However, many Prairie farmers aren’t buying what they’re selling, says a University of Calgary professor.

“In some regions (the Prairies), the concept of soil health is met with caution, skepticism or even rejection,” said Sabrina Peric, an associate professor in the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Arts.

Peric was one of dozens of researchers and soil scientists who spoke at the Soils for our Future conference, held July 20-25 in Winnipeg.

She presented the results of a survey of Canadian farmers, in which researchers tried to measure producer perceptions of soil health.

Scientists and policy makers may be fully on-board with the concept, but many Canadian farmers are not.

“Several producers … in conversations with me, often (described) the idea of soil health as a contemporary fad. (Something) meant to catch people’s eye … but in general, of little use to producers,” Peric said.

“Our research suggests we need to take a moment to look at the … acceptability of this concept.”

The study hasn’t been published yet, but Peric and her fellow researchers looked at a range of information. She collaborated with Anna Bettini of the University of Calgary and Kevin Tiessen of the International Development Research Centre, a federal organization.

They received 117 responses to surveys, had 37 in-depth interviews with farmers, met with 12 crop organizations and analyzed data collected by the Canadian Roundtable on Sustainable Crops and Soil Conservations Council of Canada.

In summary, they found:

• Prairie farmers are more skeptical about soil health than producers in Ontario.

• There’s a generational divide, with older farmers being more resistant to the concept.

• Many farmers don’t understand soil health and what it means.

Prairie farmers, particularly producers from Saskatchewan and Alberta, said that the government emphasis on soil health is yet another “top down” regulation, which is driven by urban values, Peric said.

Put another way, some farmers believe that people in Ottawa and Toronto are telling them how to grow crops and raise livestock.

One example is cover crops.

The federal government has invested tens of millions of dollars to convince farmers to seed cover crops, which are often planted in the fall and keep a living root in the soil after the cash crop is harvested.

“The thing about cover crops, we farm in a semi-arid climate. There’s not a lot of extra moisture around, especially in the fall,” Jake Leguee, who farms near Weyburn, Sask., said in 2022.

Prairie farmers have repeatedly delivered this message, but it seems like no one is listening.

“One thing that came across clearly (in the survey) is that for a long time, producer knowledge and expertise has been ignored by scientists and policy makers,” Peric said.

The resentment toward soil health policies could be linked to larger grievances in western Canadian agriculture.

The federal government has set targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, and many farmers dislike those policies.

“Soil health is an increasingly important part of a broader national set of policies intended to target climate change and achieve net-zero goals in Canada,” says a description of Peric’s research.

One interesting finding from the University of Calgary survey is that many producers don’t understand the term “soil health.”

“There is huge conceptual confusion that we noticed across Canada,” Peric said.

“Many producers want to know, who is deciding the meaning?”

The problem could be that soil health is still a new concept.

For decades, soil scientists and farmers talked about the quality of the soil rather than soil health.

Jeff Schoenau, a University of Saskatchewan soil scientist, believes soil health and soil quality are basically the same thing.

“In my early career, I was looking at the effects of the adoption of no-till (on soil quality),” he said.

“We were looking at soil organic matter content, the nitrogen supplying power, we were looking at the soil aggregation or structure and water infiltration…. Those are the same parameters we use today as measures of soil health.”

The post Soil health skepticism prevalent appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Nick Betts, CANZA’s managing director, announced the project Monday morning at CANZA’s Seeding New Ground event in Ottawa.

“For the last year, CANZA has been working on understanding how we can measure soil carbon and soil nutrition in a way that works for farmers (at) a lower cost, that can still meet global reporting requirements verification requirements,” Betts said.

The $4 million project is funded by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) along with partners Maple Leaf Foods and Nutrien Ag Solutions.

“We did this at a pilot stage in 2023/2024,” Betts said. “What was announced this morning was an opportunity … thanks to Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, to take this to the next level.”

CANZA conducted two pilot projects in Saskatchewan and Manitoba to test out its MRV Framework. The framework was developed in collaboration with the Smart Prosperity Institute (SPI), informed by a four year AAFC-funded research project at SPI. CANZA said in a release the results of these pilots provided critical and positive insights into the framework’s effectiveness, accuracy and scalability.

The $4-million project aims to expand upon the MRV framework and the 5,000 acres tested in Saskatchewan to 15,000 acres across four different locations in the province. CANZA said with its partners, it will facilitate three activities: 1) optimizing the soil sampling process; 2) developing a handheld, in-field MRV tool; and 3) facilitating knowledge sharing of the MRV system. CANZA said farmers and agronomists will also be engaged in this project “as critical partners in testing and demonstrating the processes and tools ” which will help ensure the MRV system’s effectiveness and widespread adoption.

Tim Faveri, vice-president of Sustainability & Stakeholder Relations at Nutrien said the initiative is “very farm-centred” and will allow producers to”make thier business choices and provide tools for them to be successful and monetize their practices.”

CANZA said the goal of the program is to develop a “regionally relevant, cost-effective, and scalable MRV system” which aims to “enable farmers to quickly and cost-effectively measure the environmental outcomes of their climate-smart farming practices.”

Farmers can monetize outcomes by selling credits to companies looking to offset emissions or “increase the profitability of their commodity within their value chain or other sectors.”

Kathleen Sullivan, vice-president of Government Relations at Maple Leaf Foods, said this initiative would contribute to Maple Leaf’s vision “to be the most sustainable protein company in the world.”

“By developing advanced MRV tools and processes, we are together taking a significant step towards a more sustainable, and really importantly, a more profitable future for Canadian agriculture,” she said.

Betts said the purpose of this project is to give producers “another tool in their toolbox, to be able to value environmental outcomes, value the carbon in their soil, but also understand what their soil competition system looks like in a better way, so they can manage it better and get better yields.”

He said farmers are already doing a great job, “but if we can make it even easier, it’s going to make it even easier for them to stay afloat, build a secure system, give them profit.”

He said the need for this program came from CANZA’s partners.

“One of the core pieces they wanted to work on was climate smart agriculture and understand, what does it mean to measure carbon in a field?”

“We’re not very good at measuring what it means when we’re talking about a rotational crop,” Betts said, “so taking that and giving farmer credit for what they’re actually putting in the ground and storing for the rest of us is going to be really a key piece of giving them the value they need.”

AAFC contributed $2 million to the project from the Agricultural Clean Technology Program – Research and Innovation Stream. Nutrien and Maple Leaf Foods matched these funds.

The post Soil carbon measurement and verification system launched appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“We’re making an assumption that sustainability isn’t going away,” said Bryan Prystupa, senior product owner for FCC AgExpert. “Regardless of campaign slogans or what political colour is leading our country, if we focus on the value we can deliver for the farmer, none of that should matter.”

Prystupa was talking about AgExpert’s new feature at Manitoba Ag Days 2025 in Brandon on Wednesday.

AgExpert is two different, but related software products. AgExpert Accounting, which Prystupa describes as similar to QuickBooks, delves into the bookkeeping and financial management of a farm. AgExpert Field is a field record keeping tool that tracks things like field boundaries, yield data, and various other activities associated with farming to help calculate that cost of production. The sustainability tool is an option that was recently added to AgExpert Field.

Basically, the tool takes the data already being collected to track production costs and creates reports that give farmers insights into their net carbon footprint.

“It can estimate the carbon my farm sequestered last year and the history of my soil organic carbon going as far back as 40 years, all with two clicks,” said Prystupa.

He stressed that greenhouse gas emissions are only half of the equation.

“It was very important for us to also measure the carbon sequestration getting pumped into the dirt, the soil organic carbon, thanks to the crops, the pastureland and the tree belt.”

Prystupa said the developers made certain that the sustainability feature is non-judgmental. It won’t tell a farmer that they need to do better. “We are neutral,” he said, adding that the feature is also optional. “If there’s interest by a user, great and if there isn’t, no sweat either.”

Read more about AgExpert’s sustainability tool in an upcoming print edition. For more stories on Manitoba Ag Days 2025, visit, our landing page.

The post New tool for carbon footprint tracking unveiled at Manitoba AgDays appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“The United States and Mexico are working on implementing measures to resume the normal flow of Mexican exports,” it said in a statement.

It added that the measures did not apply to other exports and control measures were being implemented.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Friday said that Mexico’s chief veterinary officer had notified it of the detection of NWS in a cow at a checkpoint near the southern border with Guatemala.

NWS maggots often enter through an open wound and feed on living flesh of warm-blooded animals, including people, USDA said.

It warned that infestations can be difficult to detect at first but can manifest itself through growing wounds, creamy larvae and signs of discomfort.

USDA said it was working with partners in Mexico and Central America to stop the screwworm’s spread and asking producers in the area to monitor their livestock and pets, and immediately report potential cases.

— Reporting by Sarah Morland

The post US suspends Mexican cattle imports after New World screwworm case appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Those gains were partially offset by increasing emissions from diesel fuel, nitrogen fertilizer and land-use changes.

In a report released this week, the National Farmers Union (NFU) quantified agricultural emissions from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador.

The research compiles many data sources, including national inventory reports (NIRs), and Environment and Climate Change Canada data.

Without accounting for carbon sequestration or desequestration, the report estimates that emissions from agriculture fell to 1.5 million tonnes in 2021 from 1.8 million tonnes in 1990–a 17 per cent reduction.

The largest source of emissions continues to be cattle. Enteric methane from beef and dairy cattle, along with manure management, accounted for 0.52 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2021. This total has steadily decreased since 1990 as the cattle numbers declined. Efficiency gains have also decreased emissions, the report noted.

The NFU added that it’s difficult to draw a boundary line between emission that are and are not from livestock, as significant emissions come from production of feed grains.

Emissions from farm fuels decreased slightly to 0.21 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2021 from 0.29 million tonnes in 1990. This includes diesel and gasoline use, fuel oil, natural gas, propane, and emissions from fossil-fuel-fired electricity generation.

Between 1990 and 2021, the composition of fuel use changed significantly. Fuel oil accounted for about three-quarters of farm fuel emissions in 1990. In 2021, they made up under a third of emissions. Meanwhile, emissions from diesel fuel went from about a quarter of fuel emissions to about two-thirds.

Emissions from nitrogen fertilizer, including fertilizer production, also increased by almost 60 per cent in from 1990 to 2021.

The report also examined carbon sequestration since 1990. This included changes in woody biomass (e.g. removal of trees, shelterbelts), land conversion to cropland, crop residue carbon input, and others.

It concluded that each year since 1990, Atlantic agricultural soils have experienced a net loss of soil carbon. Desequestration seems to be increasing, the NFU noted, with the most significant factor being conversion of land–mainly forest–to cropland. Smaller areas of perennial crops are also behind the change.

Meanwhile, manure application has been the most steady source of carbon addition to soils, the report said. As livestock numbers waned, so did sequestration from manure.

The NFU acknowledged that work needs to be done to reduce uncertainty in emissions numbers. However, it said there is enough data to move forward of agriculture emissions reduction.

The post Atlantic ag emissions dropped slightly since 1990: report appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

In August, the NFU released the third edition of its Agriculture Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Canada report. It reflected updated information from the latest national inventory that the federal government released this year.

The 2023 inventory report contained several methodology changes, the NFU said. In particular, it drew attention to new values for “crop residue C input.” Those new values stemmed from recalculations due to new data from the 2021 Census of Agriculture.

All told, “trendline average soil carbon sequestration in 2020 and 2021, from all sources and causes, is up about 10 percent,” the NFU said.

Soil carbon sequestration is estimated at 22 million tonnes per year of carbon dioxide equivalent, up from 20 million tonnes suggested in the 2022 inventory report.

Environment and Climate Change Canada also changed the way it models on-farm fuel use and associated emissions.

The exact nature of that change isn’t clear, said Darrin Qualman, author of the report and the NFU’s director of climate crisis policy and action. Attempts to clarify with ECCC weren’t fruitful, he added.

As best he could tell, prior to the 2023 national inventory report, the ECCC said tillage reduction was leading to generally consistent fuel use year to year. A graph in the NFU report shows emissions from on-farm diesel fuel use fluctuating between eight and ten million tonnes per year from the early 2000s to present.

RELATED: NFU calls for agriculture to ‘scale back’ nitrogen use, export goals

Based on lengthy quotes from the inventory report in the NFU report, ECCC appears to have decided this assumption was incorrect, and rebalanced the way it splits use of fuel between on-road and off-road vehicles, including use of farm equipment in the field.

As a result, emissions from on-farm diesel use climbed steadily from 1990 until the late 2010s instead of being relatively flat, according to the EEEC. Emissions begin to drop again between 2018 and 2021, but still remain slightly above the projected emissions from the previous national inventory.

Qualman said the macro trends remain the same, regardless of the minutiae.

“We’re not uncertain about the trend line,” he said. “As we’ve dramatically increased fertilizer tonnage, we’re not uncertain as to whether the emissions have gone up or down. We’re certain that the emissions have gone up.”

There is uncertainty, but Qualman said that uncertainty is not the same as saying they don’t know if emissions are significant.

“We just have a little question about where they are in absolute terms,” he said.

A version of this article first appeared in the Manitoba Co-operator.

The post NFU report adjusts sequestration, fuel emissions numbers appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

There’s the ability of farmers to constantly learn and increase their management skills. There are also vast improvements in technology – mechanical, digital and biological – that have come from researchers in both private companies and public institutions. Public funds have enabled government employees and universities to push the envelope, which has helped farmers become more efficient and prosperous and also helped feed the world.

Yes, there are problems with how that’s done, but the bottom line in this argument is that more people have more and healthier food than ever before.

The rapid evolution of public funding focus, especially from Environment Canada, to the interaction with agriculture and public good – especially the environment and climate – has been stark.

We must continue to manage climate adaptation and reduce impact, along with the impact on agriculture practices on soil, water and air. However, losing the emphasis on productivity could have dire human consequences.

I’m a big supporter of the greater focus that industry has placed on soil health and we’ve paid special attention to it at Glacier FarmMedia as a strategic priority. We have hundreds of articles on soil health on our websites. I encourage you to use them as a resource on soil health trends and research.

Many times in recent years, we’ve described the reasons to care about soil health for society and farm business success. Civilizations have fallen when the health of their soils no longer supported the nutritional needs of citizens. Healthier soils have many benefits for farmer operations, including better water management and more resilient crop growing conditions.

Piles of government funds are now flowing to encourage best practices that result in carbon sequestration, most of which have improvements in soil health at their base.

As we plan our coverage and we report on events with content valuable to farmers, the volume of soil health discussion is overwhelming.

Regular discussion and continued research and understanding of soil health is important, but please, let’s also continue the productivity, efficiency and yield-driving research and programs that will feed the growing number of people in our world.

Both are connected, of course. Healthy soils provide the base upon which elite growing practices can be tried successfully, but we need to talk about both.

I studied dairy sector research funding after the recent release of $7.5 million from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada for national dairy research, the fourth funding of a Dairy Research Cluster.

I looked at the priorities for the four dairy research clusters and saw that the focus has evolved, especially on the part of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, to include climate change mitigation and risk management in most areas.

There’s range to continue the excellent work on dairy genomics and a better understanding of the human health impacts of dairy, but there’s no doubt that finding a climate angle is key to getting funds.

This isn’t new and it’s part of declining research funding for agriculture productivity across the board. I remember a dairy researcher from Western Canada lamenting to me about a decade ago that there were few projects funded on dairy cattle unless there was a human health impact.

The value of public funding in the latest dairy cluster has dropped from $11.3 million over five years to $7.5 million.

Who will fill the productivity research gap?

It will have to come from the rest of the industry. That includes initiatives like Yield Enhancement Networks (YENS), which use loads of data from individual farmers to produce lessons for their farms based on benchmarks. There are big projects, such as the cross-national wheat YEN involving Ontario and nearby American states, but I’m also encouraged by the local mini-YENs for corn.

Companies that supply farmers must be involved too, although they, too, are focusing on environment and climate versus the productivity that remains sorely needed.

The post Keep balance in research funding appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The target has raised a number of challenges and opportunities for researchers working to support these efforts, including how to calculate an accurate footprint, and what incentives are necessary to get growers on board. 

Two experts who know first- hand the complexity of this issue are Joy Agnew, vice-president of research at Olds College, and Joshua Bourassa, research associate with the Simpson Centre for Agricultural and Food Policy. They spoke at the Olds College AgSmart event recently to share the latest findings and discuss ongoing work. 

Apples to oranges 

To reach net zero, the Canadian ag sector must be able to show that any emissions (such as methane from livestock, emissions from equipment use, manure handling or farming practices) are equally offset by sequestration or carbon sinks. 

Sinks include conservation tillage, crop rotations and alternative grazing, among others. The biggest issue facing those trying to quantify a carbon footprint for agriculture is that there are no reliable ways to measure and compare emissions and carbon sinks. Nor are the measurements standard throughout. 

“There is no mechanism to evaluate the value of keeping land in grazing and not losing carbon to tilling for crop production,” said Karin Schmid, beef production and extension specialist with Alberta Beef Producers, another panelist at the show. 

Compounding this issue is the way these elements are measured. While emissions are measured as carbon dioxide, sequestration is measured as units of carbon. Equivalency calculations are used to make it easier to compare. 

The net carbon footprint of Canadian agriculture is calculated as approximately 12 to 72 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, which accounts for 1.6 to 9.6 per cent of Canada’s emissions. This is a fraction of one per cent of global emissions. The 2030 target is looking to reduce Canadian agriculture’s total annual emissions from 740 mega-tonnes of carbon dioxide to 400 by 2030. 

Canadian farmers lead 

Canada leads the pack in nutrient-use efficiency for crop production; 72 per cent efficient compared with 61 per cent in the European Union. The 4R Nutrient Stewardship Strategy is one reason. Growers use 4R (right source, right rate, right placement, and right time) to make decisions that raise the efficiency of the fertilizer being applied. Canadian growers have also begun to adopt practices that reduce emissions and also provide carbon sinks. 

“There are a huge number of practices to both reduce emissions and increase carbon sequestration, and they also provide cost savings and reduced environmental impacts. It’s a win-win,” says Agnew. 

Many practices improve efficiencies and the bottom line for growers. Using high efficiency fertilizers and variable rate applications improves crop nutrient use and reduces leaching and waste. 

Where to from here? 

While Canadian growers have the tools they need to accomplish GHG reductions, said panellists, adoption rates are still low. While approximately 70 per cent of crop production land is using some part of the 4R strategy, there are still gaps right source (6-14 per cent) and right placement (variable rate 15-40 per cent). 

The On-Farm Climate Action Fund has $200 million committed to support farmers who wish to adopt best management practices that store carbon and reduce GHG emissions, specifically nitrogen management, cover cropping and rotational grazing practices. 

There are also a number of other carbon programs available through organizations including FCL, Richardson Pioneer, Cargill, Nutrien and Farmers’ Edge. 

The big question is, will these incentives be enough to ramp up use of these practices in time to meet the target for 2030. 

That is a question examined by the Simpson Centre for Agricultural and Food Policy at the University of Calgary. The last major shift in practice was conservation tillage and the general consensus is that it took 30 years to become widely adopted. 

The Simpson Centre study involves growers in Western Canada and the northern great plains. While some practices may not result in significant yield increases, the reduction in nutrient loss will be a cost savings. 

“We aren’t sure yet if incentives and offsets alone will accomplish this goal. There are no major structural changes – new equipment, for example – needed to adopt these practices. Price is the biggest barrier,” says Bourassa. 

If everything else lines up and the consumers are willing to pay for the efforts made by the industry, another hurdle still remains. 

“Quantifying emissions reductions and soil carbon sequestration required for carbon markets is challenging. What’s the baseline and how do we know if we as a sector meet the target?”, says Agnew.

The post The unbalanced carbon equation appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“We have not seen a dime,” said Barclay Uruski, who farms near Arborg, Man.

Farmers Edge is a Manitoba-based firm that provides digital farm management tools. It launched its Smart Carbon program in 2021, which it said would allow farmers to turn current and new agronomic practices into sellable carbon credits.

According to the Farmers Edge’s website, the program involves simplified and automated data collection through on-farm hardware and sensors. Data is “aggregated on behalf of all farmers in the program to calculate the carbon credits generated.”

It also touts an “aggregated approach for maximum returns.”

Uruski said he has used Farmers Edge’s products for four years. He had decided to unsubscribe, when a Farmers Edge representative asked him to consider joining the Smart Carbon program instead.

“Basically, you will profit and Farmers Edge won’t cost you anything,” Uruski said he was told. “[Farmers Edge] will sell your carbon credits and your nitrogen management.”

The representative sent the farm a proposal. The document, which Uruski provided to Glacier FarmMedia, shows a projected income of just over $6,600 for “historical smart carbon revenue” and nearly $6,800 in “total combined yearly smart carbon revenue.”

The document said figures were an “estimated amount, subject to qualification and if carbon credits are selling at $20/tonne.”

Uruski was under the impression that he could expect a cheque at the end of the year, so he agreed to try the program. He expected that he wouldn’t have to pay for his subscription, though he noted this wasn’t communicated clearly.

The cheque didn’t come. Uruski said Farmers Edge told him, “it’s coming. It’s getting better. You’re going to get more money.”

He was surprised when he received a bill for his subscription. He paid for half and said he wouldn’t pay the rest until he saw the expected cheque.

Two years later, Uruski says he has not received a cheque and Farmers Edge has threatened to take him to a collection agency over the remaining half of his subscription. He said he’s received no explanation for why he hasn’t been paid for his credits.

Uruski posted to farmers’ forums on Facebook, and realized he wasn’t the only one in this situation.

Nathan Allard-Bean, who farms near Rouleau, Sask., said he enrolled in the Smart Carbon program in 2022. He expected to get Farmers Edge services for free in exchange for the credits.

“We had no skin in the game,” Allard-Bean said.

He said he was told Farmers Edge could give him credits for the past four years. The firm suggested he would get $1.50 to $2 per acre on his 12,000-acre farm and he was under the impression that it would give him a cheque for those credits.

“It was promised at a certain time, then another time, and then another time and then no answer,” Allard-Bean said.

He said he hasn’t been able to reach any of his eight Farmers Edge contacts since February and he’s not sure if those employees work there anymore.

Phil Greenwood, who farms near Kisbey, Sask., said he enrolled in the carbon credit program in spring 2022. In a conversation via text message, Greenwood said he signed on with the understanding that credits would pay for the use of weather stations, soil sampling and variable-rate services.

Greenwood said it was his understanding that “we would still be receiving thousands of dollars in net credits after paying for these services.” He was surprised when he received several invoices.

He phoned Farmers Edge and was told to “ignore it for now,” he told the Co-operator. Verbally, he was told he would pay after Farmers Edge paid him for the credits, Greenwood said.

“A few months later, another bill — I believe over $100,000,” he said. “They said I could ignore the $35,000-part as long as I paid the $70,000.”

An email shared with the Co-operator shows Greenwood had more than 19,000 acres contracted to Farmers Edge. When Greenwood asked why his credits wouldn’t pay for his services, he was told “they won’t sell the carbon credits at this time due to current values.”

Greenwood wanted out of the program but was told he couldn’t exit without paying what he describes as “a huge penalty.”

Positive stories

Not all farmers have had bad experiences, however. Korey Peters, who farms near Steinbach, Man. said his only complaint is the reams of paperwork. The Farmers Edge employee his farm dealt with was “very helpful,” he said.

Peters said the company paid up front for the weather station services it received and expected to be reimbursed when the carbon credits sold. The Farmers Edge representative has kept in touch with him, and though he doesn’t believe the farm been paid yet (another family member deals with Farmers Edge), he said he’s not worried.

The credit system

It’s not clear why unhappy farmers have not seen the returns they expected. Farmers Edge did not respond to questions sent by Glacier FarmMedia.

The carbon credit market is unregulated, and prices have been volatile. The average price of credits on the global voluntary carbon market climbed nearly 60 per cent throughout 2021, according to an August 2022 report from Ecosystem Marketplace. The average price of agriculture-related credits was US$8.81 per ton, the highest price across all categories, though actually a 10 per cent decrease from 2020 prices.

Nature-based credits (of which agricultural credits count), have seen a drop in price over the past year, said Kate Ervine, an associate professor at Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia. Ervine has studied carbon markets extensively.

Several reports showed that some carbon credit standards bodies approved inappropriate projects, or those that were not actually providing promised benefits, Ervine said. That, in turn, lowered demand for nature-based credits, affecting price.

None of the farmers interviewed by Glacier FarmMedia were aware of a contractual deadline by which their credits were meant to be sold, though some weren’t sure. The company is not legally obligated to include a deadline in its contracts.

“It’s not regulated,” Ervine said. “People who don’t really know about the market, they’re in a vulnerable position.”

There’s a lot of chatter in the voluntary carbon space on how to tackle this issue, she added said.

For those interested in the voluntary carbon market, Ervine advised spending extra time to understand the system or speaking with verification bodies, though she acknowledged these bodies might have a vested interest. She suggested local academics might offer unbiased opinions.

“That’s just ad hoc, so I don’t think that’s the solution,” she said. “Project developers can promise a lot, and if you don’t know the market or understand it, then it sounds really good. Then you find out after that you didn’t have any guarantees.”

The post Farmers say they were misled on carbon credits, urge caution appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

That depends on who you ask.

The head of the country’s largest bank recently backed the former, saying a “carbon soil market could be worth as much as $4 billion. But right now, Canada lacks a consistent and credible system to measure, report and verify carbon soil pools,” Dave McKay wrote in a recent opinion piece.

“Without this, farmers get little to no economic credit for the sustainable farming practices that many of them are so good at.”

But the climate advisor to the National Farmers Union says that concept has been tried over and over, and always found wanting.

“They should be paid through federal and provincial programs to undertake certain soil building and carbon sequestration practices — not per tonne, but per practice,” said Darrin Qualman, the NFU’s long-time climate policy advisor.

Various markets that pay farmers for carbon credits and then sell them to large emitters of greenhouse gases have been around for years, said Qualman, adding that such markets don’t address the big problems with carbon sequestration in soils.

One issue is that soil holds limited amounts of carbon and while farmers may think they’re taking ‘new’ carbon from the atmosphere and putting it into the ground, that’s not so, he said.

“Our soils can absorb carbon because previous farming practices released carbon. We can think of the carbon being sequestered now as being returned to the soil. That means there’s no room in the soil for CO2 from fossil fuels.”

Even if soil captured the carbon dioxide from fossil fuel emissions, it’s not the best storage container, he added.

“Carbon can be expected to stay in the soil for perhaps decades, perhaps less,” said Qualman, adding that during an intense drought like 2021, fields can even lose carbon.

“It’s not reasonable to expect that carbon will stay in the soil for the hundreds or thousands of years it would take to truly offset emissions from fossil fuels.”

Then there’s the problem of measuring how much is stored.

“To really get a fine-grained, accurate sense of what’s happening, you have to punch hundreds of holes in the ground because any given field has so much variability,” said Qualman. “One hole here and there to measure carbon content just doesn’t give you a statistically or scientifically valid measurement.”

Modelling is typically used to measure soil carbon content today.

“They assume that if a farmer is doing practice X, they then model that practice X (and conclude it) is resulting in carbon sequestration Y. That may or may not be a good estimate but it’s not measurement.”

The more sensible route is to offer financial incentives for good stewardship, said Qualman, pointing to the federal On-Farm Climate Action Fund, which offers money to help farmers adopt nitrogen management, cover cropping and rotational grazing practices — all of which sequester carbon.

The head of the non-profit that pioneered the practice of paying farmers for providing ‘eco-services’ disagrees with Qualman’s criticisms of sequestration.

“There’s only one way to effectively solve the climate crisis and that’s to take carbon out of the atmosphere and store it somewhere,” said Bryan Gilvesy, CEO of ALUS.

“Farmers and ranchers are experts at this. We’re very good at understanding how to provide long-term retention services of carbon in the soils.”

ALUS is a 17-year-old organization that assists producers in 38 communities, nearly half of them in Alberta. It provides eco-services through “on-farm nature-based solutions that sequester carbon, filter water and enhance biodiversity.”

RBC has been funding ALUS’s carbon sequestration programming since 2018 and recently gave it another $1.5 million for those efforts.

Gilvesy agrees with Qualman that measuring carbon in soil has been difficult.

“Some countries have good data sets to work from. We don’t have that advantage,” he said. “We have to build out, almost from scratch, that information that helps us quantify how much carbon goes in the soil and then that allows us to figure out the market value.”

To address this, ALUS recently partnered with Israeli company Albo Climate, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze satellite imagery and measure the impact of initiatives such as planting trees and shrubs on marginal or uneconomic farmland.

“This is a relatively new technology and our goal in working with Albo is to help them make it better over time by actually testing their results against our results on the ground,” said Gilvesy.

Farmers should be paid for the carbon they store in their soils and also for all the ecological goods and services they provide by sequestering it, he added.

“That includes things like biodiversity, clean air, soil health, more resilient watersheds and also the sequestration of carbon along the way,” he said.

“We believe these things have value in an emerging marketplace and ALUS is keen on making sure we can quantify these things and maximize farmer returns from these sorts of marketplaces.”

Whatever form carbon payment takes in the future, Qualman said he hopes the ag industry can move beyond the carbon credit/offset model.

“Perhaps the biggest problem with these offset protocols is that it delays real action,” he said. “It allows the largest emitters to make a payment and in return they get to delay emission reduction.

“And that puts farmers in a difficult ethical position, especially farmers that understand climate change and want everyone to do as much as possible to reduce those emissions and stabilize the climate.”

The post The Big Divide: Are carbon credits a good idea or waste of time? appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.