increasingly at risk, we can’t afford to continue with farming methods that so clearly imperil the environment.

We also can’t afford to continue to embrace the myth that organic food can’t feed the world. Studies claiming that organic yields are unequivocally less than conventional are generally short-term, meaning they collect data over just a couple of years. There is a serious dearth of long-term research on the differences between organic and conventional yields. Rodale Institute’s Farming Systems Trial is one of those rare long-term research projects comparing organic and conventional agriculture in a real-world context. And after 40 years of diligent, continuous research, the science shows organic is a resilient, reliable and environmentally friendly farming model that not only produces comparable yields to conventional but outperforms it during extreme weather events.

But it’s not just farmers who need to change their behaviours. Consumers do too. As Qualman outlined, the world wastes too much food. The majority of waste occurs in developed countries, where every year we waste almost as much as sub-Saharan Africa’s entire net production. While improvements in infrastructure and supply chains are necessary, individuals can still do plenty to chart a better course. For example, consumers can buy more “ugly” produce to avoid contributing to the large quantity of retail produce that’s thrown away every day simply because of aesthetic irregularities. People can also shift their consumption to support regionalized food systems by shopping at farmers markets and co-ops, which would cut down on transportation costs and creates more-resilient supply chains. And these are just a couple of consumer habits that must change.

But while the developed world learns to curb its waste, the developing world can tap into its potential to contribute to global food security. With simple tools such as viable seeds and better crop varieties, farmers in developing nations can dramatically increase their productivity. If you pair those tools with basic infrastructure and weather information to better time planting and harvests, these small farmers in emergent nations could potentially triple their yields.

I’ll leave you with this: extreme weather events and a changing climate require us to reckon with how we feed the world. We need to take this opportunity to stand up, say enough is enough, and embrace positive change. We have no other choice.

Darrin Qualman responds to Jeff Tkach

My interlocutor says confidently that organic systems produce yields comparable to those of fertilizer- and chemical-augmented “conventional” agriculture. Having spent time on tractors and combines on organic farms and having done policy development with organic and non-organic farmers alike for a quarter-century, I’m not sure I share that certainty. The organic farmers that I know would be very interested to learn how they can match the output of their non-organic neighbours.

But in order to make a larger point, I will grant this idea that organic fields can match the output tonnage of non-organic.

My colleague, however, still has a problem with his argument: the demands we are placing on Earth’s lands are far too high, so it matters little if these demands are met using fertilizers and pesticides or met via systems that forgo those petrochemicals. We have production problems, yes, and these are well articulated by my colleague (e.g., soil erosion, water pollution etc.). But more than this, we have a demand problem, and it cannot be solved by changing our production methods.

No agriculture method—even organic or regenerative—can feed the world that lies ahead.

As my colleague notes, we are on track to add two billion people to the human cohort this century. Perhaps worse, we are on track to add double that number to the global middle class. And those newly admitted middle-class consumers—spurred on by giant meat and dairy corporations—will want to eat diets like mine: heavy in meat and dairy products. And, if produced by grain feeding, as is almost certain, all those animal products will be produced at 80–90 per cent losses. In other words, grain-feeding systems turn 5–10 grain calories into one meat or dairy calorie. Amid the fastest extinction crisis in 65 million years, it is hard to fathom how we can upsize our already supersized food system.

Worse, as I note in my opening argument, we are, in parallel to this increase in food demand, adding many other demands to our land base, asking it to produce biomaterials to replace plastic, feedstock for liquid and solid biofuels, and fibre for fast fashion and the consumer-indulgence economy. It is a huge error to assert that organic agriculture can meet these already massive and relentlessly growing demands. Granted, though, it is also folly to assert that non-organic agriculture can do so. Neither organic nor non-organic production methods can meet this insatiable demand.

My interlocutor paints a positive picture of regenerated soils, cleaner water, more nutritious crops and conveniently sequestered carbon. What he fails to include in his assessment is the reality that attempts to meet the vast and rapidly rising demand will make all those outcomes impossible. Taking this much from the land is incompatible with the care and stewardship needed to rebuild it.

Limits are a form of wisdom. Restraint is a form of stewardship. And reducing what we demand from the land is the only way we can make our production “sustainable.” Farmers have spent more than a century on an input-use and output treadmill—chasing ever higher yields and output while global food, fuel and fibre systems demanded ever-higher production. That must now end.

In a quest to increase production, Canadian farmers have, just since 2006, nearly doubled nitrogen fertilizer use. Fertilizer use cannot be doubled again. Canadian chicken production has doubled since 1993; it cannot be doubled again. Similarly, pork and beef production cannot again be doubled. Though hard to imagine, farmers need to cease chasing ever-higher yields and output. Farmers need to be supported in a move to find stability and security—to even thrive—in a world that doesn’t lash them each year to produce more than the year before.

Above, I grant that organic agriculture can match the yields of conventional. Here, I’ll grant for the sake of debate that organic agriculture can feed this world. But even as I do so, I would underscore the idea that no agriculture can feed the world that lies 20 or 50 years along the trendlines we are now seeing—along lines that race exponentially upward, doubling and redoubling, demanding more and more from a land base and water supply already damaged, depleted and inadequate. We must employ the best and most sustainable production methods, yes, but we must also reduce and limit our consumption.

Limits are a form of wisdom. Without limits, without intelligent restraint, our future world cannot be fed. A transition to organic or regenerative production methods does not change this fact.

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Commissioner for Oats

Paula Simons — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 11:56:28 +0000

When my dad was a little boy growing up in Round Hill, Alberta, he was immensely proud that his Pa was the Commissioner for Oats. My Jewish grandfather wasn’t a farmer. He ran Round Hill’s general store. But in a farm community, my dad figured being the Commissioner for Oats must be a very important and prestigious job.

When my father was 8 or 9, the family moved to Edmonton’s bustling Boyle Street immigrant neighbourhood and left their oat-growing neighbours behind. So I don’t think it was until my dad himself started law school at the University of Alberta that he finally realized his own father had never in fact been a Commissioner for Oats. Instead, he’d been Round Hill’s Commissioner for Oaths. Since neither his Yiddish-speaking father nor his Eastern European immigrant customers could pronounce that final “th” sound, my young father naturally assumed they were saying “oats” instead of “oaths.”

The pandemic and its accompanying supply-chain crisis have thrown into stark relief the vulnerability of our food supply.

This was one of my dad’s favourite anecdotes, one he told pretty much every time he was called upon, during his long legal career, to serve as a commissioner for oaths himself. Now, a generation later, the story has come full circle. Or maybe that should be full crop-circle. Not that I’m actually Canada’s Commissioner for Oats. But I am the brand-new deputy chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry—known colloquially in Ottawa as AGFO.

It’s the first time in three years that an Alberta senator has served on AGFO, and the first time in almost a decade that an Albertan has been selected to a leadership position on the committee. As a city girl, I’d never expected to hold this position. But I can’t think of a more essential or exciting time to be working on these files.

This pandemic and its accompanying supply-chain crisis have thrown into stark relief the vulnerability of our food supply lines and the fragility of our ability to keep grocery shelves stocked. Canadians are facing major price hikes at those same stores, while few farmers are seeing any benefits from those higher prices. Prices of Alberta’s signature steaks and roast beef, in particular, are soaring out of reach for most families, but Alberta’s ranchers and cow-calf operators sure aren’t cashing in. Those profits are being taken elsewhere along a production line dominated by a handful of multinational giants.

At the same time, a series of climate crises, particularly the fires and floods and freezes in BC, have exposed susceptibilities in the transportation conduits we rely on to ship our food exports—and our forestry products—to international markets. Alberta canola, lentils, wheat and, yes, oats, got stranded in elevators for weeks when rail lines were washed out and trains couldn’t get our crops to the Port of Vancouver.

Climate change is having a direct impact on farmers, ranchers and foresters all across Canada. At the same time, farmers, ranchers and forestry companies are trying to figure out how to adapt their own practices to help them reduce or sequester carbon while they work.

And against that backdrop, fresh trade wars and trade skirmishes are playing out—with China playing games with imports of Canadian beef and pork, with Canada challenging the latest round of punitive US softwood lumber tariffs, with the Americans challenging our restrictive dairy rules, and with new attention to the whole marketing-board/production-quota model in Canada, which, with each passing year, seems more and more a throwback to another century.

Today we need to be thinking about everything from the health of our soil—which is integral to everything we grow—to the health of our economy as we consider the future of agriculture and forestry, two land-linked industries dominated by near-monopolies (or monopsonies), a condition that puts severe limitations on robust market competition.

Senate committees don’t always capture the Canadian imagination. A couple of years ago, when I was serving on the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, we made a few headlines when we held hearings from coast to coast on the controversial Bill C-69, which amended Canada’s environmental impact legislation. It was the first time the Senate had ever held hearings on a bill outside of Ottawa, and as we travelled from Vancouver to St. John’s (with stops in Calgary and Fort McMurray), hundreds and hundreds of people turned up live to watch our hearings in progress.

COVID-19 is going to limit that kind of road trip. But Senate hearings are always public and always available to live-stream—even if they aren’t always the sexiest of clickbait. Whether you’re watching or not, here’s my oath that I’ll be doing my best to fight for a prosperous, environmentally sustainable and globally competitive agriculture and forestry sector—and to make my father and grandfather of blessed memory proud.

Paula Simons is an independent senator and the host of the podcast “Alberta Unbound.” She lives in Edmonton.

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Should Canada Be More Food Self Reliant?

Mary Beckie and Herb Emery — Tue, 01 Jun 2021 20:21:37 +0000

Mary Beckie says yes

U of A professor and director of community engagement studies at the School of Public Health

This pandemic has exposed vulnerabilities and inequities in the global food system Canada is so dependent on. Images from 2020 of empty grocery shelves, farmers forced to dump milk and cull livestock, and migrant workers crowded together in production lines at Cargill’s meat processing facility in High River point to the folly of placing so many of our eggs in this global food system basket. It’s a system characterized by just-in-time supply chains, worldwide movement of labour and products, and concentration of power and profits in the hands of a few transnational mega corporations.

Not only do we rely heavily on global supply chains for much of our food, but our farmers also depend on them to sell their agricultural commodities. Meanwhile, consumer demand for local food is rapidly growing across the country, and shortened, local supply chains have proven nimble in responding to the pandemic’s disruptions. As the climate crisis adds to uncertainty and vulnerability, it’s clear that strengthening diverse and localized agri-food systems will be key to increasing our food self-sufficiency and overall resilience.

Our agri-food industry has undergone huge changes over the past 75 years, but Canada remains largely export-oriented and is the fifth-largest exporter in the world. Volatile commodity markets and rising production costs are, however, lowering net farm incomes (which decreased by 45.1 per cent in 2018) and raising farm debt to unprecedented heights ($114.8-billion in 2019). To survive the squeeze, many farmers have adopted an economies of scale approach by increasing the intensity, scale and efficiency of production through specialization and the use of agrochemicals and high-tech equipment. Still, our farm population is shrinking, farmers are aging (55 on average) and environmental impacts—greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane), biodiversity loss and overall ecosystem degradation—continue to worsen.

Many farmers and consumers are responding by turning to local food. The benefits of relocalizing food include income and employment, support for small- to medium-scale operations, more access to high-quality food and reduced food miles and waste. Alberta’s local food demand is among the highest in the country, with 2016 spending reaching $1.6-billion at farmers markets, local-food restaurants and farm retail. We can do even better. Infrastructure and regulation must be redesigned to encourage more than the current 12.7 per cent of farms in Canada and 5.1 per cent of farms in Alberta (the second-lowest in Canada) to sell directly to customers. The potential for this sector to expand and evolve is huge.

If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we need to improve our self-sufficiency, from food to vaccine production. Supporting local supply-chain development will contribute to creating a more regenerative, secure and equitable agri-food system for all Canadians.

Herb Emery says no

Vaughan Chair in Economics at the University of New Brunswick

Canada already has high food self-reliance. Some 70 per cent of the food we consume in Canada is produced within Canada, but over 50 per cent of what we produce is exported. We are self-sufficient in dairy under supply management and we have more livestock than we can process and absorb in our domestic market. We are, however, reliant on imports of many fresh fruits and vegetables.

In the spring of 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic generated concerns about trade dependence for food supply, and fears over food supply disruptions created interest in developing what many believed would a more secure supply, with production closer to the consumer. But food supplies did not fail, nor were they interrupted to any important extent nationally. Food self-reliance remains a strategy to address a perceived risk rather than a realized problem. It’s also not obvious that local food production is more secure than imports secured through our large and sophisticated food retailers. Canadians don’t import food; food retailers who sell to Canadians do.

As with any insurance strategy, we need to ask what we’re willing to pay for a feeling of more security. I would have no objection to greater national reliance on domestic supply of food if our producers were competitive with imports. But the policies and regulations required to get production in food sectors more oriented to domestic production over export, and to displace imports, would likely raise prices to consumers and reduce quality and variety of fresh foods for what would amount to little, if any, gain in food security.

Some argue that pushing for food self-reliance through what amounts to more protection of the local market would have a higher economic multiplier for the economy than the unprocessed live animals and crops we export. But this gain in GDP would come at the expense of consumers, who would face higher prices for food, which could diminish spending on other GDP-creating goods and services.

Greater national food self-reliance is an odd goal if we expect more resilience as food is produced closer to the consumer. If that’s the case, shouldn’t we promote greater self-reliance for provinces and territories New Brunswick, for example, produces less than 10 per cent of the food its residents consume. Canadian industries such as meat processing are highly concentrated, which creates vulnerability to pandemic-related shutdowns or even transportation blockades. University of Waterloo researcher Jodi Koberinski says Canada has “allowed a kind of consolidation and concentration… (so) folks can have steak three or four times a week as a middle-class person… That access to cheap meat has come at a price, and that price is resiliency within your local food system.” Before we push greater national self-reliance, should we not first recommend that import-dependent regions pursue greater self-reliance over importing food from Alberta, Ontario or Quebec?

Mary Beckie responds to Herb Emery

Herb Emery may look back on last year’s pandemic panic-buying with a sense of calm reassurance now that the toilet paper and pasta shelves are full again. Grocery availability did stabilize fairly quickly with changes to restocking policies, but longer-term problems in Canada’s agri-food system persist and should no longer be ignored. These systemic issues, from production through to consumption, require more holistic and integrated approaches if we are to achieve a more secure, ecologically sustainable, healthy and equitable food system. Strengthening local/regional supply chains is key.

Emery argues Canada is already food self-reliant, but the reality is diversity of food production has declined as policies favour large-scale, specialized farms that produce a limited number of commodities for the global marketplace. Yes, we’re a major food exporter, but we’re also the sixth-largest food importer in the world. Some commodities we export, only to see them processed and sold back to us at higher cost. In 2019 we imported food worth $26.8-billion—$15.7-billion from the US alone. We were self-sufficient in basic fruits and vegetables until the 1950s, but we currently import 80 per cent of these foods, which are fundamental to a healthy diet. Fostering social and technical innovations to support diversified indoor and outdoor horticulture could allow us to replace a significant amount of these imports.

Yes, we produce more beef than we can consume, but approximately 90 per cent of it is processed at two foreign-owned companies—Cargill and JBS—based in Alberta and Ontario. Excessive ownership concentration and centralization of meat-processing in Canada leaves huge gaps in small- to medium-scale processing, which creates a barrier for livestock producers with smaller volumes and who want to sell to local and regional markets. Decentralizing and building domestic processing capacity in this and other food sectors is critical. Canada also has a highly concentrated food retail market. Five companies have captured more than 60 per cent of sales, which soared during the pandemic. Loblaws, Sobeys and Metro are Canadian-owned giants, whereas Costco and Walmart are US-owned multinationals.

Emery warns that relying more on local food will raise food costs. But studies show that food produced and processed locally generates a net benefit by putting money back into the hands of local producers, businesses and communities while creating a more diverse food culture and agricultural landscape. While the dollar amount Canadians spend on food is increasing, food’s percentage of total household expenditures is declining. In 1961 Canadians spent 28 per cent of our personal expenditures on food; in 2019 we spent 14.9 per cent. Perhaps more significantly, the price we pay doesn’t include uncounted costs associated with industrially produced and processed food, such as impacts on the environment, animal welfare, public health and labour. Full-cost accounting would reveal the true cost of our food.

Farmland preservation is another fundamental issue in Canada. Although we have a large landmass, only 7 per cent is suitable for agriculture and 70 per cent of this is in the Prairie provinces, where no legislated protection exists and prime farmland is being fragmented and lost to urban and industrial development. Land speculation is driving higher prices, making land unaffordable for people who want to start farming while enticing others to sell to investment companies and developers. With a shrinking and aging farm population across Canada, 92 per cent of which has no succession plan in place, we are headed to a generational crisis in farming.

Yet in 2016 there was a small increase in the number of young farmers (35 and under), the first increase in this age group since the 1991 census. Many new entrants do not come from a farming background, are women, and are oriented towards ecological farming practices, smaller-scale, diversified operations and local/regional marketing. This is an important and hopeful trend, bringing young people into the farming community and contributing to regenerative farming and diversifying regional food systems. These young farmers need access to land, supportive financing and relevant education and training. Farmer-to-farmer networks, such as Young Agrarians in western Canada, are filling the gap left by mainstream agricultural institutions, which tend to focus on conventional and large-scale agriculture. More public support and changes to policies and regulations are needed to grow this new generation of farmers.

For too long Canada has taken agriculture, the environment and farmers for granted. In the quest to be part of the global marketplace, policymakers have undervalued these crucial assets and disassembled regional food systems. Reinvesting in localized supply chains through collaboration across all sectors will generate social, environmental and economic benefits that will strengthen our food self-reliance and our resilience in the face of future shocks. COVID-19 was a wake-up call; we now have an opportunity to rethink the way we produce, process and distribute food.

Herb Emery responds to Mary Beckie.

Professor Beckie argues that the pandemic has exposed vulnerabilities and inequities stemming from our reliance on the global food system. She recalls the fears that arose early in the pandemic over empty grocery shelves, and observes that Canadian farmers dumped milk and culled livestock. Beckie reminds us of the issues with migrant workers crowded in production lines at Alberta meat-processing plants. She sees these problems as endemic to global food systems characterized by “just-in-time supply chains, worldwide movement of labour and products, and concentration of power and profits in the hands of a few transnational mega corporations.” Even if all of this were true, greater national food self-sufficiency would do little to address these problems.

If the pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in Canada’s food system, then these are as much a product of our existing national food system and demonstrate that greater national self-sufficiency won’t address the perceived problems of relying on the global system. The waste of milk that Professor Beckie notes and the challenges of finding labour for meat processing in Alberta both occurred in nationally food sufficient industries. Food self-sufficiency in dairy is created region-ally through supply management, and created nationally with meat through industrially concentrated processing. With beef we produce far more cattle than we can process for the domestic market, so the industry generates exportable surpluses. And these—along with energy and manufacturing exports—pay for our imports of foods we can’t produce as cheaply as other places can, at least not year-round.

If we want to shorten supply chains so that Canadians consume more locally produced food, we’d need policies to reduce national supply chains for products such as processed meats. We’d push for greater provincial food self-reliance, as New Brunswick is doing as a result of the pandemic. Its goals are to restore meat-processing capacity that competitive pressures, including a lack of labour supply, drove to Quebec and Alberta, and to grow more of its own fruit and vegetables in greenhouses.

With greater food self-sufficiency in Canada, storing fresh food would be a technological challenge (since we can’t grow many foods year-round). We’d be moving away from imported fresh produce and relying more on frozen and preserved fruits and vegetables—as we did before global trade provided fresh(er) produce at lower prices. In other words, greater food self-sufficiency would mean reducing the availability and affordability of fresh produce in winter. It would also mean shrinking the meat-processing industry in places such as Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec, and expanding it in New Brunswick.

It’s not clear that local food production reduces corporate power and profits. Most food retailing in Canada is done by regionally dominant corporations which, from time to time, expand into other corporations’ turf (as Sobey’s and Superstore have done). Costco and Walmart brought price competition with their powers of procurement and supply-chain management. Local food producers currently market through these retail giants.

Even if you enable more direct food purchases from farmers and producers, it’s not clear how much market share this would take from corporate retailers. Food safety is important, and as you scale-up food production from farmers markets to bigger direct-retail sales, producers become subject to regulations that raise costs, which they then pass on to consumers. The costs of food-safety regulations favour producing at larger scale. Professor Beckie identifies these sorts of cost pressures as driving producers to increase scale and specialize in exportable products over local garden production.

Canadians’ concerns about the availability of food during the pandemic have been less about the businesses they buy from and more about price inflation. To secure public support, any moves toward local food production and greater national food self-sufficiency will need to be sensitive to the impact on household food costs.

My biggest problem with a turn to national food self-sufficiency is that the policies and approaches needed to support producers would likely prove highly inequitable to consumers. Our best example in Canada is dairy supply management, where quota systems support a nationally self-sufficient supply of milk. They also generate considerable wealth for quota holders and high milk prices for consumers. Negative health consequences then arise from the substitution of sugary beverages for milk, with the problem worse in lower income households with children. Many agricultural economists see quota-system-inflated dairy prices as a milk tax, and argue it’s a regressive tax, meaning the burden is heavier at lower-income levels.

There are many reasons to support local food production. But greater national food self-sufficiency is unlikely to support the re-emergence of local family farms and reduce the power of “Big Food.” Instead, our current regional and national models suggest we’d unlikely change much other than the quality of food over the winter and food prices over the year.

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