The committee met at 8:34 a.m.

[R. Glumac in the chair.]

R. Glumac (Chair): Okay, I’m going to call this meeting to order.

My name is Rick Glumac. I’m the MLA for Port Moody–​Coquitlam and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fish and Food, a committee of the Legislative Assembly that includes MLAs from the government and official opposition parties. Our committee is examining carbon sequestration and related technology in British Columbia’s agricultural sector.

On Friday, we heard from British Columbians — including farmers, growers, ranchers, producers, and Indigenous organizations — and today we will be continuing those presentations.

The committee is also accepting written input until this Friday, November 17, at 2 p.m. Information on how to participate can be found on the committee’s website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/aff.

[8:35 a.m.]

We have a number of presenters today. We’ll be using a timing device, which will be visible on the screen. Each presentation is ten minutes, followed by ten minutes for questions from committee members.

Before we begin, I’ll ask committee members to introduce themselves, and I’ll just call your name, starting with our Deputy Chair.

I. Paton (Deputy Chair): Morning. Ian Paton, MLA for Delta South. I am the shadow minister for Agriculture for the official opposition.

S. Chant: Good morning. My name is Susie Chant. I’m the MLA for North Vancouver–Seymour, Parliamentary Secretary for Accessibility.

I’m coming to you from the unceded territory of the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

M. Dykeman: Good morning. My name is Megan Dykeman. I’m the MLA for Langley East.

K. Paddon: Morning. My name is Kelli Paddon. I’m the MLA for Chilliwack-Kent.

J. Sturdy: Jordan Sturdy, MLA, West Vancouver–Sea to Sky.

C. Oakes: Good morning. MLA Coralee Oakes of Cariboo North.

A. Singh: Morning. My name is Aman Singh. I’m the MLA for Richmond-Queensborough.

R. Russell: Hi. Good morning. Roly Russell, MLA from Boundary, South Okanagan and Similkameen.

R. Glumac (Chair): Excellent. Our first presenter today is David Haley.

David, you have ten minutes. We’re looking forward to your presentation.

Take it away.

Presentations on Carbon Sequestration
and Related Technology

DAVID HALEY

D. Haley: Thanks for the opportunity to present. I’m coming to you from the Cowichan Valley, the traditional home of the Cowichan Nation.

My background is I’m a registered professional forester with almost 50 years of experience, but I’m also the current owner of a century farm that was established in 1886. I do business as Haley Agro-Forestry. I volunteer with several organizations: Coastal Douglas-fir Conservation Partnership; Providence Farm in Duncan, a therapeutic farm; the Nanaimo-Cedar Farmers’ Institute; Vancouver Island Economic Alliance; and my farm was a sample site for soil assessment by the eco-gastronomy department at the University of Victoria.

While I don’t speak on behalf of any of those organizations, I think my opinions have got some relevance. I can submit my comments, also, in writing.

In general, I’m basing my comments on the need for improved policy coherence across governments, ministries and organizations; support for the small independent farmer, firstly those within the ALR and those without; building a circular economy; building community resilience; and recognizing and incentivizing policies and programs that deliver carbon sequestration and access to carbon markets.

I’m using your guiding questions as my outline. The first: what opportunities exist to improve soil health? I think there are multiple opportunities both within the traditional silo of agriculture and outside of that traditional silo. That will cross boundaries of landowners, industries and governments at all four levels — federal, Indigenous, provincial and local. I think this builds resilience at the local level, which then, in turn, rolls up to provide resilience at the provincial and federal levels.

[8:40 a.m.]

I think there are several examples that offer those op­portunities right now: the focus on housing; the recently signed tripartite framework agreement on nature conservation; the Provincial Forestry Forum; Farmers Institutes meeting with the minister and Premier; the desire for local food and food security; and also the need for electrical power.

My specific examples there are to…. I’m asking for the province to mandate local governments to enable a bylaw to allow the transfer of density potential from a parcel of land outside of the ALR to a parcel of land within an urban containment boundary or transportation centre. This would address the two needs of local governments to both provide housing and address climate change while creating a willing buyer, willing seller situation. The Coastal Douglas-fir Conservation Partnership has a study from UBC to provide the details.

I have focused somewhat on the forestry sector, but I would look for opportunities to combine fire and flood resilience activities to create landscape-level management for farmlands, forest industries and communities. I think the recent report from the Forest Practices Board on landscape fire management can be adapted here. I would recognize and use the existing Farmers Institutes to encourage and incentivize small farmers.

I note that many of these small farmers don’t necessarily belong to one or more of the agriculture councils, but there’s a study coming out of the University of Northern B.C. looking at farmers markets, which will be released in January ’24, which shows some of the financial impact.

I think the second question: what are the barriers or risks…? I think the barriers are lack of recognition, whether that be financial or non-financial recognition of the environmental benefits provided by farms. The trade-offs between maximizing productivity of one or a few crops versus the known but unquantified environmental benefits is a major barrier. And I think providing public goods and services shouldn’t be placed solely on the farmer but should involve public support.

I think that the second barrier is a resistance to recognizing trees as a farm crop. The third is a lack of coherence around various items such as the environmental farm plan, Farmers for Climate Solutions and a lack of extension activities.

Third question. How can the province support B.C.’s agritech sector? I would look to academic institutions to provide both research and extension services, the use of lidar and other technologies to identify pests and diseases, technology for better storage and shipping technologies to reduce food waste, and technical solutions to use manure to improve soil organic matter and nutrient levels on farmlands and adjacent forest lands. Biochar and the production of energy could also be included here.

In terms of the fourth question, support, I would ask that we stop attempts to increase the level of farm-gate sales for small individual farmers, mandate the use of the density transfer as mentioned above, improve the environmental farm plan, support organizations such as Farmland Advantage and the Delta Farmland and Wildlife Trust with better evaluation tools — and expand those concepts across B.C. — and have the accountants and economists create better tools to evaluate the non-financial items, the environmental services.

Then, fifth, how can collaboration between farmers, in­novators, etc. be improved? I mentioned a number of points above, but in addition, I’d like to suggest that there’s a need to create a conservation tax incentive program that would apply to all farmlands first and then all other lands with conservation and carbon sequestration values. The Land Trust Alliance of B.C. has been promoting this for at least five years, if not longer.

[8:45 a.m.]

I think encourage incentives through existing area initiatives, such as the Island Coastal Economic Trust and the Vancouver Island Economic Alliance. The Vancouver Economic Alliance is a doing a three-year strategic plan, so the opportunity is good here.

Support the development of a water budget for defined geographical areas to address the angst concerning the groundwater registration program. The Cowichan and Koksilah watersheds are making significant progress on this in partnership with the Cowichan Nation.

Focus on food security. There are multiple statements around how Vancouver Island only has a few days of food if there are significant transportation interruptions.

Support the use of fibre and farm waste to fuel local bioenergy processes. This should focus on heat production initially, with the production of electricity being a secondary priority, and B.C. Hydro must be a partner and not an obstacle.

I’ll stop there. As I said, I can provide my written document to the Committee Clerk. I believe the time is now for questions.

R. Glumac (Chair): It is indeed. Do the committee members have any questions?

I’ll start, I guess. You said that your farm was a sample site for soil testing.

D. Haley: That’s correct.

R. Glumac (Chair): Is this in regards to looking at carbon content and all of that? Can you tell us a bit more about how that went for you and what opportunities you might see to increase carbon content in your soil in the future?

D. Haley: Well, I think it went well. I think the final analysis is still being done by the PhD candidate, but the purpose was to look for any relationships between soil carbon content and organic matter and try and link that to the quality of crops and then further link that to the quality of the landowner or the farmer’s health, thinking that healthy soils led to healthy crops led to healthy farmers.

In terms of adding carbon, I think currently I have good practice management. I do a lot of mulching and make yearly applications of the manure onto my hayfields to increase the organic content.

R. Glumac (Chair): Thank you. We have a question from Roly.

R. Russell: Thank you for the presentation, David. I appreciate it.

I have two comments you made that I’m curious about. One is you mentioned conservation incentives via taxation, which obviously could link back to carbon sequestration potential or carbon storage. Maybe you could flesh that out a little bit.

At the beginning, you mentioned increased…. Not sure which words you used, but increased cohesion in terms of policy between different ministries to support farms and farmers. I’m wondering if you could embellish those two pieces a little bit for us.

D. Haley: Well, in terms of incentives, I think the conservation tax incentive I mentioned would be one example. The Islands Trust has a very similar program already in existence, but over the years that it’s been in existence, which I believe is over ten, the amount of land that’s actually been dedicated for conservation purposes is relatively small.

[8:50 a.m.]

I think that’s in part because of the complexity of doing the assessment, and then the actual benefit is quite low. I think the environmental farm plan itself is an incentive, but it could be improved.

The coherence example I’ll give is that I applied for an engineering project to do some water storage, and in my original application, I included costs for two biologists to assess fisheries’ habitat and amphibian habitat. But that wasn’t a recognized cost. I had to apply for a second project for the biology costs. I’m still in the process of doing that, because of some reasons that I won’t get into here.

I mentioned policy coherence, and I had a fairly strong emphasis on forestry aspects. I recently returned from a trip to Finland that the UBC Faculty of Forestry organized, and that was one of the lessons from Finland. They work very hard to have policy coherence across the forest in­dustry, whether that’s providing lidar data free of charge or whether it’s making sure that every product that comes out of the forest — whether it be pulp logs, sawlogs or bioenergy wood — has a market and a process to handle it.

Does that answer…?

R. Russell: Yes. I appreciate that.

Just to clarify, when you’re talking about that secondary application, you’re talking about through the environmental farm plan process, correct?

D. Haley: Yeah.

R. Russell: I appreciate that comment. I think what you are getting at there is maybe there is an opportunity for some more integrated kind of priorities across the different EFP programs.

D. Haley: Yeah. I don’t want to slam the program. I think it’s good. I’m on my second environmental farm plan. It’s been very helpful, but I do find there are some irritating points.

The second example I will give, I guess, is around the forestry. With our fire seasons we’ve had, I think there are opportunities for integration of fuel management, grazing of cattle — those two things. One could consider them as pure forestry, but by building up the resilience in the forest stands, that is going to protect the farmland, the food security, the communities, the infrastructure.

R. Russell: Excellent. Thank you.

R. Glumac (Chair): All right. Well, thank you very much for your presentation, David. I appreciate it.

D. Haley: Thank you. I appreciate the time.

R. Glumac (Chair): We’ll let our next guest in. I believe they’re in the waiting room.

R. Kolof: Good morning, everyone.

R. Glumac (Chair): Good morning. Welcome. Thank you for coming today and presenting to the committee.

You have ten minutes for your presentation, ten minutes for questions.

Take it away.

[8:55 a.m.]

RAQUEL KOLOF

R. Kolof: I just wanted to start with a little introduction to who I am. My name is Raquel Kolof, and I’m the owner-operator of Hough Heritage Farm. I’ve been farming for about ten years. I’m a small-scale diversified farmer that practises regenerative agriculture.

I started farming with a whole bunch of different livestock — goats, sheep, pigs. I now focus primarily on cattle because I find that they are absolutely the best bang for your buck when it comes to carbon sequestration, soil health and climate change mitigation. I focus on heritage breeds because I find that they’re most resilient as well.

I’m coming to you now from the unceded territory of the Squamish First Nation.

Let’s start the presentation.

One of the questions you asked is: how can the provincial government support B.C.’s agritech sector to develop new carbon sequestration innovations?

I come back to what most farmers and ranchers know, which is that the most powerful tool we have right now to sequester carbon and mitigate climate change is grazing cattle on grasslands. Grasslands outperform forests on carbon sequestration. Grazing cattle have a myriad of benefits to our communities in addition to the ecological services they provide. I want to ask this committee to return to what works, which is a radically traditional type of farming.

We have noticed that biology outperforms technology every time. There are some far more intelligent scientists than I who have said it best. Dr. Hans Herren, who won the World Food Prize for coming up with biological controls to halt infestations, said that the answer is not more technology to overcome nature; it is understanding nature and working with it to restore balance. “Tackling the cause of the problem beats symptom treatment every time.”

I think a great quote from Nose to Tail is: “The solution to feeding the world isn’t found in a lab. It exists on grasslands, and that’s ruminants.”

Not to share bad news, but we know the world will likely hit 1.5 degrees of warming limit in 20 years. This is the 2021 UN climate change report. They’ve called for a “code red for humanity.”

I’m on the islands regional extension committee. I represent the Sunshine Coast. On that committee, they shared this screen. It shows that we’re projected to go over 35 extremely hot days by 2085, but in 2021, we actually hit 40. So we know it’s dire. We know we need soil more than ever now. We know we need farmers more than ever now for our ecological services. Given the research shows how important healthy soil is for our climate mitigation efforts, I think the time is wonderful for this committee to look at this issue.

I’ve read this quote, and I love it: “We can farm our way out of the climate crisis.” That is a picture of my Icelandic sheep.

First, we need to invest in healthy soil. The foundation of all life on earth is soil. I don’t need to tell you much more about soil. I’m sure you know all about it.

The one thing I have heard time and time again in the community is, “Only big parcels are going to be effective,” or “It’s only class 1 to 4 of land capability class that is really going to be effective for farming,” and that’s just not true. We need every acre we can get. We need every parcel we can get. I farm on 15 acres. It’s small compared to most farms, but it’s large compared to most farms on the Sunshine Coast.

[9:00 a.m.]

Most high-performing farms on the coast are five acres. They are producing tonnes of food on a very small footprint and sequestering carbon on that small footprint as well. I just want to remind the committee of the important value of smallholding farms.

Also, all land classes can be carbon-sequestering ma­chines, especially the grasslands on class 6. We know that 60 at-risk species in Canada reside in grassland ecosystems. They’re absolutely critical for the health of our environment.

Next you know everything about soil. I don’t need to go into it, but there are 60 at-risk insect species in soil. We know that 70 to 80 percent of all insects require the top two inches of soil for life. We need those insects to pollinate our food and to grow food. Once again, soil is critical.

You’ve seen this. Julia Smith, of the Small-Scale Meat Producers, showed this slide. I just want to emphasize it again, because this former chief scientist at the UN environment program highlighted that outside of the farming sector, few people realize the vital role soil plays in mitigating climate change.

I think that’s what is so important about the Ministry of Agriculture. As a farmer, I’m dealing with the Ministry of Forests. I’m dealing with the Ministry of Transportation. The Ministry of Transportation sprays glyphosate on the roadways to control knotweed, which is really just an edible plant. I’m here trying to practice regenerative agriculture, but it’s difficult to do when other ministries don’t understand the critical role that soil plays in healthy food and a healthy environment. I urge the Ministry of Agriculture to share the knowledge and try to work with other ministries to support more soil-based farming.

This is another slide that I wanted to share because it’s incredibly hopeful. It talks about how regenerative practices help sequester 2.29 megagrams of carbon per hectare annually. What they showed in California — there’s a link to the research — is that if we just sequestered 1 milligram of carbon per hectare by using regenerative practices on rangeland, it would offset the annual emissions from energy use for their commercial and residential sectors.

We are 2.3 times the size of California with a seventh of the population. Our potential to be global leaders in regenerative agriculture and carbon sequestration is monumental, and I’m very excited by that.

Now, there’s a problem when we talk about regenerative agriculture and we look into soil science. There’s a lot of greenwashing going on. I just wanted to show the committee that there is a third-party certification body that’s global. It’s called A Greener World. If you look on the bottom right hand, they do certified regenerative agriculture third-party certifications.

There are farmers in B.C. right now that have gone through that rigorous process. I went through one for the Animal Welfare Approved certification. A rancher from Texas came up to rigorously audit my farm. He spent two days here.

If you’re ever wondering about how we can support regenerative farms, and how we know who has a regenerative farm and who does not, I would encourage the Ministry of Agriculture to encourage other farmers to get certified through this rigorous system, and then you’ll know who you can support better.

Oh, there we go. We don’t want to miss that one; that’s critical. I apologize for showing a picture of cow poop so early in the morning, but what I wanted to show, and you can see all the fungi growing out of it, is an issue with the greenwashing of regen ag. People forget that livestock are a critical component of that. You can see on my land that we have a cow patty and the microbial system just loving it.

I didn’t see the amount of life blossom on my farm until I got cattle. I got dung beetles within months. The bird life, the insect life, the soil sponge — my entire farm took off with cattle. So when we talk about regen ag, we really need to ensure that livestock integration and beneficial livestock impact are part of that system.

What do we need? We need hooved, herding herbivores. Say that three times, really fast. Ruminants are really critical to the soil microbiome, which is critical to sequestering carbon and mitigating climate change. It’s a win-win.

[9:05 a.m.]

You all know the principles of regenerative agriculture. I just wanted to show it again — maintaining living roots year-round; integrating animals, biodiversity, minimum soil disturbance; keeping the soil covered. Well, what’s the best way to do that? It’s rotational grazing. It is just a win-win all around.

There are so many benefits, which go beyond healthy food and a healthy ecosystem, when you rotationally graze. Our province has been gutted by forest fires. Well, grazers remove a lot of the fuel that will increase forest fires. There’s a cooling effect on the soil. It prevents ero­sion, with better water quality, and aids the hydrologic cycle. There’s just so much to go into regenerative grazing that it’s imperative to support — and it tastes great, because we get beef from it, or lamb.

I’m going to keep going.

One of the aspects I wanted to hit on, when we talk about climate change and agriculture, is the need for preservation of heritage breeds. On the Sunshine Coast, when we experienced the heat dome, a lot of the production-bred livestock died. We had production-bred meat, poultry. Up in Sechelt, a flock all died during the heat dome.

My heritage-breed chickens did fine. They knew what to do; they knew how to stay cool. They are more resilient. This is me with my lowline cattle. I also raised Berkshire pigs, and all of them fared quite well. We put in misters, but I didn’t need to do anything else. You can see my barns are only three-sided, a lot of airflow, and we have solar shades. Really, they went into the forest.

Biodiversity in our species and our heritage breeds, and biodiversity in our landscape, are critical. If I’d had a farm that was just pasture, it would have been a disaster, because they couldn’t seek cooler areas.

Above- and below-ground biodiversity is critical to mitigate climate change. We’ve got to preserve the genetics of 30,000 years of evolution. Dr. Tim McAllister, who’s a research scientist at the University of Calgary and works for Agriculture Canada, had a great presentation about this. In it, he said biodiversity and carbon cycles are intertwined. It’s not just preserving heritage breeds for the sake of having robust and resilient livestock. It’s also that they help the carbon cycle function.

There’s some incredible research going out from the Livestock Conservancy to preserve heritage breeds. I’ll send you this presentation, so you can read that on your own. Those are my Berkshire pigs.

I think the risk we have right now is that three-quarters of our world food supply comes from 12 crops and five livestock species. In fact, poultry barns, the meat-bird lines, I think, only come from nine different flocks. There are nine lineages for meat birds. That’s very scary, to have that brittle food supply. We really need, for our future generations, to preserve these heritage breeds, so they can do the job of mitigating climate change. Regen ag is the key. I’ll tell you, hand on my heart: B.C. farmers and ranchers hold that key.

What are the barriers? One of the barriers I just wanted to touch on briefly is housing. I know there are a lot of issues with housing. I think the term used was “nefarious” housing. That is very well the case in the Lower Mainland, but I urge the committee to understand that the rest of the province does not have the issues with housing destroying the ALR that the Lower Mainland has.

Every farmer I know farms and supplements their farming with Airbnbs, short-term rentals, housing. I couldn’t farm if I didn’t have an Airbnb. I know Airbnb is a bad word right now, but I wanted to share the reality. Farmers need housing options in order to afford to farm.

The other barrier is water access. On the Sunshine Coast, farmers were cut off during stage 4 water restrictions. We did a lot of work to try and get farmers exemptions from stage 4 water restrictions. The issue was that simply because we were outdoor water users, we were considered non-essential. That absolutely goes against the needs to mitigate climate change and keep healthy soil alive.

[9:10 a.m.]

When farmers are cut off from water, plants die, but also the soil dies. The minute there is dead soil, it releases carbon and erodes. Then, when the rain comes, it washes away, and we’ve lost it.

I put a well in in 2019 in order to have a safe, secure water supply, and I got a lot of letters from the Ministry of Forests saying: “Well, you need to cut back your water supply for ecological reasons.” I wanted to say: “Well, I also have an ecosystem here that I’m preserving. I have ponds, I have streams, I have wildlife.”

Farms are our helpers. We are your colleagues in water preservation. Let us do our job with our other ALR colleagues that are the indoor users, like alcohol producers. They’re allowed to use water during stage 4 water restrictions, simply because they are indoor users. Maybe we should get the same access because we’re soil-based farmers.

I’ve always said farmers don’t use water. We borrow it. We’re part of the hydrologic cycle, and our soil keeps that cycle alive and functioning. The other beautiful part of beef is it uses very little water, but we do need water to keep our pastures alive, and that’s an important thing to note.

Despite our desperate need for water, we have greatly diminished our ability to receive it, but that’s not the case for soil-based regenerative farmers. We are increasing our ability to receive water, so we are absolutely partners in preserving our water supply, and a healthy water supply at that.

We know that living soil can absorb ten times its weight in water. Look at the deep roots of perennial pastures. Crops don’t have roots like that. When you have grasslands, you have flowering plants that benefit pollinators, and you have fabulous root systems that will keep the soil hydrated and able to receive water when the rains do come.

These are a lot of quotes about soil’s water-holding capacity, and I think you know all this, so we’ll just move on. A great quote from Allan Savory is: “It’s not drought that causes bare ground; it’s bare ground that causes drought.” So help farmers prevent desertification and keep the soil alive with our rangelands and our livestock.

The asks I would have for the committee today are to pro­tect our heritage breeds, to preserve our grasslands and prevent them from being converted over into residential areas or even croplands, secure water for farmers and increased biodiversity.

Once again, returning to the original point, in the face of climate change, regenerative farms demonstrate that the key to resilience is working with nature. We have to restore our natural processes, and soil is the key to our food security and our future.

Thank you so much. I will stop sharing.

R. Glumac (Chair): Excellent. Thank you so much for your presentation.

R. Russell: Thanks very much. Loved the presentation.

Just a quick question. We heard on Friday, I guess it was, and we heard again this morning about the potential utility of the environmental farm plan as one of those tools to incentivize some of these regenerative practices that you’re mentioning.

Do you want to speak at all to where that’s working well and where that’s not working well or if there are other avenues to do that that you think would be better?

R. Kolof: Absolutely. Thank you for asking the question, Roly.

I am part of the environmental farm plan. I received it about five years ago, and it works well. I think the one piece of advice I would have is for programs to realize that farmers are the experts on their land.

I think the Ministry of Agriculture, I have to say, does an amazing job of working with us as partners. I absolutely adore our regional agrologists and kudos to the Min. of Ag for all the hard work they do connecting to farmers. I’m so impressed by them.

The environmental farm plan, the one recommendation I would give is we need higher cost-share ratios. The 70-30 can be a barrier for most farmers. Coming up with 30 percent of funding for a big project — there are lot of farmers that can’t afford that.

I know 92 percent of my farm income goes directly to hay and feed. My last hay delivery was $930 a tonne, and it’s less than $100 in Edmonton for a tonne. So realize that farmers are struggling right now. If you can increase the cost-share ratios to 80, 90 percent for generative ag that would be appreciated.

[9:15 a.m.]

R. Russell: Excellent. Thank you.

R. Glumac (Chair): Thank you so much. I don’t see any other questions, but thank you, Raquel, for your presentation. Very much appreciate it.

R. Kolof: I think Ian has his hand up.

I. Paton: I think I was just waving instead. I’m actually waving to Raquel because I have known Raquel for many years.

Good morning, Raquel. Thanks for your presentation. It was great.

Help me again. A lot of people will read that cattle and manure and methane are bad for our environment. But you’re saying the exact opposite. You’re saying livestock, in the way of cattle on our pasturelands, is the best thing we can have.

Simplify this for me. I sort of know the answer. For the group, simplify this for me as to why you believe livestock grazing, grasslands and cattle manure are a good thing.

R. Kolof: Absolutely. Thank you, Ian. That’s an amazing question.

The answer is cattle produce enteric methane, so biogenic enteric methane. It is burps. They burp methane. But their methane is biogenic, of a natural biological origin, and it has a half-life of ten to 12 years. The methane from cattle is part of the natural carbon cycle. Methane is CH₄. It goes up into the environment, joins with H₂O and CO₂ and makes rain and air. I mean, it’s unbelievable. Then the carbon gets sequestered back into the environment.

Cattle are just part of this regenerative cycle of carbon cycling, whereas the deep carbon, such as fossil fuels that come from the earth, is a carbon that will last forever. The majority of climate change is caused by that. Cattle are absolutely essential to sequestering carbon.

My land, for 40 years, it was just mowed. There were no animals on it at all, and the pasture was dead and lifeless. There’s a root-shoot ratio. If you keep the pasture too short, the roots can’t develop and then they can’t sequester carbon as effectively. But the other thing is if you let the grass grow, it grows too tall, and it falls over and kills the pasture. Then it can’t sequester carbon as well.

By cattle grazing, they are helping the roots develop and the plants keep growing, which keeps putting carbon back in the soil. So methane from cattle is honestly a non-issue. It’s gone, and it’s absorbed by the soil. If you want to see a great graphic, I have one. I can send it to you, and it explains it all.

I. Paton: Okay. Thanks.

R. Glumac (Chair): Just building on that. It is a concern that has been raised many times, the methane that’s produced from cattle.

You say that it has a short half-life and everything, but it’s like 28 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. I’m still trying to understand that as well. I heard your explanation. I know that there is value in, obviously, sequestering carbon in the soil.

If you have anything, that sort of scientific analysis of that versus the effect of the methane, I would love to see it.

R. Kolof: Absolutely. I’m going to a conference next week with Dr. Frank Mitloehner, who’s from U of C Davis. He is the soil scientist expert on methane. Everyone who is in this field will tell you methane from cattle is a non-issue when you have them on grass, when you have them pastured.

The greatest contribution to greenhouse gases and methane is from industry and transportation. It was interesting because we did a greenhouse gas study on the Sunshine Coast, and they asked me how many cows we have. And I said: “Not enough. Ninety-eight percent of our food is transported in from abroad.”

That’s the greenhouse gas emission we should be worried about. It’s not cattle.

I will send you all the research. There is tons of it out there, and it’s robust. Robust.

[9:20 a.m.]

Cattle are our way forward. Rotationally grazed, well-managed cattle — we can’t be sticking them in buildings — are a way forward to mitigate climate change.

We need carbon. Carbon is great. It just needs to be in the soil. Methane is CH₄. It’s carbon and hydrogen. So in essence, it’s not a toxic substance. It just needs to be functioning properly as part of the natural mineral cycle.

R. Glumac (Chair): Excellent. Well, thank you, again, for your presentation and your passion around this issue. It’s definitely felt by the committee.

R. Kolof: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

R. Glumac (Chair): We now have our next speaker joining us.

Welcome, Tristin. How are you doing?

T. Bouwman: I’m doing well.

R. Glumac (Chair): Excellent. I’m good. We’re good. We look forward to your presentation.

You have ten minutes, and then we’ll have ten minutes for questions.

Take it away.

TRISTIN BOUWMAN

T. Bouwman: Awesome. My name is Tristin Bouwman. I’ll be speaking a little bit from my experience in potato and dairy production in B.C.’s Lower Mainland, as well as some of the work that I’ve done in climate-smart agriculture policy evaluation at Wageningen University and in rural Africa, as well as some of the carbon farming work that I’ve been doing in the last couple of months.

I’ve spoken with producers over the last while about their concerns about declining soil health, especially in the Lower Mainland. There seems to be real concern among a number of growers as well as scientists, particularly in the Fraser Valley, in the Delta area. This is a real concern to farmers, because it results in less trafficability, more diesel needing to be burned in order to prepare the land, potential for lower yields and a greater risk of losing harvests.

Farmers are investing quite a lot of money. Some farmers have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last several years to improve their soil organic matter, which is what carbon sequestration is all about. The main methods that are being employed include cover crops, trying to get manure to places where it’s not normally going and things like grassland set-asides. These are all components of regenerative agriculture and, like I said, are what carbon sequestration is all about.

They’re not new practices to B.C. farmers. B.C. farmers have been some of the leaders in making cover cropping normal. Sumas Prairie has been doing it for many years. But there’s still lots of work to be done. Because this is a matter of public interest, I think there’s a clear role for government to play in helping farmers cover some of these costs.

There’s also increasing recognition among farmers of the role they need to play in helping reduce climate change. That’s not just through carbon sequestration but also reduced overall greenhouse gas emissions. The 4R program is becoming increasingly implemented in B.C. There’s lots of work. B.C. farmers are making investments, but they need more help.

That said, the topic of carbon sequestration can seem like the answer to climate change, and I think it’s important that we recognize how much we can really offset climate change with carbon sequestration.

Former colleagues of mine at Wageningen University in the Netherlands earlier this year ran the numbers, looking at how much we need to do in order to reach the 1.5-degree target at the 2100 Horizon and how much carbon sequestration — keeping in mind the fact that the more carbon you add to soils, the less the extra addition contributes to more soil carbon, because this attenuates every time that a new equilibrium is reached.

[9:25 a.m.]

They ran the numbers, and they figured that it’s somewhere between zero percent and 4 percent in the most realistic scenarios of what needs to be done to get to a 1.5 degree target that can be contributed by soil carbon sequestration at a global level.

In B.C.’s case, given its small farmland footprint, this number is probably even lower. The consequence of that is that when we talk about soil carbon sequestration, we should perhaps be focusing more on maintaining our soil health to be able to feed both our current and future generations from a good quality soil as opposed to trying to just focus on climate change mitigation. It would be a shame to overpromise in this area. We have to keep it realistic.

Another point I think it’s worthwhile making is that there’s a lot of efforts going on right now internationally and federally on carbon offset programs for agriculture. These make sense in the prairies, but they probably don’t make as much sense in B.C., because our climate is fairly diverse in B.C. and our crops are very diverse, so it means that picking one commodity and figuring out all of the emissions for it and what practices would reduce them becomes a lot more complicated. It’s particularly the case because we have some of the least amounts of long-term trials in Canada.

I’ll just add to that. The discussion of no tillage is, basically, our national research shows that it works in the prairies under dry conditions, and it doesn’t work in eastern Canada when it comes to soil carbon sequestration. It doesn’t work under wetter climates in eastern Canada. For B.C.’s Lower Mainland, we can probably expect a similar situation here — that we wouldn’t see a real improvement in soil carbon sequestration from the adoption of no tillage, particularly in the Lower Mainland where we produce most of our food for Metro Vancouver.

The last point I want to make is that one of the most effective ways that we can reduce the footprint of agriculture in B.C. or the footprint of food production is to focus on bolstering our regional food supply. Much of the emissions that we are producing are coming from the food that is being imported. That is associated with a large carbon footprint.

Just importing potatoes from California has about 25 percent of the carbon footprint of local potato production. If we can bolster our local food supplies so that we can rely less on imports, we can reduce our carbon footprint in a more sustainable way than just trying to put carbon into our soils.

Some of the recommendations that this committee could make could focus on increasing the funding that’s going towards the Delta wildlife and farmers’ trust so that their programs can reach more farmers, as well as to put permanent cover on blueberry fields and help make the delivery of manure to areas that don’t normally receive manure viable for farmers.

I’ll just add to that the lack of data that we have in B.C., I think, is another area that could really be redressed by the kinds of recommendations this committee could make.

That’s my input. Thank you so much.

[9:30 a.m.]

R. Glumac (Chair): Thank you. Just to clarify, when you were talking about the potatoes from California, did you say that it’s 25 percent more carbon, or was it 25 percent of the carbon? B.C. is 25 percent of…? I wasn’t clear what you were saying.

T. Bouwman: Okay. Sorry, there. The carbon footprint of a locally produced potato…. If it’s one, the carbon footprint of trucking from California is 0.25.

R. Glumac (Chair): So it adds 25 percent.

T. Bouwman: It adds a substantial amount to….

R. Glumac (Chair): Okay.

T. Bouwman: Now, we have to take into account what the carbon footprint of the farms that it would be produced on in California is, and I don’t know those exact numbers. But we can be confident that the transport of our crops is contributing a very significant amount of the carbon footprint of imported produce.

R. Glumac (Chair): Right. Okay.

Megan has a question.

M. Dykeman: Thank you so much. It’s nice to see you, Tristan.

T. Bouwman: Likewise.

M. Dykeman: I’m curious. You mentioned pieces that are missing, like more data. I know that in many applications in the agricultural world, we’ve talked about the challenges of not, say, having extension services available to farmers.

I’m wondering if you could give sort of an idea of a place that’s very much like, say, our size or challenges associated with our geography in Canada, where they’re doing this very well, and that would be a good place to study or look at if there was going to be a shift in services supplied to farmers for transition to this, more readily?

T. Bouwman: Yeah, I mean, B.C. is very unique in that we have so many commodities being produced in such a small area. I think, in my experience, in the Netherlands, there seemed to be a much bigger focus on this.

I’ll also just say when I did work in Africa, the amount of extension services there was, in some ways, abysmal. But in my experience here, I felt like there was as much, or there was plenty of access to extension there too. That’s just to say that even in some of the most challenging low-budget environments, it can still be done. But I’d point you to the Netherlands.

M. Dykeman: Perfect. I really appreciate it. Thanks for your time today.

T. Bouwman: You’re welcome.

R. Glumac (Chair): Thank you.

We have a question from Ian.

I. Paton (Deputy Chair): Hi. Good morning. Thanks, Tristan. A couple of things.

One is that I think I was chatting with you the other day about our supplies of poultry manure and whatnot. They’re actually heading south into Washington state, and some of our farmers in the Fraser Valley aren’t getting the opportunity to utilize poultry manure on our farms, which is such a fantastic source of nitrogen.

The second thing. I don’t know how many people on the screen understand that you’ve worked for many years for Heppell’s, the huge potato-growing family in Cloverdale. When you look at the risk of Heppell’s losing 230-some-odd acres on 192nd street, which could become an industrial site of warehouses like Campbell Heights right across the street….

It’s a long story, but the federal government owns that land, and it looks like it may be taken out of agriculture. As the rest of farmers are trying to do what they can to sequester carbon to participate in regenerative agriculture, what is your feeling? It all goes for naught if we lose farmland to asphalt, to blacktop, to creating more industrial sites or highways.

[9:35 a.m.]

A lot of people think farmland is just being lost to housing, but it’s not. It’s being lost to a lot of different things, such as roads, highways, railways and different things like that. I’ll leave that with you to comment on those things.

T. Bouwman: Yeah. When it comes to poultry manure, there is a common sentiment among farmers that a lot of it is moving to the U.S. I made some phone calls, and it seems like in the past we’ve lost maybe, say, 20 percent of our poultry manure going down south across the border to some organic farms, for the most part.

Now it looks like that demand has dried up in the last year or so, or is substantially reduced. I think that may be less of an impact right now, but over the last number of years, it seems to have been a place that we’ve lost a lot of the nutrients that could have been contributing towards our local soil health.

Regarding the land on 192nd that’s being farmed by Heppell’s Potatoes and Canadian Farms, that land is Can­ada’s earliest farmland. There is no other parcel in western Canada that contributes so much towards displacing imports at a time that we need local production the most, because it produces early, in January — sorry, planted in February and harvesting in May already.

Because it can produce before everything else, it starts the market. To lose that piece would then jeopardize a lot of our ability to repel imports, and that would be hugely damaging to the sector and, like you say, towards the efforts that are being made to improve our soil health.

There have been huge soil health investments made on that piece of land too.

J. Sturdy: To go back to this issue of transport of potatoes, or whatever other crop it happens to be…. Let’s talk about potatoes. You mentioned they have a larger carbon footprint. I think that’s due to transport, and I think that’s generally well recognized. But also there are some significant costs associated with transporting those potatoes at long distance.

Why is it that that’s happening, in your mind? How can those growers out-compete or at least enter into the market here and in the Lower Mainland or in British Columbia, recognizing that those transport costs are so high? What’s the deal with our economics around growing?

T. Bouwman: Yeah, I mean, our costs of production are high, and our land base of production is small, so we can’t meet, with the current land base that we have for regional agriculture, the food needs of our population. We produce about one-third of our local produce needs and about half of our local potato needs.

That’s in part because it’s so expensive to be producing here. And that’s where I think, in the past, the government set targets on how much of our food should be produced locally. Maybe they need some reconsideration.

J. Sturdy: Then would you be advocating for tariffs, that sort of thing, or are you saying that we can’t compete here in British Columbia because our cost of production is too high relative to other jurisdictions?

T. Bouwman: I think there is truth to that and that more investment in local production, both through helping offset the costs of becoming more competitive…. That means technology adoption and innovation. I’d say I think it really comes down to that — helping farmers adopt the technologies that we need in order to be competitive.

We’re also operating on so much of a smaller scale than our competitors to the south.

[9:40 a.m.]

There are also cases where tariffs are important. Because we’re so small, a small increase in acreage…. You know, a 10 percent increase in acreage in Idaho for potatoes would be ten times the total B.C. production.

If they ever produce and dump their products here, then we end up in a lot of trouble. We do have tariffs on potatoes for that, but there are other crops where some protection maybe makes sense.

R. Glumac (Chair): Excellent. Well, thank you so much for your presentation today. We really appreciate it.

T. Bouwman: You’re welcome. Good luck.

R. Glumac (Chair): Well go on to our next presenter from Wesco Food Society.

Sylvain, welcome. We look forward to your presentation today. You have ten minutes, and then another ten minutes for questions afterwards.

Whenever you’re ready.

WESCO FOOD SOCIETY

S. Rollin: Thanks for having me. My name is Sylvain Rollin, and I am the executive director at Wesco Food Society, based on the west coast of Vancouver Island. I’ve operated this business, which supports local food security, for quite a while. When this assembly came to be, I was excited to be able to present to you.

I’m following the guiding questions at the moment. Some of the concerns I have for local agriculture and re­generative soil agriculture and what carbon sequestration could be in the future…. I’m just going to follow up the questions that were sent in this document. I gave a good description of my thoughts, what they are and how we can really enhance the future in this field and support local food production.

When it comes to a tree planting in marginal lands and within cropland and pastures, planting trees where there has been decimation by the logging companies in the past is a great initiative. But we need to assess the longevity of those trees’ lifespan in comparison to the number of trees being cut, which is far greater than the expectancy of a tree-growth timeline. That means we’re cutting too many trees by the timeline that a tree gets to reach maturity. This is affecting a lot of our ecosystem.

Doing this, we’ll be able to protect zones that could see new growth for trees that could grow up to an 800-year lifespan. Are we going to be able to achieve that? Will we see old growth and rainforest again? These are questions I ask. To the common sense of the owl, tree logging is affecting everything. Old trees have a large carbon sequestration capacity compared to younger trees, making them more valuable for our ecosystem, preserving wildlife and other critters and creatures that are supporting that ecosystem.

Creating assessment plans to involve zoning-adapted trees in the rural and urban communities is also a great initiative. When we see small, urban, marginal communities, there hasn’t been much planned, because of production in such environments, to really create more of an ecologically balanced ecosystem, with the massive amount of concrete being poured and whatnot. Especially if we involve fruit trees and edible plants, that would be also beneficial for food security.

[9:45 a.m.]

For the subject of rotational grazing, yes, rotational grazing, by keeping land fertile, using composting pro­vided from a region-wide circular composting system, like the one that has arisen in Alberni Valley, called Sort’n Go, to help farmers gain access to affordable compost in a rural zone adapted for agriculture….

One of the big issues in marginalized communities is ac­cess to resources. Adding access to a composting system that supports that agricultural level would be very beneficial.

Cover cropping. For that subject…. I believe AMP, wildflower, alfalfa are some of the great aspects for cover crop or a great selection for cover cropping. They produce really good carbon sequestration, and also, it’s easy to grow compared to grass. Grass requires a lot of…. Well, it creates a layer in the soil that really stops the sequestration of carbon, compared to those.

Now, for that point, composting or organic amendments…. The most important factor for our ecosystem and soil regeneration is the use of biodynamic farming and organic composting, meaning using nature or the ecological values that we can create and balancing that ecosystem for farming.

Sensing sampling and analysis technologies. There are huge issues around land auditing. This should be more ac­cessible and affordable to assess soil efficiency and organic certification for farmers. It’s difficult for someone to become an audit, as well, since most farmers won’t pay for an audit because of the additional related costs.

For the point decision aid and farm management tool, when levelling the economic level of local farms, I find it very difficult in my region to create local food services for local agriculture and local food accessibility because there is such a large monopoly in local food chain distribution happening here.

It’s seeming to be some sort of egocentricity that was led by multinational food systems that destroyed the development for local food accessibility and development in marginal communities to thrive on. That’s from my research I made in the last few years of my life, travelling Canada and investing research time on what the food system in Canada was and now is becoming or trying to become.

Now, the rest is basically the questions. Am I supposed to stop now or answer these questions?

R. Glumac (Chair): Which questions are you referring to?

S. Rollin: The next part of the documents is the guiding questions. What opportunities exist to improve soil and increased carbon content in B.C.?

R. Glumac (Chair): Yeah, you can touch upon…. You have roughly three minutes left. If there’s something key that you’d like to share your thoughts on around those questions, that’d be great.

S. Rollin: Okay. Well, I’ll go with the main one, then.

How can the provincial government encourage and support farmers’, ranchers’, producers’, growers’ and proces­sors’ use of made-in-B.C. innovation to increase carbon sequestration? That answer, to me, is by working together with the local agrifood system industry on the rise.

There are many non-profit groups, ours included, that are engaging in creating a localized food system to create better regenerative agriculture and land value for food accessibility and development to counter the desecration that has been created because of a mass food production system led by a for-profit corporate food chain system that created a world of local food development barriers and ecological insecurity around the world.

A local food system based out of trade within marginal communities is a way to enhance local agriculture stability that will help generate more growth and increase carbon sequestration provincewide.

[9:50 a.m.]

My calculations are that this new system will rise to be­come a provincewide board of trade and will spread across Canada and other countries as the system that supports a localized economy and food security.

Am I close to my time?

R. Glumac (Chair): You still have a minute.

S. Rollin: Okay.

How can collaboration between farmers, innovators, re­searchers and the provincial government be improved? By favouring collaboration with non-profit bodies around B.C. that work towards local agrifood development, food accessibility and ecologically valued land to sustainably create a better local economy that strives for the many marginalized communities that are now a dominant equation in B.C. and Canada.

What are the barriers or risks to adopting practices and technologies that are associated with increasing carbon sequestration in the agricultural sector? The barriers are that there aren’t many supportive actions to boosting these types of practices. The risk is not properly assessing the beneficial and economic value of such a provincewide movement. Agriculture needs to be recognized as a community-involved action plan and not just left for the farmers to build.

Can I still go?

R. Glumac (Chair): Well, we’re out of time, unless there’s something you’d like to add quickly.

S. Rollin: I’m just grateful to be able to share these, be­cause these are questions I cannot really share with anyone, and it’s great to be part of this. Thank you for listening.

R. Glumac (Chair): Thank you for your presentation.

Do committee members have any questions?

All right. We thank you for your presentation today and for your contribution to the committee’s work. Thank you so much.

We don’t have any questions from committee members, so we’ll move, I think, now, towards recess. I think we have the next presenter scheduled at ten after ten.

S. Rollin: Thank you very much. Have a good day.

R. Glumac (Chair): The committee is now in recess until 10:10.

The committee recessed from 9:53 a.m. to 10:10 a.m.

[R. Glumac in the chair.]

R. Glumac (Chair): All right. We’ll call the committee back to order.

Do we have the next presenter ready to go?

Welcome, Harold. It’s good to see you. We look forward to your presentation today at the committee.

Whenever you’re ready, you can take it away. You have ten minutes for a presentation, and then we have ten minutes for questions.

FARMLAND DEFENSE

H. Steves: I think most of you know me, so I won’t introduce myself.

This is the 50th anniversary of the agricultural land re­serve that was founded in 1973 and 55 years since I was elected to Richmond council. I’ve now retired from Richmond council, but I was on the Lower Mainland regional parks board in 1969 as well. At that time, we were losing large acreages of farmland, and I realized this was a land use issue. Even though we’re talking about sequestering carbon, that too is somewhat of a land use issue as well as a biological one, as I will point out.

In 1971, I was elected to the NDP provincial executive, and I drafted the agricultural policy for the ’72 election to establish a land zoning program to set aside areas for agricultural production and to prevent such land being subdivided for residential and industrial uses.

I was elected MLA, and in 1973, we introduced the Land Commission Act. It had four objectives that many of you may not know about: (1) preserve agricultural land for farm use, (2) preserve greenbelt in and around urban areas, (3) preserve land for urban or industrial development and (4) preserve parkland for recreational use.

The ALR also had a land bank to get farmers back on the land. About 8,000 to 10,000 acres were leased or sold to young farmers in the first ten years, and I’ll comment on that later. An agricultural income assurance program was established to assist farmers in the lean times. These benefits were eliminated by subsequent provincial governments. However, reducing GHGs in the ALR is a land use issue, as I said, as much as it is a biological issue.

In 2006, I was chair of agriculture for Metro Vancouver. After several years of meetings with farmers and other stakeholders, we produced several reports on food security, the Metro Vancouver food system strategy in 2011 and the regional food system action plan in 2016. We also produced recommendations for the use of Colony Farm. One-third was used to demonstrate greenhouse-gas-sequestering farming methods and have hedgerows to sequester GHGs and provide habitats for birds, bees and beneficial insects.

In 2006, a report by the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture, B.C.’s Food Self-Reliance, recommended that to produce a healthy diet for British Columbians, farmland with access to irrigation will have to increase by 92,000 hectares. In 2022, Stats Canada reported a loss of 325,000 hectares of land under cultivation since 2006, although, presumably, most of that was not irrigated.

In the rich soils of Metro Vancouver, only 17 percent is growing vegetables; 49 percent is pastures, hay or un­farmed. Now, B.C. is promoting agritech industrial-type uses on farmland. A report from Invest B.C. to Metro Vancouver indicates that most agritech companies don’t want to locate in the ALR. With over 100 employees each, these companies and Vertical Harvest, the largest vertical greenhouse company, want to be near cities and town centres, where the workers and customers live. This saves the soil and reduces greenhouse gases.

In spite of EVs, B.C.’s fossil-fuel-burning vehicle stock is growing at near double the population growth rate, driven by automobile-oriented urban growth in the urban edge and beyond.

[10:15 a.m.]

B.C. will have more fossil fuel vehicles in 2030 than any time in B.C. history. This is an unintended consequence of expanding into farmland and rural areas, and I think this is almost as important as sequestering carbon to the soil.

At the same time, trucking long distances has increased. In 2021 a report on food flows in Metro Vancouver noted the source of B.C. food supply includes 39.6 percent from international imports, 21.7 percent from other provinces and 34.4 percent from B.C.

There are solutions. At the World Habitat Forum in 2006, a group from the UN met with myself, Skip Triplett, president of KPU, and others and asked us to establish an urban farm school. Subsequently, Richmond bought the Garden City lands, 136 acres in central Richmond, from the federal government, and KPU started North America’s first farm school. Students are taught regenerative organic agriculture and how to rebuild the soil and sequester carbon.

Richmond provides incubator farms for them to im­prove their skills. Then they go on to farm unused or unutilized farmland or vacant land around mega-mansions.

However, there are problems. The young agrarians are attempting to find land to lease with some difficulty. When they do find land, the owners often only provide one-year leases. We need the B.C. government to reinstate the land bank program of 1973. A requirement would be to rebuild the soil with organics, compost and manures, and to sequester carbon.

Also, Metro Vancouver should be encouraged by the province and even assisted in getting Colony Farm underway.

Small farms could be encouraged to try different methods of carbon sequestration. On our farm, we’re experimenting with a new process of using bacteria and micro-organisms to heat up and ferment fresh manure so that it does not lose as much nitrogen and carbon and is ready for growing vegetables in just over a month. We are setting up a demonstration garden in the spring.

As more land is brought into production, carbon se­questration will increase, especially if you’re putting a rider on it that those that acquire land have to do so.

However, as crops increase, it’s important for B.C. at all levels to instruct all their facilities to buy local. We have a real problem with critical mass because the main major food chains won’t buy our products because we can’t produce it in quantity. The B.C. government and local governments can solve that problem.

It is also important to support B.C. farms in the hard times with the new agricultural insurance program, and certainly, the farmers that are affected by high hay prices right now could benefit from it.

In conclusion, it isn’t just a simple problem of sequestering carbon in the soils of the land that is farmed. We must get B.C. farmland back into production using soil carbon sequestration practices, and also reduce cars and trucking.

The ALR is still the most successful agricultural land program in North America. It prevented urban sprawl and forced cities to develop walkable communities with parks, trails and habitat coexisting with local food production.

We need a commitment to support better local, regional and provincial land use planning that has the strength equal to the ALR of 1973, and that is really where sequestering carbon comes in.

This was our original vision. With courage and perse­verance, we can maintain that vision over the next 50 years.

R. Glumac (Chair): Excellent. Thank you so much, Harold, for your presentation.

We have a question from Megan.

M. Dykeman: Hi, Harold. It’s nice to see you again. Thank you for your presentation, and thank you for sharing the history of the original land bank and the changes over time. I appreciated your comments about how it’s as much of a land use challenge as it is otherwise.

In terms of supports, there have been a few presenters that have mentioned the lack of extension services. I’m wondering what other sort of supports you think need to be in place for farmers in terms of either education or resources like some of the work that universities like KPU and others do, providing research or scientific supports.

[10:20 a.m.]

What other pieces do you think might be missing, and how do you see those roles being filled? Do you see them being filled with post-secondary institutions, non-profits? I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

H. Steves: That’s actually where Colony Farm comes in. Colony Farm was given to Metro Vancouver, and it was supposed to be farmed. I think it was given by the prov­ince 20 years ago. Our report on Colony Farm was to do just that, but Metro Vancouver was going to organize the demonstration farms and provide input. That didn’t happen.

Since that time, I’ve talked to both Kwantlen and UBC, and I know UBC has been talking to Metro Vancouver about getting involved. It’s a 600-acre farm of which 200 acres was supposed to be set aside for this kind of research. It was a research farm at one time, and our intent was to make it a research farm again.

In terms of KPU, the Garden City lands, that’s exactly what they are doing. I think it shows that we need it on a much larger scale, and I think that’s where the province comes in. The province should be supporting these programs. They could start with talking to Metro about Colony Farm because Metro was told they had to farm it, and it hasn’t happened.

R. Glumac (Chair): I don’t see any further questions.

With that, thank you again, Harold, for your time today and for sharing your vast amount of wisdom that you have in this area.

A. Singh: It was good to see you, Harold.

H. Steves: Thanks very much. See you all later.

R. Glumac (Chair): All right. Take care.

Our next presenter — we’ll let them in now. We have Raymond Lee and Paolo Orosa from ONT Holdings.

If you guys would like to introduce yourselves and then take it away. You have ten minutes for a presentation and ten minutes for questions following.

ONT HOLDINGS

R. Lee: All right. Morning, everyone. Thank you for this opportunity to showcase our product and company for the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fish and Food. My name is Raymond Lee, and I’m the president and co-founder at ONT Holdings located in Langley, B.C.

ONT is an agriculture technology company founded on the belief that the solution to climate change and food security are not opposing forces. They are issues that can be solved together. At ONT, we use IoT, ICT and AI technology to grow microalgae faster than anyone in Canada, perhaps in the world. Today I’ll be sharing how we use microalgae to fight climate change.

ONT strives to remove atmospheric carbon dioxide with microalgae, which is a profitable way to clean the planet. Algae is one of the most efficient ways to remove large amounts of carbon dioxide as it eats carbon dioxide as a food source to grow and release oxygen. Science speaks for itself, and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Algae has been cleaning our planet for millions of years naturally, producing over 85 percent of the planet’s oxygen. Over time, even our food chain has become reliant on algae as its foundation.

Microalgae is also one of the most well studied micro-organisms, and it’s easy to grow. All we need is CO₂ water, sunlight and a bit of nutrient. ONT grows microalgae in a closed-loop photobioreactor, away from potential contamination in a controlled environment.

Our technology optimizes and accelerates the natural carbon dioxide conversion process in a closed-loop system that completely controls light, temperature and nutrients. We feed the captured carbon dioxide to the microalgae, and the microalgae eats it as a food source. It grows exponentially.

[10:25 a.m.]

It takes up to 2½ tonnes of CO₂ to make one tonne of algae biomass. This biomass is the algae that comes from the photobioreactor, and it can be made into many valuable products that we need, like biofertilizer, animal feeds, supplements, biofuels, etc., just to name a few. We empty half of the photobioreactor every day, and it regrows the next day, just like that.

The culture media is used as a completely organic and nutrition rich soil amendment. Our flagship product, ONT Bio-Enhancer, is OMRI-listed for organic use. A liquid soil amendment harnesses the power of the algae to reinvigorate the microbiome in soil, helping beneficial bacteria and fungi to proliferate. This promotes soil health and plant growth.

Over time, it will help reduce the needs for chemical-based fertilizer and helps lower the greenhouse gas emissions of farms. By implementing our innovative solutions, farmers can expect a healthier bottom line while simultaneously contributing to a more sustainable and responsible approach to agriculture.

This year, we have been working together with universities like UFV, SFU BCCAI, plus other private groups to do more trials on different crops. Soil health is at the core of regenerative agriculture, and we’re committed to it.

As I mentioned before, the biomass can also be turned into animal feeds or food ingredients that are healthy and rich in protein, carbohydrates, fatty acids and tons of vitamins and minerals. Ultimately, the algae both cleans the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and serves as a solution for food security. Each of these commodities are high in demand. Our vision is profitable and makes good returns for investors. It’s, most importantly, a carbon-negative solution for agriculture and energy.

Moving on to the process in the business is of saving the planet. We have set up a six-tonne pilot plant in Langley, B.C. That is in full operation, consistently demonstrating the growing process of microalgae.

Our next stage is to set up 100-tonne facility in the greater Vancouver area. We need a little over two acres of greenhouse land, which would be enough to neutralize 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per year. Envision how beneficial it will be for the local people if we can help pull 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air that we breathe in every day and the benefits that can help our medical system long term because we have cleaner air.

Now take that vision and multiply it. If we have all the local cities and farms adapt to the use of our soil amendment for their crops, plants, grass, flowers, etc., our carbon footprint will improve drastically as well. Our soil amendment helps to improve soil health and promotes healthier plants to capture CO₂ from the atmosphere and sequester it in the soil — a win-win situation for everyone.

Our team have tested and perfected our project for almost a decade to break down this concept into its simplest form. It almost sounds magical, but the fully functioning process of nature has been reproduced in a controlled environment. The potential is massive. But to roll out a solution like this at a speed the planet requires, we need lots of help and financial support from the government, private sector, businesses, charitable foundations and individuals who put the planet first.

Regenerative agriculture is farming that supports soil health, food security and the planet. We are doing our part. We hope more people can join and spread awareness to support our fight against climate change. Ultimately, I believe there are great opportunities for a project or solution like ours to help improve soil health and increase carbon content in agricultural soils, especially in B.C. and across Canada.

That brings my presentation to a close. Thank you again to the committee members for this opportunity.

Thank you, Dr. Laila from SFU BCCAI for recommending us as a presenter.

At this time, I would like to pass it on to my colleague Paolo there, our in-house biotechnologist, with the Q-and-A part.

Over to you, Paolo.

P. Orosa: Yes, any questions are welcome at this point.

[10:30 a.m.]

R. Glumac (Chair): Any questions from the committee members?

Just to clarify, you have a demonstration plant operational right now, you’re saying, and it currently sequesters 10,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year?

R. Lee: Well, actually….

Sorry. Let me take that.

P. Orosa: Go ahead, Raymond.

R. Lee: The pilot plan is just demonstrating the growing process of the microalgae. For the 10,000 sequestering of CO₂ per year, that’s our next stage that we’re looking at, if we want to extend. So we’re not at the second stage yet.

R. Glumac (Chair): Okay. The microalgae that you produce, you were saying, could be feedstock, food for livestock, basically. You were saying that you can also put it into the soil. Is that right?

P. Orosa: Yeah. Our main product right now is our bioenhancer, which is a liquid soil amendment. The way that works, it’s made through the culture media of the algae. When we grow the algae, we can separate the algae into the biomass and the culture media. The biomass, that itself could be used for animal feed or bioenergy or multiple sources. But the liquid culture media, that is our soil amendment, and that holds several metabolites and hormones that we can use for plant growth.

When we apply it to soil, either to drip or foliage spray, it can help increase the nutrient availability for the plants by increasing the amount of soil micro-organisms present. Through increased nutrient availability, we can improve plant growth, as well as reducing the amount of fertilizers needed.

By reducing the amount of fertilizers, it also reduces the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released through the agriculture sector, while also increasing the amount of food produced.

R. Glumac (Chair): Excellent. Well, it’s a very interesting technology that you guys have there. So thank you for sharing that with the committee today.

I don’t see any further questions, but thank you so much for your presentation.

R. Lee: Okay. Thank you so much.

P. Orosa: Thank you.

R. Glumac (Chair): See you.

The next presenter, our final presenter, is not here yet. Is that correct?

K. Riarh (Committee Clerk): That’s correct. She wasn’t scheduled until 10:50, but we’re hoping she will log in momentarily.

R. Glumac (Chair): Okay. Yeah. We’re a bit ahead of schedule, so I guess we’ll take a recess until let’s just say 11:40. Sorry. I’m on Calgary time, 10:40.

So we’ll reconvene at 10:40.

The committee recessed from 10:33 a.m. to 10:41 a.m.

[R. Glumac in the chair.]

R. Glumac (Chair): We’ll call the meeting back to order. We have our next speaker coming in.

Praveena, welcome. Thank you for joining us today. We look forward to hearing your presentation to the committee.

You have ten minutes to share your thoughts with us. Then we have ten minutes for questions following that.

Take it away whenever you’re ready.

ISHA FOUNDATION

P. Sridhar: Hi. Thank you.

I’m the chief technology officer for the Save Soil Movement. It’s a global movement. We have been building awareness on soil health across the world and asking for policies to support farmers to manage their soils sustainably in a healthy manner. I come from there.

I’m quite honoured to be sitting in front of all of you because British Columbia, if anything, has done the most amount of work in a concerted manner to build soil health, be it for the foragers or the soil maps, all of it.

The aspects that we want to share here with you as a movement is this. The way we look at policy is there are four pillars for any actions to be taken by farmers with respect to managing their soil sustainably.

One is to do with the knowledge systems which support farmers to do the right thing. I see that there’s quite a bit of publication with British Columbia, even on the website and everywhere, which talks about even drought-proofing foraging crops to all the other kinds of crops. So the knowledge systems that are needed for farmers to adopt certain behaviour to kind of build soil health and climate mitigate is existing. It’s catalogued quite well.

The second element is: how do you support farmers? When we say support farmers, one is to have knowledge in place, another is to hand-hold farmers in adopting the knowledge. That’s the second pillar.

The third one will be having clear legislation in place which guides in terms of what should be done to soils, just like air or water as a resource. From my observation of most of the legislation, the soil health mandate, in terms of legally, is also well founded in most of the rules and regulations of this region.

The fourth one being: do we have monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to see whatever legal interventions and projects that we set up to build soil health? How are they functioning? Should there be course corrections? Should there be a change in direction? Should there be encouragement to whatever is working by allocating more funds or resources?

[10:45 a.m.]

So from all of it, from having done the analysis and also engaging a few of the farmers with whom we have interacted in Canada, what we find is that the farmer hand-holding ecosystem is what we couldn’t really find a lot of information about. There exists knowledge, there exist schemes from the government to support the farmers to adopt the right thing, however the farmers support it.

This is one particular aspect I thought we, as a movement, would like to understand and maybe share with the standing committee — to understand it and see if there are any ways we can support for this particular aspect.

Why I say this is one particular aspect that we would want to look closely at, and maybe interact with farmers in the region and understand, is because we have been working with marginal and small farmers in South Asia. We have had the experience of seeing what it takes to have the farmers adopt certain things. This is one particular aspect where we think we can share what we know and maybe, if need be, assist in any manner possible.

Second, we have also been working with carbon credits, accessing project development organizations like Iora, Boomitra and a few other companies who are using hybrid mechanisms to evaluate the carbon sequestered by farmers. When I say hybrid, one is doing on-ground soil testing, and the second is also doing remote sensing–based measurements of carbon over a period of time and assessing it.

From our experience, we are trying to reduce the cost of measuring carbon and accessing the carbon markets for farmers. We are still in the process of rolling this whole thing out. We have not yet been able to realize credits for farmers, but we work with over 183,000 farmers in India, and out of them, at least, we have shortlisted around 5,000 of them for whom we are trying to get carbon credit access.

That’s one particular area we could share our experience in terms of, because I think this committee also wants to look at what can be the accessing… How there can be innovations to help access the carbon finance space.

So that’s my submission.

R. Glumac (Chair): Excellent. Well, thank you very much for your presentation.

We have a question from Megan.

M. Dykeman: Thanks for your presentation.

Quick question: if you had to identify the one greatest challenge you’ve seen…? You’ve mentioned that you work with farmers internationally. What has the major challenge been, do you think, that you’ve seen sort of uniformly no matter where you’re working?

P. Sridhar: The behaviour change. Whenever you want them to start sequestering carbon, it requires change in behaviour.

When I say change in behaviour, it could be change in cropping pattern, or it could be change in the way you tend to the land, or it could be expenditure related to how you tend to the land.

Let’s say we want…. I think Canada is mostly no-till farming, so I don’t think you will have the issue, but in our region, it’s mostly till farming. When we want farmers to move from tilling to no-till, there is a change in equipment needed. So there may be willingness to change, but there has to be support to transition towards change in behaviour, either by having the equipment in rental or having it in rotational basis. That’s the biggest challenge we see with all farmers.

The trust. One more thing is that farmers don’t trust people who are not farmers. We have been working with farmers for over 25 years. Our task has been that…. The first five years we worked with a small group of farmers who could realize success from whatever we told, and they became our leaders or change-makers in the farming community.

When your livelihood doesn’t depend on land, and you come and preach to me, I’m not going to listen to you, because farming is one of the most risky professions. I don’t know how many of us realize it, but it’s the most risky profession, in which most of the parameters of success are not in our control.

[10:50 a.m.]

One of the ways we have seen is that to build trust takes time. The easiest and the shortest way to build trust is to work with successful farmers who are the guides of the farmers who are in transition. This is the second aspect.

M. Dykeman: That’s a great point. I really like what you said there about the challenge with trust.

You’re a farmer of poultry. When somebody comes and they’re not from that world and have a change…. As many farmers have seen over the years, there are lots of people who have preached changes over time, and without the perspective and the context, it’s just very difficult. So I really appreciate that.

Thank you for your presentation.

R. Glumac (Chair): Yes. Thank you.

On one of the pillars, you mentioned clear legislation to guide what should be done with soils. What kinds of legislation do you have in mind when you’re referring to that?

P. Sridhar: Right now, at the moment, we are in the process of the feeding the soil monitoring directive of the EU. The EU has come up with and is saying…. What are the ways in which we monitor soil health? What should be the parameters that are supposed to be measured, and how do you ensure that they are monitored? This is something that we are feeding into.

Our simple one-line solution with respect to soil legislation would be: how do you measure soil health so that it’s easily communicated about?

When we measure soil health, there are 20 parameters we measure — macro, micro, rare elements — but we never measure biological parameters. None of the soil health laboratories measure soil biological parameters. No one looks at the proportion of bacteria and fungus. For any soils to become healthy…. The starting point of health is life, introducing life back into soil.

How do you introduce life back into soil? First of all, you will have bacteria, fungus — different kinds of inoculum that you introduce. We find that most of the soil inoculum is very similar to the gut microbiome of the bovine animals of the region. Your animal waste, in simple terms. They carry the biome. So that can be the source of your life. What is the food for the source? The food for the source is the organic matter.

In simple terms, can you have legislation which measures the life in soil, not just the macro and micronutrient parameters?

The minute you bring back life into soil…. What happens is the soil food web begins to reform itself. All the links which are broken will start re-establishing themselves, and they start producing the nutrients required for the crops.

I think for an acre of any crop, certain crops…. You may need a grain’s worth of phosphate for the crop. The problem is that the phosphate is not in an available format.

When we provide fertilizers, it’s all…. The percentage of phosphate that is made available is a certain percentage, whereas when you have life in soil, it knows how to make the unavailable form of nutrients available for plants in a bargain for the sugar and food that the plants harvest through the process of photosynthesis, in very simple terms. I think Elaine Ingham speaks elaborately about it.

The simplest legislation, I would say, is how much the percentage of soil organic matter is in the soil. Measure the life in soil. These are the two specific elements. There is an upward trajectory of organic matter in soil. There is definitely life being…. Bringing back to life is happening.

The legislation, I would say, is…. Have a standard. At the moment, we asked for legislation to have 3 to 6 percent of soil organic matter as a minimum in agriculture soils.

We definitely understand that’s not possible in arid climates or poor parental material. So it’s suggestive. To put a number gives imagination to people and says: “Oh, we need something like this.” Achieve. You need to think of increasing your soil organic matter in your soils.

That would be the legislative recommendation I have to share.

R. Glumac (Chair): Thank you. Just so I understand, the reason you’re suggesting that there be a recommended amount of organic material in soil as a guideline….

[10:55 a.m.]

What would be the purpose of having that in legislation? What would be the end goal of that?

P. Sridhar: When you want to achieve something, you have a target. You need to work towards it. I’m running at a certain pace right now. I’m able to do only so many miles in so many minutes. Whereas if I set up a target, I need to prepare. I need to practice enough for me to get to the target.

What are those targets? If we establish those targets, then we need to start working with farmers and supporting them, incentivizing them to bring back the organic matter into the soil.

All the policy level interventions — or, rather, programmatic interventions — will be towards achieving this goal of organic matter.

R. Glumac (Chair): In achieving that goal of organic matter, what is the end result we’re hoping to achieve? Is it better food production? Is it sequestering carbon? Is it all of the above?

P. Sridhar: So soil, organic matter, technically speaking — 1 percent of carbon is equal to 1.73 matter. That’s the conversion. That means every percentage increase in soil of carbon leads to 1.73 percent increase in matter. Or rather when you put 1.73 percent of matter, you’re increasing the carbon 1 percent. So there is carbon finance accessible.

Second, when you improve organic matter in the soil, the resilience of crops with respect to climate shocks in­creases. The quality of food improves. The nutrition density harvested in the food increases and the food security, in terms of yields, definitely improves. So all of these things. There are some 12 SDGs, sustainable development goals, that get met when you increase soil health.

The simplest way to improve and establish a foundation for soil health is soil organic matter — increasing soil organic matter. The way to achieve it are to put animal and plant waste back into the soil.

R. Glumac (Chair): Thank you.

A follow-up question from Megan.

M. Dykeman: Very quickly.

I looked through your slides and one of the questions I meant to ask was…. I see that you’re part of the Isha Foundation. I was just wondering if you could tell us just very quickly about the work you do and about the history and how you got into this part of soil.

P. Sridhar: Okay. We have been working with farmers in south India from 1998. In the south of India, we don’t have the luxury of glacier-fed rivers or rains. Monsoon rains, they’re very quickly packed into less than 30 days of torrential rains. After that, there is no rain. Our farmers are going through a lot of droughts and flood cycles.

We have built resilience in farmers in that part of the world by training them in regenerative agriculture practices and bringing trees back onto the land — as in, having trees as part of the farming practice along with the annual field crops. With this, we are seeing farmer livelihoods improve by at least three to eight times. We have also been able to connect whatever good produce that’s happening because of good practices to the markets and get farmers premium prices.

Right now we are working with over 183,000 farmers in the south of India. We also have aggregated farmers. In India, we don’t have unions. We have farmer producer companies. Over 12,000 farmers are aggregated, and the producers which are of higher quality get premium prices. Be it coconut, be it millets, be it vegetables — all of that is produced by these farmers. We are assisting farmers in hand-holding and behaviour change at the production spectrum until the consumption spectrum.

The push and pull mechanisms — we are working on both ends of the spectrum by assisting farmers in change of behaviour. With change of behaviour, when not rewarded, there is a possibility of people going back. We are trying to ensure the change of behaviour becomes semi-permanent and eventually permanent because they realize it.

In the semi-permanent to permanent phase, you really need a pull mechanism. That pull mechanism is usually markets’ willingness to pay a higher price for the produce. We establish that also through market linkages.

[11:00 a.m.]

M. Dykeman: Great. Thanks again. I appreciate your presentation today.

P. Sridhar: Thank you. Thank you for listening to me.

R. Glumac (Chair): So your experience is…. Basically, what you’re saying is that you’re working in an environment that is subject to the potential of drought and that by enhancing soil health, you are preventing that drought from happening on the farms and having the farms able to produce longer. Is that part of it?

P. Sridhar: I’ll answer this with a case study. There’s a coconut farmer in one of the most driest parts of south India. It’s the third year of consistent drought, no rains until the third year.

The neighbouring farmers have started slashing the co­conut trees down. This person was getting around 140 nuts per tree on a regular year. With the current rate of drought, the number of nuts has gone down to 90 nuts per tree, but his coconut trees are not drying or dying. So there is climate resilience built into the farm because of these habits.

R. Glumac (Chair): Excellent.

Jordan has a question.

J. Sturdy: You had some stats or data on percentage of organic matter in soils globally and perhaps in India. Do you have any sense of what averages may be in agricultural soil in British Columbia?

P. Sridhar: No, I do not have it.

R. Glumac (Chair): Did you have any follow-up, Jordan, or is that the only question?

Okay. We’ll go to Aman.

A. Singh: Not a question. Thank you for the presentation. That was incredibly knowledgable, and I just wanted to get on here and thank you for that presentation. I am looking forward to maybe finding out more from you. That was really, really knowledgable.

R. Russell: Similar to Aman, I really appreciate the presentation and your depth of knowledge on this.

Particularly, I have to say that one of the links I think we struggle with sometimes is that connection back to livelihoods and the quality-of-life piece from engaging in some of this stuff. So I really appreciate you making that connection explicitly for us.

P. Sridhar: Thanks a lot for being patient with me.

R. Glumac (Chair): Thank you so much for your time today. We all very much appreciated your presentation.

With that, committee members, if there’s nothing else, I will ask for a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 11:03 a.m.