When honeybees forage, they collect nectar, pollen and water from nearby flowers. These flowers contain traces of the chemicals in the soil and water where they grow.

As honeybees fly, they also pick up dust and other tiny particles from the air and any surfaces they touch. Some of these particles include metals from human activities like burning fossil fuels or industrial pollution.

By the time the bee has returned to its nest it is covered, inside and out, with the chemicals found in its local area. In this way, the honey in a beehive is a mix of everything the bees gather within about a three-kilometer area. Learning how to read the composition of honey will allow us to understand the chemical makeup of any given environment.

The honey produced by the tireless work of the honeybee is nothing short of an untapped goldmine of environmental data that could help us better understand the spread of environmental pollutants.

Bees can help map pollution

Our research — focusing on the Manchester area in the U.K. — proposes using honey as a window into the chemical make-up of a local area. Our team comprised of researchers from Dalhousie University in Canada and the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. We measured metal concentrations in honey collected by citizen scientist beekeepers in northwest England.

Greater Manchester was a major industrial powerhouse. Unfortunately, historical industrial activities often leave behind a legacy of pollution and have been linked to environmental contamination.

Metal contaminants in soil and water from historical industrial activities do not easily disappear. They can be remobilized as dust during activities like building and road construction, or farming. Likewise, metals in surface water and groundwater may also be transferred into flowers via plant roots.

Honey samples were collected by local citizen scientist beekeepers to help determine the distribution of metal pollution across Greater Manchester. Honey samples were gathered over a single season to establish baseline metal concentrations from urban, industrial, residential and agricultural zoning districts. This baseline data can be used in future studies to monitor long-term trends and changes in metal concentrations in the environment.

Average arsenic and cadmium concentrations in Manchester were higher than global averages. Cadmium and lead concentrations were also higher than the recommended World Health Organization and United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization guidelines.

These high metal concentrations reflect Manchester’s heavy industrial past. They also reveal pollution patterns from current human activities like transportation and construction.

Natural biomonitors

Rapid urbanization, transportation, industrialization and other human activities has resulted in increased global water, air and soil pollution. Interest in measuring local and global pollution is also increasing.

Current pollution monitoring and reporting in Canada is expensive and focuses on air pollution monitoring under the National Air Pollution Surveillance program. This program was established in 1969 to monitor and assess the long-term air quality in populated regions of Canada and the dataset can be used by governments to assess air pollution trends.

The National Air Pollution Surveillance network comprises 286 sites in 203 communities located in every province and territory across Canada and is managed by the provinces, territories and some municipal governments.

Pollutant releases to air and water from industrial facilities are self-reported by the industries themselves under the National Pollutant Release Inventory. However, this inventory has been criticized for under-reporting of pollutants, and a lack of information related to how toxic the pollution can be.

Because these traditional methods can be expensive and time-consuming, government agencies and researchers need cost-effective monitoring tools to holistically track environmental pollutants such as heavy metals. Our research suggests that honey could be just the cost-effective monitoring tool governments are looking for.

Researchers in Vancouver have already run studies to measure metals like lead and cadmium in honey from hives in Vancouver’s downtown core. Analysis in 2019 found that the honey was clean, well below global averages for heavy metals like lead.

Although the honey in downtown Vancouver was perfectly safe to eat, they also discovered higher levels of metals in honey collected from nearby industries or densely populated areas. Efforts to map pollution using honey in Australia and Italy have also been effective.

Biomonitoring pollution in Canada

Because bees collect nectar, pollen and water from flowers within a three-kilometer area, they offer a seasonal snapshot of local environmental pollution.

Although there are nearly 300 National Air Pollution Surveillance sites across Canada, there are nearly one million bee hives offering even greater national coverage. These cost-effective pollution monitoring sites would complement existing pollution monitoring networks.

With beekeeping rising in popularity, this allows for community participation in biomonitoring studies like ours. Canada’s more than 13,000 beekeepers are a critical untapped resource of citizen scientists that could be vital to measuring long-term trends of harmful metals and other contaminants across Canada.

—Tony Robert Walker is a professor at the School for Resource and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University. Simon Harper is a professor of computer science at the University of Manchester.

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“These type of greenwashing claims are on the rise and consumers have a right to know the truth about their food choices,” said Carrie Apfel, an attorney with Earthjustice, on a Wednesday press call.

Earthjustice is representing EWG in the suit alongside the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Edelson PC, and FarmStand.

The suit was filed on Wednesday by the Washington-based Environmental Working Group (EWG) in D.C. Superior Court. Tyson did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

In 2021, Tyson said it would achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 by increasing its use of renewable energy and eliminating deforestation in its supply chain, among other steps.

The company also markets a brand of “climate-friendly” beef it says is produced with 10 per cent less emissions than conventional beef.

In its lawsuit, EWG alleges that Tyson has not presented a rigorous plan for reaching its net zero goals or details for its lower-emission beef production and is thus misleading consumers with the claims.

Tyson is one of the largest meat processing companies in the United States. The company says it produces 20 per cent of the country’s beef, pork, and chicken and that the majority of its emissions are from beef production.

Livestock production generates about 14.5 per cent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions globally, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Cattle represent 65 per cent of those emissions.

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Holdanca Farms is located near Wallace Bay, N.S., and is owned and operated by the father-daughter duo of John and Maria Duynisveld.

After winning the award at the banquet, John Duynisveld said he felt overwhelmed.

“It’s such an honor,” he said.

Duynisveld gave credit to the other TESA nominees, highlighting the important work they all do when it comes to the environment and agriculture.

“All of us come from different parts of the country, different environments, and everyone has their own challenges in how they can have their operation work with the challenges that nature throws at them and how they’re able to cooperate with nature, rather than fight it and make things work for them in their own way. So, they’re all incredibly deserving farms and ranches.”

At Holdanca Farms, the Duynisvelds raise a herd of grass-fed cattle, as well as sheep and pastured pigs and poultry. They own 500 acres, 250 of which is a managed, biodiverse native woodlot, and the other half is in long-term pasture production.

A focus for the Duynisvelds is native and migratory birds that make their home on the North Shore of Nova Scotia. They ensure space in their barns and other outbuildings for barn swallows to safely enter and exit during breeding season. They avoid cutting forages at this time and put fences around the nests to prevent livestock from damaging them. On their farm, they have recorded over 100 wild bird species. Around 30 of those are endangered.

Holdanca Farms also directly markets their beef and are involved in agriculture education programs such as Ag in the Classroom and environmental education programs they host right on their farm.

“Holdanca Farms is a testament to how responsible farming practices can go hand in hand with success and their importance to protecting and preserving our land and wildlife,” Mike Duguid, one of the co-chairs of CCA’s environment committee, said in a press release.

Even when winning awards, the work doesn’t stop. Maria Duynisveld was back home in Nova Scotia while her father accepted the award, tending to their cattle.

“A really big thanks to our daughter Maria, who is home running the farm and dealing with all the problems that happen as soon as I go away and solving the problems very well,” Duynisveld said to laughter from the crowd.

Holdanca Farms won out of the six different operations that were nominated from across the country.

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Last year, Canada experienced its worst-ever fire season, with more than 6,600 blazes burning 15 million hectares, an area roughly seven times the annual average.

Low snowfall throughout an abnormally warm winter and widespread drought prompted the government to warn in April that 2024 could potentially be another “catastrophic” year for fires.

Out-of-control forest fires in the western provinces of British Columbia and Alberta forced large-scale evacuations this spring, although cooler weather in late May and early June helped dampen down fire activity in recent weeks.

Rain across the prairies also helped improve drought conditions, although 45 per cent of the country is still classed as abnormally dry, according to Agriculture Canada.

Weather models suggest temperatures over the next three months will be warmer than normal across most of the country, except along the coast of British Columbia, said Jennifer Smith, a meteorologist with the Meteorological Service of Canada.

The models predicted less rain than usual in central Canada but were not able to make reliable predictions for much of the rest of the country, she added.

“Canadians need to be ready for a warmer summer that could be met with drier conditions across the country,” Smith told a media briefing, adding that would be conducive to wildfires and smoke.

So far, the 2024 fire season has been much quieter than last year, with 511,000 hectares burned year-to-date across Canada versus 4.7 million hectares at the same point in 2023, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. However, wildfire activity typically ramps up during July and August.

This year, in response to feedback received last summer, the federal Environment Ministry is introducing a new air quality advisory system and daily smoke forecast maps to better inform Canadians about the health risk from wildfire smoke, officials said.

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A recent study claimed grain-fed beef has less of a carbon impact, but Ontario farmer Ted Zettel believes that research failed to account for the long-term capacity of pasture-based farming to sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

Zettel, who runs Zettel Family Farms with his sons Mark and Sam, spoke on a panel about grass-fed and organic cattle production.

“I realize there is a spectrum of production techniques (but) … these are ruminants,” Zettel said.

Cattle efficiently convert forage to food, and “I wouldn’t want to try and defend (the climate impact of) cattle raised on grain and corn.”

The same event had one panelist, cow-calf producer Phil Woodhouse, highlight recent research that favours grain-fed production in terms of climate mitigation.

“Ruminants are great for taking energy and making meat out of it,” said Woodhouse, who also works in beef product sales for Jones Feed Mills in Lindenwood, Ont. .

When young, most types of cattle can efficiently turn grass into energy. As they approach finishing weight, grain diets take over on the feed-efficiency side so the carbon footprint of growing grain is eclipsed by the food produced.

Zettel questioned the scale of recent research. He believes carbon sequestration achieved by maintaining permanent pasture gives his farm’s system a significant advantage over those that finish animals with grain.

The comparison is even more favourable when looking at confinement feedlot operations, he added. However, Zettel described the climate impact discussion as a sideline to the typical grass-fed beef value chain.

Zettel Family Farms markets a range of organic meat products online for delivery or on-farm pick-up. Mark Zettel and his wife, Emily, run a community-shared agriculture-style market garden and Ted also brokers beef for other grass-fed producers in the area.

He said climate change effects tend to be low on the priority list for the farm’s consumers. Price, quality and familiarity with the farmer rank higher.

He senses distrust among some consumers with any certification process. People seem worried about influence from farm groups and their failure to respond to consumer concerns, so face-to-face contact is important, said Zettel.

He and Woodhouse agreed that British breeds outperform other European breeds when finishing cattle on grass. With grass-fed, Woodhouse added, the shorter stature, high-capacity phenotypes within those breeds tend to do better.

The other panelist, beef specialist James Byrne from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, cautioned that grazing pastures and growing pastures are two separate processes.

“They are inter-related. Obviously, in order to have cattle that pasture, you have to grow it,” but it takes skill to manage grazing so the pasture is profitable.

Pastures are dynamic and will vary day to day, said Byrne, but the nutritional needs of cattle are relatively stable.

Given the opportunity, cattle are selective when grazing. To demonstrate why this presents a challenge, Byrne showed the growth curve of a pasture through spring, early summer, late summer and fall. The dry matter intake curve that accompanies this growth curve is similar for all grasses, he said.

“As humans, we can look at the (late summer) field and see a lot of grass. But a cow looks at the field and sees not a lot to eat.”

Cattle will seek forage other than the coarse-stemmed, mature and seedy grasses that often populate a late-summer pasture.

“You can force them to graze it but that’s not good for economic performance.”

Rotational grazing is one strategy to address this summer slump, though it’s not suitable for every operation or for every bovine, Byrne said.

For herds in which average daily gain isn’t a priority, it could be a mistake to regularly send animals into high-quality, growing pasture. Breeding animals, for example, don’t need a high level of quality feed, said Byrne. In those cases, lengthening the rotation might work better.

On a grander scale, effective rotational grazing can improve a herd’s economic performance.

Woodhouse said rotational grazing is easier to do on larger-scale farms and ranches due to the labour requirements. He has customers who are happy to have lower gain over the summer on permanent pasture and then finish the cattle on grain in the fall.

Zettel countered the thought that labour requirements can be too high. If a good system is installed and established, rotational grazing can be labour efficient, he said.

“When you get good at it, it doesn’t take long at all, and I think that’s the path to maximizing the soil improvement.”

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“It’s the largest piece of fescue grasslands remaining on the planet. It’s a significant place. And it’s still intact because of the great work that the Thrall family, and the McIntyres before them, have done concerning those grasslands and ranching sustainably on them,” said Jeremy Hogan, director of Prairie Grassland Conservation for the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Hogan said the easement took about five years to complete. Funders for the project include the government of Alberta, the Canadian government, corporate supporters such as Cenovus Energy, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service and private funders such as the Gerald A. Cooper-Key Foundation and the Weston Family Foundation.

In February 2013, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Ducks Unlimited Canada and Ralph Thrall III announced the start of a fundraising campaign to put a conservation easement on the ranch. They completed the campaign in April 2024. Thrall, general manager and chief executive officer of McIntyre Ranch, said he and his siblings had considered the idea of an easement for years. A conservation easement is a legal agreement that protects the natural value of the land through a voluntary agreement restricting land use change in perpetuity. The property can no longer be broken up. It can’t be converted to cropland, subdivided for acreages, or host solar panels or wind generators. The landowner continues to own the land and is still able to conduct their ranching business.

The McIntyre Ranch has an incredible range of native grasslands and over 1,000 hectares of wetlands. The property is home to over 150 species of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and fish. Twenty-seven species of concern can be found on the ranch, including the ferruginous hawk and the chestnut-collared longspur. It’s also home to important grassland songbird populations.

Preserving diversity

Thrall said the Nature Conservancy of Canada, through its conservation easements, is trying to preserve natural habitats and species diversity. Keeping cattle on the landscape helps keep the grasslands healthy and productive.

“The truth of cattle is that they are essential for wildlife and carbon sequestration,” said Thrall. Cattle are also a benefit for grassland health. Grasslands play an important part in the ecosystem, a role that’s often overlooked, he said.

“The fact is that the grasslands of Canada are every bit as important as the rainforests of South America. Eighty per cent of Canadian grasslands have been lost to farming, urbanization or industrial development. Every piece of conservation, all lands that are conserved, are important. We happen to be associated with one that is exceptionally large. We’re just proud of the fact that we are preserving grasslands for species diversity and wildlife habitat.”

Thrall runs about 3,000 cows. Calves are kept over winter, backgrounded and put on grass. “We also have a purebred Hereford and a purebred Red Angus herd of about 200 females, and our main herd is a crossbred herd of both breeds.”

Thrall said he and his siblings have had a very positive experience working with NCC and DUC.

“It’s a win-win for our family, a win-win for the ranch, and a win-win for organizations like the Nature Conservancy of Canada and Ducks Unlimited to create this easement. And it’s been a great challenge. The greater the challenge, the greater the reward. And this has been extremely rewarding for us.”

The NCC’s Hogan said it will be doing ecological monitoring, inventories of the plants and animals that live on the ranch and baseline assessments. “They will continue to operate, business as usual. Hopefully, we can support their stewardship practices. We’re working with Environment and Climate Change Canada to look at what the risks are on the ranch. And once those are identified, we’ll identify what stewardship actions would benefit those specific species and then we can help fundraise for them and find grant opportunities to pay for that kind of work.”

Thrall recommended that anyone who has questions about preserving their farm or ranch contact the NCC. It has launched the Prairie Grassland Action Plan to conserve 500,000 hectares of grassland by 2030. “That’s the number we chose based on the current rate of grassland loss in Canada,” Hogan said. “It’s important to know that only 20 per cent of Canada’s prairie grasslands remain.”

More information can be found at prairiegrasslands.ca.

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Regarding the statement “the agriculture community seems incapable of re-prioritizing land use,” priorities by whose standards and by what criteria? Farmers who have invested their lives in becoming sustainable both in their financial as well as their ecological business are incapable of making correct decisions? Correct by whose criteria? And just whose priorities are to take precedence over others’ priorities?

Regarding the statements of the taxpayer’s willingness or unwillingness to fund “incentives for the agricultural landscape,” there is a class of people, to which Matt McIntosh seems to be a party, who have the hubris to think that third parties (themselves) have the authority and competence to pre-empt the decisions and priorities of other people.

In this case, pre-empt the decisions of farmers and taxpayers and to impose undetermined and undefined financial, social, and long term ecological costs and risks on them while bearing none of those costs or risks themselves.

Yes, we need to protect and enhance the environment that we share, but granting the power to impose one group’s priorities on other people, no matter how well intentioned, in order to prevent them from imposing even greater restrictions, is ceding the battle now and in the future to those whose stated objective is to shut down agriculture completely.

The hope that it will appease them by granting them the power to possibly impose even greater restrictions is naive at best. I have far more confidence in a free society’s ability to cope with future environmental problems than in our ability to cope with a government and a parasitic bureaucracy whom we have ceded all of our property rights and civil liberties to, with all of the environmental, economic and social catastrophes that are inherent with that type of government.

A simple perusal of history will give you plenty of examples. Matt McIntosh even references the EU and the onerous regulations that are imposed on the farmers there, imposed by the very enviro-blindered bureaucrats he wants to appease here.

The day that Matt McIntosh or anyone else purchases at my determined price, and assumes ownership of my land, is the time at which they can begin to make decisions of what they will or will not do with it.

Why on earth would you ever want to concede to anyone else the power to dictate what will happen on your land and the power to force taxpayers against their will to pay you to do anything? Power to extract a tax on one person to be paid to another is the same power to force compliance with the regulation.

The ‘payment’ is only the moral rationalization we grant politicians for imposing what we want on others. Accepting such a payment is a capitulation of part, if not all, of our property rights.

Protect our property rights. Do that by taking care of the environment and do not give up your rights and become party to the further extortion of the taxpayer. We want them to feel that they are our allies, not that they are our patron benefactors nor our extortion victims.

I’m sorry, but a pre-emptive surrender of our rights to people who want our demise is not the answer.

Travis Hatch
Sunset House Alta.

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Why it’s important

Environmental regulation was one of the main factors behind protests that swept France and parts of Europe, unsettling governments in the run-up to European elections. The French authorities have responded with extra aid and plans to simplify environmental rules, echoing steps taken at EU level. Ecology associations have attacked a watering down of European standards.

By the numbers

The new plan aims to halve pesticide use by 2030 compared to the 2011-2013 period on the basis of an EU indicator, called HRI1, which takes into account the chemical’s toxicity. The previous indicator, called NODU, applied by France simply calculated the volume of pesticides per hectare.

Under the new indicator, France has already achieved a reduction of about 30 per cent, the government says.

France will devote nearly 150 million euros ($161.66 million) this year to research into alternatives. It will also invest 50 million euros on new equipment.

Context

The “Ecophyto” policy was launched in 2009 but the objective of halving pesticide use within a decade was pushed back as volumes increased. Farmers argue that the banning of some pesticides forced them to use more of less effective ones, while adverse weather also led them to increase volumes.

The government aims to avoid a repeat of previous setbacks. Sugar beet growers have notably endured disease losses after a ban on neonicotinoid pesticides.

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Aside from the environment, there are practical political and economic reasons to support hypothetical restrictions on the removal of woodlots, fencerows, tallgrass prairie and the like. And if we are proactive, there is opportunity to lobby for frameworks that support our bottom lines as well as nature.

Not doing so means that one day, we face a higher chance of regulations that burden more than they reward.

There is discrepancy between how farmers and commercial developers can transform land where I am in Ontario.

Let’s say a commercial developer wants to clear a 15-acre woodlot for houses. Before clearing and construction can begin, that developer is required to carry out an environmental investigation to determine if removing the woodlot will negatively affect particular animal or plant species, increase flooding risk, and so on.

The requirements that must be addressed in the investigation will change based on the landscape’s characteristics.

Whether such requirements are actually effective at preventing ecological damage is another question, but commercial developers have to at least try to prove their intentions will not cause excessive environmental harm.

Farm businesses are also obliged to not cause harm to Ontario’s natural spaces and species. However, they are under little or no obligation to provide environmental assessments before starting the chainsaw. Generally, they can transform any landscape to suit production needs.

Proving their actions did, in fact, hurt species at risk would have to be done after the fact, when the evidence has been all but destroyed.

Flexibility to manage our land as we see fit is the charitable, positive way one might view this state of affairs. But time and again, the agriculture community seems incapable of re-prioritizing land use.

When the price of corn, soybeans or vegetables is good, natural spaces are cleared in an effort to maximize profits. When prices are poor, natural spaces are cleared to maximize profits. Continued farmland consolidation only exacerbates the process.

From a regulatory perspective, we in Canadian agriculture often look to Europe to see where we might be in five, 10 or 20 years’ time. Animal welfare requirements for housing and transportation offer a prime example.

I’d argue that environmental protection is another, and one of particular note in recent months as farmers across multiple European Union countries take to the streets in protest of what they perceive to be ever-tighter environmental regulations.

How happy would you be if trimming a fencerow was no longer permitted because it was found to house a rare lichen species? This is reality on some farms in the United Kingdom.

We ignore such examples at our peril.

Conversely, proactively identifying the problem could bring opportunities to identify solutions.

In Ireland, for example, the ACRES program offers farmers payments to increase the number and length of hedgerows, plant trees, build riparian areas, conserve archeological monuments and a range of other ecologically minded actions. Similar frameworks are being rolled out in England.

While they are likely far from perfect, both cases could act as a model in Canada and support existing, but comparatively limited, initiatives like the new Resilient Agricultural Landscape Program.

I often hear the argument that Canadian taxpayers would never be willing to fund programs like ACRES. I disagree.

With a little momentum and creativity in design, I’m optimistic that significant investments in environmental incentives for the agricultural landscape would be much more tangible for the taxpayer, and thus easier to stomach.

Our national and provincial governments are already spending enormous amounts of cash on perceived environmental initiatives.

We as farmers and landowners need to do a much better job of highlighting the ecological problems we helped create and what we can do to fix them.

Failing to protect biodiversity, prevent deterioration in water quality and such will likely come back to bite us politically.

Why not get ahead? Why not identify more practical ways of farming for nature, and diversify income streams in the process?

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Give Canada’s agriculture and food industries something they can work toward.

That’s how you’ll get them on-side with greenhouse gas reduction goals. Right now, there’s not much to make them care or to feel there’s a point in participating. With “intensity” spurned by the enviro-lords, what’s a farmer to do?

When it comes to the futility around climate change discussions, much goes back to the absence of a reasonable-sounding approach that can be embraced by consumers, farmers, service providers, industry and government.

Sure, some among us are comfortable with huge, costly transformations of our economy and society, so long as somebody else is paying the bill. As soon as somebody needs to foot the bill themselves, it’s a different matter and things go nowhere.

To the question of “how much are you willing to pay for what you’re demanding?” most people have the same answer for climate change as they do for taxes, social justice, better policing, improved highways and sending humans to Mars.

“Well, I can’t afford to pay for that. The costs have to be paid by the bad-doers.” That’s the typical “not me” answer.

But isn’t that the problem? We’re all bad-doers. If any of us are sincere about reaching GHG reduction goals, we’re all going to have to sacrifice.

Fossil fuel-producing and food-exporting countries resent being blamed for the emissions their industries (including farmers) produce, when what they emit is in aid of supplying products, like food and energy, to the importers, who tend to be the ones pointing the finger.

Countries with gigantic infrastructures of power generation and transmission – that’s us – complain about the incredible cost of re-engineering everything on a short timeline. People in developing countries complain that they can’t afford to pay for “green” power generation, so the developed nations need to pay them to build it, or else they’ll burn coal like we did in the old days.

I walk my dogs past large, old, single-detached houses with Greta Thunberg and Consider Climate signs in their front yards, signalling their objection to people living the way they do.

I’ve known environmentalists who work in the middle of the city but commute from ex-urban acreages because they “prefer that lifestyle.”

We’ve just witnessed tens of thousands of people jetting across the planet, as they do each year, to attend another COP environmental summit, staying in perfectly air-conditioned Dubai luxury hotels and then marching out and telling us we’re bad and need to change. (Perhaps next year the conflab could be done over Zoom.)

In this reality, it’s pretty hard to ask anybody in farming to willingly sacrifice anything. What’s the point?

Rather than this endless orgy of values-signalling that so many of us seem unable to break away from, perhaps we could offer reasonable people like farmers something they could work with.

How about recognizing and rewarding them for having the best environmental competitive advantage in whatever crops and livestock they produce?

What if we rewarded farmers and the food industry for having reached their greatest comparative environmental advantage in production, and for embracing everything they could in GHG reduction?

It’s fantastical when people speak about eliminating fossil fuel consumption by 2050, or whatever this week’s target is. It’s not even a reasonable goal. Fossil fuel production isn’t bad if it doesn’t damage the environment more than other energy sources.

That’s why the debate among the reasonable has shifted to the notion of “abatement,” which contains the carbon-capture concept. Yet, there is pushback against this for various reasons, plus an underlying discomfort with accepting a formerly resisted thing, and naked hypocrisy.

Farmers want to be good stewards of the climate. They want to be good citizens of this spinning ball of humanity we call home. But they need some reasonable goals.

Give them achievable and rewarded goals to work toward and they’ll gear up, dig down and figure out how to do things more GHG-efficiently.

Expect them to undermine their own sustainability in order to satisfy ludicrously fantastical imaginings of hypocrites and you’ll get the same shrugged shoulders with which most of us treated COP28.

– Ed White is a reporter with the Western Producer.

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