In Wilmot Township, Ont., family histories and futures are closely intertwined with the land and what governments decide to do with it. 

Adam van Bergeijk moved to the southern Ontario farming region 28 years ago with his wife and two sons after development encroached on the lands surrounding his dairy farm in the Netherlands.  

He figured that would never happen in Ontario, where farmland was fertile and protected. 

But in March, van Bergeijk was approached by Canacre, a private-sector land consultant, with an offer to buy his family’s land for industrial use on behalf of the Region of Waterloo and the Township of Wilmot. 

The van Bergeijks — Adam (right), his wife Hannie (left) and son Arjo (centre) — say the threat of land expropriation is familiar at Mountainoak Farm. “We did it 30 years ago and if we lose our land then we’ll have to do it again,” Adam van Bergeijk says. “That’s not a nice thing to think about. That’s not what I want.”

The township is on the traditional territories of the Neutral, Anishnaabeg, Haudenosaunee and Mississauga peoples. It is made up of a dozen towns and villages that rely heavily on farming, lies southwest of Kitchener and the city of Waterloo. The land the region is looking to expropriate is just south of New Hamburg, one of the township’s larger centres.

Van Bergeijk has been making cheese for 43 years, most of them here on a farm adjacent to the land the region is eyeing. Over the past few years, his family bought additional land right in the middle of that site to expand their operations. His two sons and their children planned for a future on Mountainoak Farm. Selling the new land was not in the plans, so they turned down Canacre’s offer and started asking questions.

Arjo van Bergeijk tells The Narwhal his family bought land in the area that is now being expropriated as security for Mountainoak Farm’s future growth. “There is less land becoming available, so if it’s in your name, it’s your farm, your land,” he says. “That’s what we thought.” 

“I am a citizen of Wilmot, and I want to stay that way. But it’s getting more and more difficult,” Adam van Bergeijk (right) of Mountainoak Farm says. 

All they — and Wilmot residents at large — have learned is this: according to flyers sent out by local officials many times since March, the region is responding to a provincial call to assemble shovel-ready land for industry. Having identified just under 800 acres, or about 323 hectares, in the middle of Wilmot that includes six farms and six residential properties, the region told the landowners their options are to sell or have their land expropriated — and soon. 

“As you may be aware, there is currently a shortage of industrial lands in the Region of Waterloo,” one of the flyers says. “To address this situation, the region is considering the acquisition of strategic land parcels to ensure its ability to accommodate the full range of new job growth and business investment to 2051. The intention is to assemble a new industrial business park.” It doesn’t say what kind of industry or business. 

In a different flyer, the region says the land is being assembled “for future investment from a major employer,” without mentioning who that employer is. This flyer promises the land shift “will result in thousands of well-paying local jobs and further economic prosperity in Waterloo Region.” 

The Township of Wilmot, Ont., is made up of a dozen towns and villages that rely heavily on farming.

The Region of Waterloo has identified just under 800 acres, or over 323 hectares, in the middle of Wilmot that includes six farms and six residential properties for an industrial site.

More than four months later, it is still unclear what company or even industry the Wilmot land is being prepared for. Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli told Waterloo Region Record in May the land wasn’t going to become an electric-vehicle battery plant. The township, the region’s planning department and the province did not respond to emails from The Narwhal.

“Biggest problem is not knowing what is coming,” van Bergeijk says. “Could be a warehouse. Could be a chemical plant. Could be a garbage dump. We don’t know. That’s the strangest thing.” In the second flyer, the region notes while confidentiality can be “frustrating,” it’s a “common practice in real estate negotiations, with the intention to protect the integrity of conversations and negotiations with the buyer and seller.” 

Most farmers in Wilmot have banded together to oppose the expropriation. The grassroots group dubbed “Fight for Farmland” has signage everywhere across the township: peeking between crops of corn and cabbage, set up in front of the fields and barns where cows eat and sleep, stuck into the dirt on the side of roads, placed in the windows of shops and restaurants and planted on the front yards of nearly every house within driving distance of the lands.

Most Wilmot farmers have banded together to oppose the expropriation as a group dubbed “Fight for Farmland,” which has signage everywhere across the township.

Right now, Wilmot is a quiet, farming region. Traffic on the roads is minimal and reserved mostly for farming activity: tractors and hay-filled trucks. “The whole community would change drastically,” Richard Good of St. Jacobs Foods, says of the incoming industrial site which will be situated next to his farm. “Imagine seeing thousands of people going to work every day on these roads.” 

The group’s efforts to glean more information on who wants the land, and why, have not been fruitful. The Region of Waterloo has refused to release any information in response to the 21 requests the group filed under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. 

Seven farmers told The Narwhal they are worried about the impacts of the loss of fertile land on their livelihoods and Ontario’s future food security. They are also concerned about the possible environmental impacts of converting farmland to industrial land. 

According to the 2021 Census of Agriculture, Ontario is home to a quarter of Canada’s farms, and almost eight per cent of the country’s farmland. According to Ontario Farmland Trust, the province is losing 319 acres of farmland every day to other uses. At that rate, Ontario will lose all of its farmland in 100 years. 

Once farmland is paved over, it can no longer be used to sequester carbon, mitigate floods, filter water, provide habitat for species at risk or grow food. 

St. Jacobs Foods is just south of the farmlands set to be expropriated for industrial use, separated by a road. But the lands are connected, with waterways and power lines running through them. 

Richard Good’s father — a dairy farmer — bought the 100-acre farm in 1958. When Good took over St. Jacobs Foods, he started growing mixed vegetables, including cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage. “I grew up here,” he said. “I still live here.”

“I don’t think people are giving food production the priority that it should have,” says Richard Good, a retired farmer who still lives on the land he grew up on in Wilmot. Called St. Jacobs Foods, his family’s property is right across the road from the farmlands facing expropriation. 

“There were food shortages during COVID, and people sort of woke up and took notice of how maybe we don’t have the security in our food industry that we think. And yet now, you don’t hear anything about that anymore. It’s all about how we need the industry.” 

Good’s father — a dairy farmer — bought the 100-acre farm in 1958. When Good took over St. Jacobs Foods, he started growing vegetables, including cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage. He retired nearly three years ago. 

“I think what the public needs to realize is that over time the area that we can produce food from is diminishing,” Good says. “And, you know, when do you say ‘stop’ and hold on to what you’ve got instead of just parcelling it away?”

Eva Wagler (top) bought the farm from Richard Good when he retired almost three years ago. “I thought we’d retire here,” she says. She has put a lot of time, effort and money into the farm and the environmental impact of the land expropriation across the street could “throw all that investment out the window,” Good says.

Eva Wagler agrees. She came to Canada from the Czech Republic 14 years ago on a year-long study abroad program and spent time working on Good’s farm. She decided she wanted to stay permanently, and bought part of St. Jacobs Foods from Good. “He taught me everything about farming,” she said. “I fell in love with it right here.” 

Though St. Jacobs Foods is not part of the land assembly, Wagler says she is worried about the environmental impacts to her farm. 

“Water contamination is a huge concern,” Wagler says, noting a creek that leads to a pond on her site travels through several farms set to be expropriated. “What if the industrial site contaminates the water? We don’t know what kind of impact it’ll have.” 

Several farms are connected by waterways to the future industrial site in Wilmot, including St. Jacobs Foods. Farmers are concerned about the environmental impacts of an industrial site so close to the lands they grow on.

The farmers opposing the expropriation say they don’t object to growth or new economic opportunities in the region. But they say a greater population will require both more jobs and more food. In that balance, they believe the government is prioritizing the wrong thing and in the wrong way. 

“I think there is an opportunity for development to happen but we need to talk about it and be creative,” Good says. “I don’t think we can just grab 800 acres in secret.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This story is part of Carbon Cache, an ongoing series about nature-based climate solutions.

It’s a brilliant spring day in the flat, big-sky country near Iron Springs, Alta., an hour north of Lethbridge, where John Kolk farms 4,000 acres with his wife, son, two daughters and a small staff.

“The ducks and geese are making a racket and everyone is excited for spring,” he tells me when I call him to talk about new federal funding for farmers tackling climate change.

Spring is a busy time of year, and Kolk is making plans for the rest of the season. He’s got two quarter sections — about 320 acres — of corn planned this year, and it’ll be out of the field by August. He has a decision to make: does he plant a cover crop for the fall?

Cover cropping involves the planting of a secondary crop for the off-season instead of leaving a field bare. It’s what Kolk calls leaving “a bit of a jacket on the field through the winter.”

The practice has numerous advantages: preventing erosion, retaining soil moisture and acting as a carbon sink. 

A 2019 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found sequestering carbon dioxide from the air will form a significant part of the world’s efforts to mitigate the climate crisis, and noted agricultural lands can play a sizable role. 

“When you’ve got live roots,” Kolk explains, “you’re taking carbon out of the air.”

But seeding a cover crop is not without its challenges. To really be effective in the region, the new crop has to be seeded before the old one dies off. Kolk has planted cover crops before, on four quarter sections of beans. “You don’t want to go drive on good beans in order to put a cover crop in,” he says. So farmers turn to aerial solutions.

His corn crop will grow to nine feet tall but won’t be gone until November, when new seeds would no longer germinate. Planting new seeds on two quarter sections covered in nine-foot corn stalks requires hiring a helicopter that needs to be equipped with expensive specialized equipment. 

New federal funding announced in Monday’s budget could mean Kolk and other farmers will  have the access to the funds to move forward with cover cropping and other carbon-reduction practices.

“If I know I’m going to get partly funded for that I will [seed that cover crop] this August,” he says. 

“Of course I won’t be the only one,” he adds. “So then all of a sudden, there’ll be a demand for that service. And then the opportunity for more people to use cover crops.”

That’s the plan according to this week’s federal budget, which includes $200 million in new funding for increasing the adoption of climate-friendly practices like cover cropping, nitrogen management and rotational grazing. It also allocates $10 million over two years to facilitate a transition to clean energy from diesel-fueled farm equipment and earmarks another $60 million for the preservation of existing wetlands and trees on farmlands.

It’s what Farmers for Climate Solutions, a coalition of farming organizations across Canada, described as “unprecedented” funding.

“This is one of the largest investments we’ve ever seen for agriculture in the federal budget,” Karen Ross, the director of Farmers for Climate Solutions, tells The Narwhal. “I was thrilled.” 

For agriculture advocates, the budget signifies the government is recognizing the industry’s potential to combat the climate crisis using already-accepted farming practices.

“Agriculture can play, and is playing, a big role in climate change mitigation,” Chris van den Heuvel, a vice president with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, says by phone.

“Agriculture needs to be recognized … as one of the sectors that can help in the solutions for climate change,” he added.

Making climate-friendly decisions economically viable for farmers in Canada

Four thousand kilometres across the country, Cedric MacLeod has 120 head of cattle — “beating hearts” as he calls them — on his 400-acre farm near Centreville, N.B.

Included on that farm is a wetland formed from an old dugout that he’s been considering filling in for more grazing land. The other, more expensive, option would be to leave it and allow a wetland habitat to flourish.

“Those are the kind of decisions a lot of producers are facing,” he says by phone from Fredericton, where, he tells me, the sun has finally come out on a cool spring day. 

Expanding the wetland and allowing native milkweed to grow, he says, could help create habitat for monarch butterflies, along with local songbirds, migratory birds and amphibians. Wetlands also act as a carbon sink. A 2017 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that the preservation of ecosystems like wetlands, forests and grasslands could add up to more than one-third of the emissions reductions needed under the Paris Agreement.

But preserving wetlands on a farm can be an economic decision — one that can be difficult in a sector already facing tight margins.

Areas like the Lomond Grazing Association lease in southern Alberta preserve untilled native prairie and wetlands. The recent federal budget earmarked funding for farmers and ranchers to preserve existing wetlands, as well as trees, which are well-known carbon sinks. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

The new federal funding for agricultural climate solutions could make those decisions a little easier.

The allocation of $60 million of federal funding over the next two years for protection of wetlands and trees on farms could potentially help make his decision an economic one as well as a climate-friendly one, MacLeod says. 

Helping farmers square good climate decisions financially is something people working in agriculture say is the best way forward when it comes to reducing the climate impact of the industry.

It’s “the first time that there’s been a deliberate attempt to incent good agronomic practices that will help to capture carbon,” Kolk says. “So we know a lot about it, we’ve heard a lot about it, [now we’re] putting the whole piece together.” 

“I think that when you start incentivizing it, it’ll start to happen.”

‘Agriculture is 10 per cent of the problem and 20 per cent of the solution’

The agriculture industry has long been lambasted as a significant contributor to Canada’s carbon pollution — it produces between eight and 10 per cent of the country’s total carbon emissions —  but this year’s budget aimed to turn that idea on its head. “Farmers are major players in Canada’s fight against climate change,” it reads.

And that recognition is welcome news to those in the farming community. 

Farming advocates like Ross, herself a vegetable farmer in Ontario, acknowledges that agriculture is responsible for a large chunk of national emissions. “We only have nine growing seasons left [until the 2030 Paris Agreement goals],” she says. “And for farmers to be part of the solution we of course need to meaningfully reduce these emissions.” 

“But the thing is, in order to shift our practices to ones that reduce emissions, there are often high upfront costs,” she added. That’s where Farmers for Climate Solutions has been advocating for federal funding.

With “public support to help us kind of manage those upfront costs, or share those upfront costs,” she says, the government is acknowledging the “role of farmers to be part of our climate solution.”

Macleod, the beef farmer in New Brunswick, agrees.

“We’ve always maintained that agriculture is 10 per cent of the problem and 20 per cent of the solution,” he says.

Agriculture has long been lambasted a significant contributor to Canada’s carbon pollution but the industry — and the federal government — is adamant agriculture is poised to be a leader in reducing emissions, particularly with public support in place in the form of financial incentives. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Fertilizer waste isn’t just bad for the climate, ‘it’s just wasted money’

Among the other climate-friendly farming practices highlighted in the recent budget is nitrogen fertilizer management.

Fertilizer has been pegged as a significant contributor to the climate impact of agriculture. Some 70 per cent of crop farms apply fertilizer, according to Statistics Canada. 

When fertilizer is applied in the wrong quantity or wrong location, it can end up as runoff.

When nitrogen fertilizer is lost as runoff, it ends up as a greenhouse gas. It has been estimated that as much as 20 per cent of nitrogen fertilizer is lost as runoff, which can end up being a significant contributor to carbon pollution.

“Nitrogen waste is bad for the environment, but it’s also bad for the farmer,” Ross tells me. “It’s just wasted money.”

Federal funding aims to help farmers reduce nitrogen runoff. One of the key ways farmers can pinpoint ways to reduce waste is to hire an agronomist who can come up with a tailored, specific plan for when, how and what rate fertilizer is applied, based on crop needs and soil conditions. But that costs money.

And for many farmers, these sorts of decisions will come down to what’s “good for the bottom line,” Paul Thoroughgood, who farms 2,000 acres of canola, green lentils, flax, spring wheat and winter wheat just south of Moose Jaw, Sask., says.

“Fertilizers are our largest expenses on the farm,” he says. “We recognize that there is a greenhouse gas implication to that. So by making the most efficient use of that fertilizer, it’s a double win.”

New federal funding to help reduce nitrogen fertilizer runoff could enable farmers to hire agronomists who can help identify the proper timing, rate and location of fertilizer application. It’s been estimated that as much as 20 per cent of nitrogen fertilizer is lost as runoff, which means increased carbon pollution. Photo: Shutterstock

Decarbonizing farm machinery has a ‘longer timeframe’

Part of the recent budget includes earmarking $10 million for programs that will move toward “powering farms with clean energy and moving off diesel.”

That’s a big task.

According to a diesel industry group, diesel powers more than two-thirds of all farm equipment and is used to transport 90 percent of farm products in the United States. 

“Right now, the number of diesel engines that we have running on a daily basis is very high,” Thoroughgood says, noting “a combine is awfully high horsepower, and it runs for an awfully long day, day after day.”

Decarbonizing such heavy machinery is challenging, he says.

But, he adds, “you never want to say never because, gosh, the advancements we’ve seen in my farming career are phenomenal.”

Thoroughgood points to recent moves from long-haul trucking companies to move toward electric or hydrogen fuel cell systems. If long-haul trucks can move to clean fuel, he says, farm machinery may well be on that path too — eventually.

Paul Thoroughgood’s farm in Saskatchewan relies heavily on diesel-powered machinery, as is the norm in North American agriculture. He doesn’t foresee that being phased out across the board in the immediate future, but is watching the adoption of clean technology in other carbon-intensive sectors, like long-haul trucking. Photo: Sara Hylton / The Narwhal

“That’s probably going to take a little bit longer timeframe,” van den Heuvel says of a large-scale move away from diesel. “But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be done.”

He points to opportunities for farmers to use biodiesel in tractors or to switch to clean-powered grain dryers.

But, he adds, “the technology and the infrastructure has to be there in place and and ensure that whatever happens in the end ultimately doesn’t end up costing us too much.” 

As many farmers are quick to point out, they compete in international markets on prices and feel they have little ability to pass additional costs down to consumers.

As part of the federal budget, the government has moved to address one longstanding concern of many in the agriculture industry: what they see as the financial punishment of carbon pricing. 

The budget acknowledges that farmers require natural gas and other fuels affected by carbon pricing in their operations, and announces that the government intends to return a portion of funds brought in through carbon pricing directly to farmers, to the tune of an estimated $100 million next year. The return of carbon price proceeds will only apply to jurisdictions without their own carbon-price schemes, including the Prairie provinces and Ontario.

‘Culture change’ needed across all Canadian farm types and sizes

Like all government plans, van den Heuvel of the Canadian Agriculture Federation says, “the devil is in the details.”

Thoroughgood compares the recent budget announcements to other government programs created to incentivize what are known as beneficial management practices through grants. 

Those grants, he says, “generally appealed to small farms, and didn’t do a great job of appealing to the larger firms, because their spending cap was so low that it was almost a rounding error for many people’s balance sheet.”

He wonders how the government will allocate the tens of millions of dollars it has earmarked to climate-friendly farming incentives.

“I hope that the government … looks at how they can make those funding programs relevant to a 30,000-acre farm, or a 50,000-acre farm — you know, something that’s really at scale that will really make a difference on the landscape,” he says.

“Figuring out how to make those programs attractive so that all farms find them interesting — not just the ones that are smaller scale — I think is absolutely critical if Canada wants to make a real impact on the agricultural landscape.”

Farmers and advocates say that the details of how new federal funding is allocated matter, and can’t be targeted to one specific size or type of farm operation. Photo: Sara Hylton / The Narwhal

Van den Heuvel agrees.

“There’s a depth and range of firm sizes, from very small operations, that might only be an acre or two in size, up to those firms that are tens of thousands of acres in size and larger,” he says from outside a barn on his fourth-generation dairy farm in Cape Breton, N.S.

“We just have to make sure that whatever [the government does] put in place is representative of the entire sector.”

Kolk is leery of targeting funding to one size farm or another, noting both approaches would come with potential pitfalls. Farmers, he says, will be responsive if there’s an incentive regardless of the size of their operation.

“If you drag a $20 bill through the gutter in Picture Butte, you watch how many farmers will grab it,” he says with a chuckle.

But at the end of the day, he believes what the government is aiming to do is about more than any one climate-friendly practice adopted by an individual farm. 

“This is a culture change,” he says. “And culture is everybody, from running the three-acre market garden to the 50,000-acre Hutterite colony.”

The Carbon Cache series is funded by Metcalf Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the foundation has no editorial input into the articles.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is the sixth part of Carbon Cache, an ongoing series about nature-based climate solutions.

The millennia-old red cedars of the Great Bear Rainforest, and the western hemlock, Douglas fir and Sitka spruce rubbing at their shoulders, capture a million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere each year, holding onto it as long as the giant trees stand.

Since 2012, the work of the trees and plants of B.C.’s coastal rainforest have been generating credits — one credit for every tonne of carbon sequestered — that are bought by the B.C. government, companies and individuals wanting to offset their carbon emissions.

The goal is to create an economy that doesn’t rely on cutting down these carbon-sequestering senior citizens. In turn, the carbon credit revenue has helped to fund Guardian Watchmen programs in nine coastal First Nations. These Indigenous guardians patrol the landscape and conduct fisheries management and species monitoring.

The Great Bear Rainforest carbon project is the blueprint for carbon offset programs in Canada. And with nature-based climate solutions gaining traction globally, quantifying the amount of carbon Canada’s natural landscapes hold is an increasingly important task.

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2017 found the simple act of preserving wetlands, forests and grasslands could provide more than one-third of the emissions reductions needed to stabilize global temperature increases below 2 C by 2030 under the Paris Accord.

The federal government is now working to develop a national offset standard for the first time. While offset programs already exist in some provinces and via voluntary carbon markets, the federal standard will mark a new era of carbon markets in Canada.

Another big change is firing up the potential for carbon markets, too: Canada is now including nature-based emissions and sequestration in its biennial reports to the United Nations.

“Previous to 2020’s biennial report, we did not include any nature-based emissions or sequestration in our carbon footprint that we report to the Paris agreement or to Canadians,”  Joseph Pallant, director of climate innovation at Ecotrust Canada, told The Narwhal.

“How crazy is that? This is like six months ago that this has been changed.”

Joseph Pallant, director of climate innovation at Ecotrust Canada, says the development of a national offset standard creates a major incentive for governments to protect nature.

What that means in practice is that when humans impact natural landscapes (by, say, cutting down a forest or destroying a wetland), those emissions are now counted as part of Canada’s carbon footprint.

Pallant said that while some people aren’t fond of the idea of commodifying nature, the development of a national offset standard, along with the inclusion of nature-based emissions in Canada’s climate reports, creates a major incentive for governments to protect nature.

For example, Pallant is working on a forest carbon economy fund that will allow communities to unlock the value of carbon stored on the landscape, offering them options for revenue beyond logging and simultaneously helping Canada meet its climate goals.

“The goal is to make improvements in nature actually affect the Canadian federal government’s bottom line,” he said.

Carbon offsets could also “massively” help fund new Indigenous Protected Areas, according to Pallant.

While the Great Bear Rainforest is the leading example of how carbon offsets can work, it’s also an example of how things can get, well, complicated.

The Great Bear agreement has faced challenges in recent years, with the credits established in the forest struggling to find buyers. Across the country, various carbon offset programs have so far failed to get off the ground due to lack of demand for offsets and hefty costs to get projects underway.

Here’s what you need to know about carbon offsets and nature-based climate solutions.

What are nature-based climate solutions?

Nature-based climate solutions can look like a lot of different things in practice: carbon offsets from forest protection, designation of Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas and national parks, restoring coastal ecosystems like kelp forests or ranchers earning carbon credits for maintaining native grasslands on their properties, to name just a few.

What brings all of these concepts together is the ultimate goal of protecting or restoring nature in part due to its ability to store carbon.

Lisa Young — executive director of Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources, which represents five Mi’kmaq communities on Cape Breton Island — noted that Indigenous people have been practising conservation for thousands of years but new opportunities are emerging through Canada’s desire to reduce emissions and protect biodiversity.

“Not only are they exploring those kinds of concepts around green economy that will also mitigate the impacts of what we’re doing to the climate, but also the land itself is healing that as well,” she says. “It’s a two-pronged kind of thing.”

Api’soomaahka, or William Singer, is working with Blood Tribe Land Management in southern Alberta to convert his cultivated land back to native grasslands. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

How do you monetize nature-based climate solutions?

One of the most fundamental issues at play around carbon offset projects is how greenhouse gas emissions are counted — and, more crucially, not counted.

“Nature is currently managed as a resource,” said Larry Sault, president and CEO of Anwaatin, a company that works with Indigenous communities on carbon sequestration projects. “Its value is only realized by its destruction.”

The concept is fairly straightforward: identify and protect an ecosystem that would otherwise lose its carbon sink functionality due to human impacts, calculate the amount of carbon presently or potentially stored in it and sell credits for the carbon the ecosystem sequesters to other entities to offset their own emissions.

Offsetting can include improved management practices of forests, farmlands, grasslands and wetlands, among others.

The federal government’s 2020 design paper for options for a federal greenhouse gas offset system requires offsets to be quantifiable, additional to a business-as-usual scenario, incremental to other incentives and verifiable.

Carbon credits garnered from offsetting can be sold in two types of carbon market: regulatory compliance or voluntary. On the regulated market, buyers are purchasing credits because of requirements by law to keep their carbon emissions below a certain threshold. If they fail to stay below that threshold, they can buy credits to offset their overage. On the voluntary market, credits are purchased voluntarily — say, to offset the emissions (and guilt) from a flight or a conference.

In terms of how credits are verified on those two markets, there isn’t a major difference, Pallant said. Some voluntary markets have more rigorous standards than some regulatory compliance markets, and vice-versa.

In October 2019, the carbon offset registry Climate Action Reserve adopted the Canada Grassland Protocol for the voluntary market. The Canadian Forage and Grasslands Association, which supported the creation of the protocol, is now evaluating the protocol by working with about 50 private land owners through a four-year pilot program. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

How do you create demand for carbon credits?

Currently, the B.C. government is the only province or territory that has committed to maintaining zero emissions, meaning the province itself purchases a significant portion of the made-in-B.C. carbon credits.

“It’s something other governments should pick up,” Pallant said. “It’s something where they can put their money where their mouth is and, importantly, it can seed the field for development of the other systems.”

The B.C. government recently announced a new five-year agreement to buy carbon credits from the Great Bear Rainforest, for example.

“By the government saying ‘we’re going to backstop demand’ and guarantee there’s demand for around 750,000 tonnes of emissions reductions per year in B.C. … that makes it worthwhile to set up a carbon offset system … and it creates a business case for Indigenous communities like the Coastal First Nations,” Pallant said.

As evidenced by the Great Bear agreement, this system can help build an alternative economy to resource extraction. Regulations that limit the amount of carbon industry can emit, such as cap-and-trade systems, also create demand because those companies that are unable to stay below the limit are forced to buy offsets.

Jordan Wilson, a Heiltsuk Coastal Guardian Watchman, aboard one of the nation’s monitoring vessels in the Great Bear Rainforest. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

In Alberta, for example, there is a regulated market for carbon credits for companies that have to reduce their emissions under the province’s Carbon Competitiveness Incentive Regulation, which targets companies that emit 100,000 tonnes of carbon per year or more.

While B.C.’s government has committed to net-zero emissions, the cancellation of the province’s cap-and-trade program has been the source of the Coastal First Nations’ struggle to find buyers outside of government for Great Bear carbon credits. The province backed out of its cap-and-trade plan in 2011, meaning there’s no requirement for companies to keep carbon emissions below a certain threshold, so offsets are only sold to the government and on a voluntary basis to companies — resulting in a huge backlog of unsold credits.

Similarly, the cancellation of Ontario’s cap-and-trade system under Premier Doug Ford’s government in 2018 meant aspiring projects had only the voluntary market to sell into. It was a move that swiftly immobilized carbon offset programs that were in the works, said Jason Rasevych, president of the Anishnawbe Business Professional Association, which is working with several Ontario First Nations to develop carbon offset programs.

Putting a price on carbon stored by nature is an awfully complex task that has been attempted since the Rio Summit in 1992 and Kyoto Protocol in 1997 with varying success. Jessica Dempsey, a UBC geography professor and author of Enterprising Nature, said that most forest offset proposals have “failed miserably.”

“It seems simple: let’s just pay people not to cut down forests or clear bogs and then we’ll create an economic interest in it and it won’t happen,” she said. “But in reality, setting all of that up and monitoring it is really complicated and bureaucratic and costly and politically challenging.”

What is the federal government doing about carbon offsets?

Well, one of the biggest things they’re doing is mandating a price on carbon nation-wide through the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. This creates the conditions for carbon offsets to potentially develop.

In early July, the federal government published a position paper on options for a federal greenhouse gas offset program. The government still has to develop a protocol for offset projects, which would include how emissions reductions should be quantified for each type of project — such as forest offsets — as well as monitoring and reporting throughout the project’s life.

Robert Gibson, professor at the University of Waterloo’s Department of Environment and Resource Studies, said the federal government’s new impact assessment legislation and strategic assessment of climate change includes a requirement for decision-makers to consider the direct impacts of a project on emissions and carbon sinks, but so far there has been “no serious effort” made to define how those considerations would be made or what implications they would have.

“We’ve been doing horribly on all matter of greenhouse gas considerations and assessments,” he said, noting that Environment and Climate Change Canada is expected to provide a technical guide to quantifying the value of a carbon sink in the near future.

An oilsands operation butts up against boreal forest in northern Alberta. Photo: Louis Bockner / Sierra Club BC

How can Indigenous communities tap into carbon markets? 

From Thunder Bay, Ont., Rasevych has watched the development of the Great Bear Forest carbon project closely.

“It’s something they do as innovators and leaders — and they are very inspiring for First Nations leadership in northern Ontario to look at and identify potential for opportunities here,” Rasevych said.

There’s no question that there are plenty of opportunities for Indigenous communities to build an economy around Great Bear-inspired protection of carbon sinks such as forests and wetlands. Canada boasts 2.7 million square kilometres of boreal forest, with 70 per cent of Indigenous communities located in forested regions.

Indeed, Indigenous-led, nature-based carbon offsets could be a pathway toward reconciliation — if they’re done right. (Australia’s Aboriginal Carbon Fund is working with the First Nations Energy and Mining Council in Canada to bring the concept here.)

“Given the overlap of Indigenous territories and carbon sinks in Canada, it is unlikely that nature-based solutions could be widely implemented without upholding Indigenous rights to lands and resources and respecting Indigenous governance and knowledge systems in climate change policy,” says a recent paper published in the Canadian science journal FACETS.

Sault of Anwaatin stresses the core challenge in bringing more carbon offset projects online is the matter of Indigenous jurisdiction.

He said many carbon-rich areas remain under provincial governance, and the only way to move forward on the issue is to honour the spirit and intent of treaties, resolve outstanding land claims and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

‘It’s like paradise for us’: the Cree Nation’s fight to save the Broadback Forest

John Cutfeet, former band councillor for Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation in northwestern Ontario and research fellow at the Yellowhead Institute, agreed: “All those activities like conservation and managing carbon sequestration are done and are premised on the fact that government owns the land.”

“But Indigenous people have said ‘no, we never gave up the land in those treaties, we need to share.’ As long as that whole notion that Indigenous people have no land is in place, that’s one of the biggest challenges that we’re going to have to overcome.”

Sault recommended the creation of agreements to ensure Indigenous people are the beneficiaries of revenues generated from offset programs — including a separate certification for offsets from Indigenous-managed lands, with explicit co-benefits such as Indigenous Guardian programs for fire management and pest control, or cultural revitalization including youth.

“Nature-based solutions policy and projects that are advanced without the partnership or consent of Indigenous Nations can generate significant opposition from communities who consider such actions as ‘carbon colonialism’ and a threat to inherent land rights,” noted the FACETS paper.

A river flows through an area of the Great Bear Rainforest known as the Kitlope. An innovative carbon offset program has helped to fund conservation in the forest. Photo: Alex Harris / Raincoast

What kind of challenges have people faced in creating carbon offsets?

Rasevych works with three Indigenous communities — Eabametoong, Marten Falls and Aroland First Nations — that collectively harvest and manage the Ogoki Forest, about 400 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay.

He said the First Nations are looking to take the next step to explore an offset project around more ecologically sustainable logging but currently lack capacity to conduct a feasibility study and create an up-to-date inventory of the stored carbon, biodiversity and harvesting volumes in the region. Without that, Rasevych said it’s impossible for communities to properly evaluate the economic trade-offs between commercial forestry and carbon offsetting.

Some money was available for First Nations to get started on this work through Ontario’s carbon pricing framework — until it was cancelled. The scrapping of the cap-and-trade system, Rasevych said, pretty well put an end to the funding for communities interested in developing offset programs.

A year after the Ford government cancelled the cap-and-trade system, a team of scholars from the University of Guelph convened a gathering of representatives from First Nations, Indigenous communities and environmental groups from across the country to hash out the impediments and opportunities in Indigenous-led conservation and carbon storage.

The battle for the ‘breathing lands’: Ontario’s Ring of Fire and the fate of its carbon-rich peatlands

Mary-Kate Craig, a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph studying Indigenous carbon markets and one of the authors of the FACETS paper, helped to host the gathering. She explained more than a dozen key barriers that were identified by participants, including: a lack of clarity about how to actually make carbon offsets work, absence of carbon markets to participate in, and concerns around financial and organizational capacity of Indigenous communities.

There are also hard-to-meet requirements for verifying carbon offset projects that can be a hindrance to them moving forward, she said. The “additionality” requirement, for example, means proponents have to prove protection or restoration of a forest, grassland or wetland could only have happened through the offset project and not by any other means. So, if there’s no threat, there’s no offset.

And the project proponent has to ensure the carbon emissions mitigated by the project aren’t simply displaced elsewhere — a form of “carbon leakage.” So the onus is on the proponent to prove managing its forest for carbon offsetting, for example, won’t just result in another area logged.

In order for the Great Bear Forest Carbon Project to come to fruition, the province had to sign an “atmospheric benefit sharing agreement” with the nine First Nations behind the offset project. B.C. is so far the only province or territory to sign one of these agreements that establish clear rules about Indigenous ownership of carbon that’s sequestered by their land, and their subsequent ability to sell carbon credits.

Heiltsuk Guardian Watchman Jordan Wilson, right, prepares salmon during “Salmon Days” on Heiltsuk territory in Bella Bella, B.C. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

It also lays out who gets the benefits. In the case of Great Bear, the Coastal First Nations agreement allocates 80 per cent of revenue from offsets to First Nations and 20 per cent to the province.

Other proposed projects are lacking this critical element.

Take the Poplar River First Nation on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg, for example. Over the last several decades it has worked to conserve its traditional territory of Asatiwisipe Aki and collaborate with three nearby First Nations to establish Pimachiowin Aki, a 29,040-square-kilometre UNESCO World Heritage Site, in 2018.

A recent report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development explained that the area’s forests and wetlands store an estimated total of 444 million tonnes of carbon. Establishing a “payment for ecosystem services agreement,” through which the provincial government pays the nation for its work to conserve this carbon sink on a per-hectare basis, would enable a massive range of opportunities for the First Nation, including species and water monitoring, land-based education and jobs in fisheries, tourism and stewardship.

Establishing a carbon finance benefit-sharing agreement between Poplar River First Nation and the Government of Manitoba would mean offsets for the carbon sequestered by these lands could be sold to finance the First Nation’s work.

“They have so much information around the carbon, and they have done so much work to try to create a functioning offset,” said Mary-Kate Craig, a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph studying Indigenous-led carbon markets.

Yet so far, Poplar River hasn’t been able to formalize a conservation economy, which Craig said is “to do with the provincial government not giving them what they need to actually create that as a project.”

The International Institute for Sustainable Development found the forests and wetlands in Pimachiowin Aki store an estimated total of 444 million tonnes of carbon. Photo: Hidehiro Otake / UNESCO

Are carbon offsets just greenwashing?

Many people say that offsets need to be part of an energy transition plan in conjunction with large-scale emissions reductions in sectors like oil and gas extraction and transportation.

Shane Moffatt of Greenpeace Canada pointed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pledge to plant two billion trees with revenues from the Trans Mountain Pipeline as a worst-case scenario.

“They need to be in addition to drastic emissions reductions, not to somehow offset or balance them out,” he said. “That’s not going to get us anywhere and is just shuffling chairs on the Titanic.”

“Understandably, conservation interests have been pushing for recognition of the importance of maintaining the carbon sinks that we now have: wetlands and forests and so forth,” said Gibson of the University of Waterloo. “That’s fine, but we need to be much more ambitious than that if we’re going to get to net-zero.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once promised to plant trees with revenues from the Trans Mountain oilsands pipeline, a strategy that doesn’t sit well with many environmentalists. Photo: Johann Simundsson

Are there more examples of successful carbon offset projects in Canada?

In 2011, three years after buying 136,000 acres of forest from a logging company in B.C.’s Selkirk Mountains, the Nature Conservancy of Canada sold its first round of carbon credits. That first sale through the Darkwoods Forest Carbon Project was for 700,000 credits — equivalent to 700,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide  — and netted more than $4 million on the voluntary market. The revenue from credits went back into conservation work on the property — and it continues to each year.

Pallant of Ecotrust Canada has been working for a decade and a half on forest carbon offset projects, trying to develop protocols and “clear the path” for successful projects.

He gives the example of the Cheakamus Community Forest, a collaboration between Ecotrust, Brinkman Climate, the town of Whistler and the First Nations of Squamish and Lil’watt.

Meet the Canadian farmers fighting climate change

With so much action both from the federal government and Indigenous governments, Rasevych of the Thunder Bay-based Anishnawbe Business Professional Association is convinced the movement toward carbon offsetting only requires a few more sparks to ignite.

“There needs to be a starting point,” he said. “There needs to be one First Nation or a group of First Nations that work together on pushing that agenda. Because it is something that our communities have a common vision about — and it’s something that could assist us globally.”

— With files from Emma Gilchrist

The Carbon Cache series is funded by Metcalf Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the foundation has no editorial input into the articles.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is the fifth part of Carbon Cache, an ongoing series about nature-based climate solutions.

Paul Thoroughgood doesn’t hear the phone ring because his head is in the freezer. He’s digging out deer steaks to thaw — his daughter wants mule deer wrapped in bacon for dinner. 

I’m calling to ask him about farming and carbon, but he has to catch his breath after running up from the basement.

Thoroughgood and his family farm 2,000 acres just south of Moose Jaw, Sask., — green lentils, canola, flax, spring wheat and winter wheat — on the farm he grew up on. It’s an area of transition, straddling the “corner-to-corner farmland” Saskatchewan is known for and the province’s grasslands and hills so often left out of the flat-farmland stereotypes.

For 23 years, Thoroughgood has been practising, and advocating for, sustainable agriculture. It’s a “buzzword,” he says, noting sustainability is more of a voyage than a place, more of a practice of “continual self improvement.” 

The view across the road from Thoroughgood’s farm in Saskatchewan. Photo: Sara Hylton / The Narwhal

Thoroughgood farms green lentils, canola, flax, spring wheat and winter wheat and says he’s always improving his practices to be more sustainable. Photo: Sara Hylton / The Narwhal

As conversations have shifted in recent decades, he says, so too have farming practices. 

For many years, farming has been lambasted as being a significant contributor to climate change: the industry has been accused of emitting large amounts of methane from cattle, heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers, stripping the land and trending toward increasing industrialization on ever-larger farming operations.

But in recent years the role of farming in reducing emissions — and stewarding the carbon sequestration potential of farmland and ranch land across the Prairies — has been getting more and more attention.

It’s all part of a growing trend of what are known as “nature-based climate solutions,” which a 2017 study found could provide up to one-third of the emissions reductions required under the Paris Accord. 

A 2019 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine declared that practices that involve removing and sequestering carbon dioxide from the air will have to play a significant part in mitigating global climate change. 

This, the report noted, includes practices that “enhance natural carbon sinks” — like agricultural lands.

And that carbon storage potential is entirely in the hands of farmers and ranchers.

‘If it’s green and growing, it’s sequestering carbon’

Bob Lowe can barely hear the phone either. He’s out branding 400 head of cattle near Nanton, Alta., and they’re making a lot of noise. 

Lowe, the president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, is adamant that ranchers have long been ahead of the curve when it comes to climate change mitigation. In large part, he says it’s inherent in the very nature of ranch land. 

Bob Lowe, president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, on his ranch near Nanton, Alta. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Grazing plays an important role in the health of native grasslands, which historically were home to bison. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Grasslands like those where Lowe ranches cover approximately a quarter of the earth’s land area — over three billion hectares.

In Canada, it’s thought native grasslands once covered 61 million hectares, covering much of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta. Today, less than a fifth remain intact, with some 50 million hectares having been cultivated for crops or converted to urban areas.

Some estimate the uncultivated grasslands of Western Canada may store two to three billion tonnes of carbon. Unlike forests, grasslands store carbon underground, in the deep root systems of the plants that grow there. 

“To put it in a nutshell, if it’s green and growing, it’s sequestering carbon,” Lowe says of the land ranchers use to run cattle. “When you rip it up, that carbon is released and it stores at a very, very slow rate.”

Ranchers don’t rip up the land, he says, and are thus protectors of an important carbon store. 

But even farmers of cultivated crops are adopting new techniques to retain the carbon storage potential of the land and soil.

Lowe says ranchers are ahead of the curve when it comes to climate change mitigation, in part because they’re stewards of carbon-rich grasslands. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Tilling ‘detrimental’ to soil — and carbon storage

Ranchers may not rip up the land, but for decades, farmers of crops have churned up the soil after one crop has been harvested to make way for the next season. 

It’s an iconic image: the prairie farmer, ploughing the soil — also known as tilling — by hand, or by ox, or by tractor. 

Cultivation of this sort happened rapidly on the Canadian Prairies once colonial settlers arrived on the land. 

In 1831, just 870 hectares of grasslands were cultivated. Settlers cultivated another 113,000 hectares over the next 50 years, and by 1931 some 24 million hectares of natural grasslands had been converted to croplands.

The original extent of Canada’s native prairie grasslands. Today, less than 20 per cent of these grasslands remain intact. Map: Alicia Carvalho / The Narwhal

“Going back into the 1930s, the farming practices of the day, which included very intensive tillage, were resulting in dust storms and loss of soil,” Jim Tokarchuk, executive director of the Soil Conservation Council of Canada, tells The Narwhal.

It’s estimated that approximately 20 per cent of global grasslands have been converted to cultivated crops, making their management more important than ever, including when it comes to carbon storage.

Soil is the key carbon storage mechanism on ranch lands and farmlands. According to some estimates, soil carbon accounts for more than 80 per cent of the total carbon found in grasslands ecosystems.

Dry mix grass prairie on the Lomond Grazing Association lease in southern Alberta. The grazing reserve harbours untilled native prairie, as well as wetlands, and is a refuge for many endangered species. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

In parts of the U.S., it’s estimated cultivated soil has lost anywhere from a third to half of its carbon as a result of agricultural practices. A study published in the journal Rangeland Ecology and Management notes that between 20 and 60 per cent of soil stored in carbon was lost as Canada’s grasslands were converted to croplands.

“Tillage is detrimental to soil health,” Tokarchuk explains. “In the last 30 years now there’s been this push to reduce tillage.” 

“Tillage, or mixing up the soil, increases the degradation or the decomposition of the organic matter,” Brian McConkey of the Prairie Soils Conservation Project explains. That reduces soil carbon content. 

One of the conservation techniques that has emerged in recent decades is “zero-till.” 

“The name really does the explanation,” Tokarchuk says. Zero-till doesn’t mean an end to growing crops, but it does mean a change to how it’s done.

In essence, instead of tilling the soil every year to prepare the soil for seeding a new crop, farmers can opt instead to leave the remnants of the previous crop in place. Rather than a freshly cultivated field of exposed dirt, the ‘stubble’ of the last crop is left in the soil, along with its roots — and therefore its carbon storage potential.

Thoroughgood’s flax field, where he shows the results of a zero till farming practice. Photo: Sara Hylton / The Narwhal

Recuperation of the soil, McConkey says, means “carbon dioxide is removed out of the atmosphere.”

Indeed, zero-till has been hailed as a “significant opportunity to offset a portion of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.”

There have been a variety of campaigns in recent years encouraging farmers to adopt no-till farming techniques, including No-Till November, encouraging male farmers to keep the stubble not only on their faces, but in their fields.

According to McConkey, 3.5 megatonnes of carbon dioxide were removed from the atmosphere and sequestered in the soil from the adoption of no-till methods throughout Canada in 2018.  

This, he notes, is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from over a million vehicles.

Barley and flax grow on Thoroughgood’s farm outside Moose Jaw, Sask. Photo: Sara Hylton / The Narwhal

Soil conservation could sequester three gigatonnes of carbon 

While zero-till holds potential to increase carbon sequestration, there are questions about whether its climate benefits are applicable across a variety of geographic regions and soil types, with some studies suggesting the carbon storage potential may be greater in warmer and wetter climates than dry, colder ones.

Add in the challenges of collecting data on soil organic carbon and getting an accurate picture of the carbon sequestration potential can be tricky.

“Information on carbon is very noisy,” Tokarchuk says. “It’s very hard to capture consistency because soil carbon is very variable. You can take two samples 10 feet apart and get different results.” 

Nevertheless, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine estimates that what it dubs “full adoption” of agricultural soil conservation practices could result in the removal of three gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually.

Three gigatonnes would be substantial if it was achieved, given that the International Energy Agency estimates global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions were about 33 gigatonnes in 2018. The potential carbon dioxide removal from agricultural and soil conservation is nearly 10 per cent of that total.

Zero-till doesn’t just have carbon storage benefits. Leaving stubble behind prevents the erosion of valuable topsoil, retains important nutrients, prevents water loss and can save farmers time and money.  

Carbon sequestered on farms is largely in the soil. By not tilling, that carbon remains in the ground. Photo: Sara Hylton / The Narwhal

Thoroughgood inspects his barley, one of the crops on his 2,000-acre farm in Saskatchewan. Photo: Sara Hylton / The Narwhal

Rethinking fertilizer use can reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Farmers are working to reduce greenhouse gases lost to the atmosphere in other ways, too — and hoping their efforts will be recognized in carbon markets.

One of the significant contributors to the climate impact of farming is fertilizer. According to Statistics Canada, some 70 per cent of crop farms apply fertilizer. 

Estimates vary as to how much of it is lost as runoff, which ends up in the environment. In many cases, as with nitrogen, that would mean it ends up as a greenhouse gas. 

It has been estimated that as much as 20 per cent of nitrogen fertilizer is lost as runoff, which can end up being a significant factor in emissions.

But in recent years, farmers have been paying more attention to what’s known as nutrient management, says McKenzie Smith, director of nutrient stewardship of Fertilizer Canada. 

Fertilizer Canada advocates for what it calls the 4Rs, referring to fertilizer being applied keeping in mind the “right source, right rate, right time, right place.” This helps ensure it’s used by the crop and not lost as runoff.

“It’s about a grower who successfully looks at their whole system and manages their nutrients in a way that ensures that their crop gets those nutrients and they’re using the right amount but they’re also utilizing timing and placement and different practices or texts or different sources and technologies.”

“So by using proper nutrient management, they’re able to sustainably grow more crops and also at the same time limit against potential environmental effects.”

“We feel this has a very strong linkage to climate change and protecting our environment because although nutrients are needed for the plant, if they’re applied inappropriately and not in the best manner, they could be lost to the environment,” Smith says.

Research in Canada has estimated greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen fertilizer use can be reduced by 15 to 25 per cent when 4R protocols are followed.

“There’s a real potential. These are not small numbers,” Smith says. “Utilizing nutrients in the right way, by following these practices on large amounts of farmland across the country, has a real positive impact.”

Smith adds that these reductions in greenhouse gas emissions have been put forward as a mechanism to be included in a national carbon credit system.

“We have a climate smart strategy, which basically takes the 4R concept and turns it into a carbon credit,” Smith says. 

“We’re working with provincial and federal governments to have that protocol be embedded in their systems so that growers doing this in the future could potentially generate carbon credits by reducing emissions.”

The federal government is currently working to develop a national carbon offset standard, with a design paper released this July. In the meantime, a Canadian Grassland Protocol has been approved for the voluntary carbon market and a Soil Enrichment Protocol is in the works. 

(Carbon credits garnered from offsetting can be sold in two types of carbon market: regulatory compliance or voluntary. On the regulated market, buyers are purchasing credits because of requirements by law to keep their carbon emissions below a certain threshold. On the voluntary market, credits are purchased voluntarily — say, to offset the emissions from a flight or a conference.)

‘There’s a whole world of carbon finance out there’

Karen Haugen-Kozyra, president of environmental consulting firm Viresco Solutions, studied carbon and nitrogen cycling at the University of Alberta back in the ’80s.

“Little did I know that carbon was going to be pretty big,” she says with a chuckle from her home in Edmonton. 

She worked on getting Alberta’s carbon credit trading system up and running in the mid-2000s. Now, through her work with Viresco, she focuses on the intersection between agriculture and carbon, helping companies, NGOs, governments, farmers and ranchers navigate the complex world of carbon credits. 

“There’s a whole world of carbon finance out there. Investors are looking for good projects to invest in,” Haugen-Kozyra says. 

There are 25 protocols (including four specific to agriculture) in Alberta’s offset system, which has been in operation since 2007.

“Protocols are just the recipes people follow to generate a carbon credit from a particular activity,” Haugen-Kozyra explains. 

“The one that’s had the most traction is the Conservation Cropping Protocol,” she says. “It rewards growers for no-till agriculture.”

“Of all the places in the world, it’s the only one that’s really happened at scale. We’ve had a lot of interest from other countries, other companies, about how we’ve been able to do this at scale. Alberta was the first to innovate on large-scale no-till projects.” 

Between 2007 and 2018, nearly 16 megatonnes of carbon offsets have been generated under the Conservation Cropping Protocol and its earlier versions, injecting more than $200 million into the agricultural sector, Haugen-Kozyra says. 

Aggregator companies work directly with farmers to bundle up offsets to sell on the marketplace. 

“Farmers are doing what they’re doing best — growing their crops, raising their animals,” Haugen-Kozyra says. “They don’t have time to be able to meet the market requirements. Plus, as an individual farm, it’s not viable. Buyers in the marketplace are looking for a minimum of 10,000 megatonnes. To bring a package to the marketplace takes a number of farms.”

Thoroughgood with his son Nolan, who wasn’t interested in farming even a year ago, but now hopes to move back home to help. Photo: Sara Hylton / The Narwhal

Carbon offset revenues from no-till methods aren’t a panacea for Alberta farmers, however. Haugen-Kozyra says the carbon yield calculated by the protocol averages about 0.08 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per acre using no-till methods, depending on the region. At today’s ceiling price of $30/tonne, that means a farmer might make $1.80 to $2.10/acre after negotiating with an aggregator and paying a 15 per cent commission. 

“We always say offsets are kind of like Air Miles. You might have been going to fly anyway …  It’s not a windfall.” 

Carbon credits can also be earned for following 4R protocols for fertilizer as well as for using advanced feeding techniques to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fed cattle. Two projects to reduce emissions in cattle were just certified in Alberta.

“It’s the first beef carbon in the world,” Haugen-Kozyra says. “People like beef carbon. It’s kinda sexy.” 

Advanced feeding techniques can reduce the amount of methane cows belch into the atmosphere. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

When cows digest food, they create what’s known as enteric methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Viresco recently wrapped up a study using a feed additive called 3-NOP in 12,000 head of cattle, which reduced methane emissions by between 17 and 70 per cent, depending on the exact diet. 

“It’s like Beano for cattle,” Haugen-Kozyra says.

Haugen-Kozyra has been working on carbon offset protocols since 2001, when she was employed in Alberta’s agriculture ministry and Paul Martin was prime minister. During the ensuing Harper years, federal interest waned. Now, with the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change mandating a price on carbon nation-wide, the file is moving again. 

“I’m not getting any younger. I’d really like to see some stuff take off in a big way in this country,” Haugen-Kozyra says. “We need everyone to roll up their sleeves.”

Will early adopters be left out?

While Thoroughgood is excited about the potential for carbon markets, he is concerned that the program still has some kinks.

“We’ve been very frustrated trying to engage on getting zero-till farmers some credit for the carbon we sequester, or have sequestered,” he tells me.

Thoroughgood has been working with Ducks Unlimited as an agrologist for 23 years. Photo: Sara Hylton / The Narwhal

He’s concerned that those in the agriculture industry that are already sequestering carbon, either deliberately or as a side effect of their operations, are not going to be rewarded.

“Ranchers who have all this carbon sequestered, because they ranch, probably are not likely going to get a reward,” he says.

“We’re not rewarding the early adopters, which is, you know, what often happens, but I think that this has driven a wedge in the discussion around how agriculture can be more productively engaged in Canada’s climate adaptation and mitigation strategy.”

Indeed, farmers in Saskatchewan, where there hasn’t been a carbon market to date, have been missing out on earning carbon credits thus far. And given the way carbon markets work, it’s tricky to earn credit for something you’re already doing, because a key hallmark of a carbon credit is it must be additional — in other words, it wouldn’t have happened otherwise. 

‘We were more efficient and we made more money’

Both Thoroughgood and Lowe acknowledge there has been tension between some farmers and those pushing for discussions about climate solutions.

“Too often we see conservation and agriculture as being at odds,” Thoroughgood  says. “And too often there hasn’t been a discussion about what it is we disagree on.” As it turns out, he says, the disagreements don’t amount to as much as one may have thought.

A combine is makes its way through Thoroughgood’s barley crop in Saskatchewan. Photo: Sara Hylton / The Narwhal

Thoroughgood has also been working with Ducks Unlimited for 23 years, as a regional agrologist. In recent years, the idea of farming practices going hand in hand with climate change mitigation has become more prevalent. And that, Thoroughgood says, is only natural. 

“A lot [of new farming practices] have been adopted because they’re financially sound,” he says. “We didn’t adopt that because it reduced our greenhouse gas emissions … we were more efficient and we made more money.”

“As a farmer, I’m not sure that I do anything with climate as my first motivator,” Thoroughgood says, though it is important to him that new farming technologies and practices have a climate benefit. 

But farmers have to be pragmatic, and economics do matter. Thoroughgood says that means benefits to the climate aren’t always the first priority. “It’s an ancillary benefit, not the primary.”

It’s an ancillary benefit — with big potential impacts on carbon storage.

— With files from Zoë Yunker and Emma Gilchrist

The Carbon Cache series is funded by Metcalf Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the foundation has no editorial input into the articles.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

As many countries move away from big hydro projects, B.C.’s government must decide whether to continue work on the Site C dam. The controversial megaproject would flood a 100-kilometre stretch of the Peace River Valley and provide enough power for the equivalent of about 500,000 homes.

The B.C. Utilities Commission, an independent body responsible for ensuring British Columbians pay fair energy rates, found the dam is likely behind schedule and over budget, with completion costs estimated at more than $10 billion. In a “high impact” scenario, it may go over budget by as much as 50 per cent.

ICYMI: Site C Dam $600 Million Over Budget, Will Miss River Diversion Timeline, Says BC Hydro CEO

The dam has faced court challenges and political actions by Treaty 8 First Nations and farmers whose land would be flooded. Treaty 8 First Nations stand to lose hunting and fishing grounds, burial sites and other areas vital to their culture and sustenance. West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations demonstrated the devastating environmental impacts Site C will have.

The Peace Valley’s land and waters are an integral part of First Nations’ identity, stories, songs and language. An open letter opposing the project, signed by 27 people and groups, including Amnesty International, says the project betrays Canada’s commitment under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Consent from affected Indigenous Peoples is required for developments such as megadams, yet the West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations did not give consent.

BC Hydro’s economic analysis also ignored ecosystems and the benefits they provide. The David Suzuki Foundation estimates ecosystem services from farmland, wetland and other natural capital in the Peace watershed are conservatively worth $7.9 billion to $8.6 billion a year. Services that sustain the health and well-being of local communities include air and water filtration, erosion control, recreational services and wildlife habitat.

The replacement value of what will be lost by flooding far exceeds the dam’s economic returns. Failure to account for the loss of ecosystem services puts us on a destructive course and undervalues natural capital in regulatory decisions.

Alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal, leveraging existing projects and prioritizing localized generation could be as good — or better — for B.C. ratepayers as the megadam. Alternative energy has the advantage of being able to be timed for when it’s needed.

ICYMI: Geothermal Would Create 15 Times More Permanent Jobs Than Site C, Panel Told As BCUC Hearings Draw to Close

Additional generation capacity may not even be necessary because BC Hydro currently exports or sells a significant amount of power, often at a loss, outside the province.

Serious concerns are also being raised about production and release of methylmercury from soil. When land is flooded, naturally occurring soil bacteria can convert mercury to methylmercury, a toxic compound that can move up the food chain and potentially harm human health. Modelling projections for Muskrat Falls dam on the lower Churchill River indicate flooding likely will increase methylmercury 10-fold in the dammed river and 2.6-fold in surface waters downstream. Methylmercury concerns loom at 22 major dams now proposed or under construction close to Indigenous communities in Canada, including Site C.

The area to be flooded is some of the North’s most arable farmland. Agrologist Wendy Holm estimates this breadbasket can feed a million people in the region, an important feature as climate change alters growing seasons and demands more local food systems.

ICYMI: B.C. Taxpayers Paid Millions for the Prime Farmland BC Hydro Will Flood with Site C Dam

Dams now supply about three-fifths of Canada’s electricity. A long-held belief that big hydro projects are the most economically sustainable energy options is fast losing support as renewable energy costs plummet and projects multiply worldwide. The Peace Valley has an incredible ability to generate natural wealth if protected from development. The alternative is ecological fragmentation.

Economic scrutiny of Site C was long overdue but only answers some questions about hydro megaprojects. We can’t elevate the economy above what we need to survive. Humans are now the primary factor altering the physical, chemical and biological properties of the planet on a geological scale. Building more megadams epitomizes the folly of our ways.

The Site C dam should never have been approved. Continuing construction is bad public policy, and it’s not too late to halt it. Canada must join other nations and stop the destructive, unnecessary practice of damming major rivers and running roughshod over Indigenous rights and title. Lower impact renewable energy, like wind, solar and geothermal, look better every day.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Communications Specialist Theresa Beer.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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Over the past four decades, B.C. taxpayers have footed a multi-million dollar bill for BC Hydro to purchase prime Peace Valley farmland in anticipation of building the Site C dam.

In 2012, the latest year for which figures are available, BC Hydro owned almost 1,000 hectares of Peace Valley farmland that would be affected by Site C, an area the size of two and a half Stanley Parks.

BC Hydro declined to reveal how much money it has spent buying farmland in the Peace Valley, but one report says the crown corporation shelled out $6.3 million on agricultural land purchases in the valley in the 11-year period from 1970 to 1981.

BC Hydro’s 2012 holdings included 740 hectares of farmland in the Agricultural Land Reserve and 250 hectares of farmland outside the ALR. In 2012, the crown corporation owned more Class 1 to Class 3 farmland within Site C’s “Project Activity Zone” than all the individual farming families combined. BC Hydro has also purchased an unknown number of hectares of farmland outside Site C’s “Project Activity Zone.” 

Peace Valley farmers say BC Hydro’s ownership of some of the valley’s best farmland, coupled with a 1957 flood reserve, has discouraged local farmers from growing much more than hay, wheat, canola and forage crops, which require far fewer investments than fruit and vegetable production, even though the valley has among the province’s most fertile soils, capable of growing a wide array of produce.

Ross Peck, a Peace Valley farmer who raises horses and grows wheat and canola on land that will be flooded by Site C, says farmers have been discouraged from spending money on irrigation or equipment that would allow them to diversify agricultural production.

“We’ve been in a holding pattern with our properties, not wanting to put much in the way of investment into them,” says Peck.

As a result, the Joint Review Panel that examined Site C’s impacts concluded that the valley’s contribution to B.C. agriculture was negligible and that only $22 million worth of crops would be lost during the predicted 100-year lifespan of Site C.

When B.C. agrologist Wendy Holm examined agricultural values that would be lost if Site C goes ahead, she calculated that 1,800 hectares of the best farmland on the Site C chopping block could produce enough fruit and vegetables to meet the nutritional needs of one million people a year.

“That’s a conservative estimate,” says Holm, whose work in agricultural economics received a Queen’s Golden Jubilee medal. “We have this breadbasket sitting right there, and it’s closer to Vancouver than [California’s] Central Valley.”

As climate change brings drought to California and other parts of the world, including to the Canadian Prairies, Holm says B.C. will need the 6,500 hectares of Peace Valley farmland that will be destroyed by Site C. An additional 5,900 hectares of valley farmland — more than all the farmland in Richmond — is at risk of being lost to the $8.8 billion dam and its 107-kilometre long reservoir.

“That land, even though it’s not being used now, will be needed in the future,” says Holm. “We could have co-ops of young people up there growing organic fruits and vegetables for British Columbia and the north in a heart beat.”

More than one-third of B.C.’s vegetable imports are from California, including 95 per cent of broccoli imports and 34 percent of lettuce imports. The drought means that British Columbians can soon expect to pay 34 per cent more for fruit and vegetables, according to a VanCity study that says broccoli alone could fetch seven dollars a pound by 2019.

The jump in food prices has already begun; in November Statistics Canada reported that over the past year our fresh fruit prices jumped by thirteen per cent, vegetables by fourteen per cent and meat by five per cent.

Despite the northerly location of the Peace Valley, its farming potential rivals that of the lower Fraser Valley, according to Vancouver soil scientist Eveline Wolterson. The valley contains some of the richest soils in the province and its unusual east-west orientation means that it receives more hours of summer sun than the Fraser Valley, compensating for a shorter growing season. Milder winters than in the Okanagan broaden the range of crops that can overwinter in the Peace.

“It’s counter intuitive,” says Wolterson, describing the Peace Valley’s growing climate as “equal, if not slightly better, than in the lower Fraser.”

Unlike California and other farming regions that are expected to continue to suffer from drought, agricultural production in the Peace Valley will benefit from global warming.

Modeling by University of Victoria scientists shows that climate change will reap a noteworthy increase in the number of frost-free periods and growing days in the Peace. In BC Hydro’s words, “a significant improvement in climatic capability for agriculture is predicted” for the Peace River Valley.

The climate change-induced changes will be so pronounced in the Peace Valley that a BC Hydro technical memo says that Class 2 and Class 3 farmland in the Site C flood and erosion zones would become Class 1 farmland, further enhancing the valley’s agricultural capability.

The valley’s rich soil and ideal growing climate have long given it an international reputation for high crop yields.

Third generation Peace Valley farmer Colin Meek recently won a 2015 yield challenge put on by seed company Dekalb. Meek topped the competition elsewhere in the B.C. Peace region and in Alberta’s Peace region when he grew 58 bushels of canola per acre on a field next to the Peace River. The highest yielding area of that field will be eradicated by Site C floodwaters, along with access to the field. The same field also falls within BC Hydro’s “Stability Impact Zone” and faces potential destruction when the banks of the Peace River crumble as the reservoir fills.

“I came back to work on the family farm from the oil patch because I realized that I’ll never be able to eat oil, drink liquefied natural gas, or breath electricity, but that I can help feed the world and clean the air with the food I grow,” Meek wrote in a December 2015 letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau which discussed the agricultural potential of the Peace Valley and asked Trudeau to stop Site C.

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More than four out of five respondents to a public opinion poll released Wednesday believe that B.C. farmland — like forests and water — is a vital public asset.

In addition, 82 per cent of those responding also indicated that “selling out the [Agricultural Land Reserve] ALR is a failure of leadership and a betrayal of the public trust.”

As many as 76 per cent of those taking part in the poll said the ALR protects farms, valleys and greenspace for wildlife habitat and recreational enjoyment.

Laws protecting the ALR should be strengthened or maintained, according to 71 per cent of respondents.

The poll — BC Public Attitudes Toward Agriculture and Food 2014 — also showed 58 per cent of respondents believed “there are no acceptable reasons for removing any more farmland from the Agricultural Land Reserve anywhere in B.C.”

The province-wide online poll was sponsored by the Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia and the Vancouver Foundation. Carried out by McAllister Opinion Research, the survey canvassed 1,704 B.C. residents aged 18 and over between July 17-29. The sample is considered accurate to within ±2.36 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

The two foundations said they commissioned the study to inform discussion and decisions on the future of the ALR, a provincial land-use zone that protects farmland and land with potential to be farmed. The ALR currently makes up 5 per cent of B.C’s land base.

Pollster and president of McAllister Opinion Research, Angus McAllister, told DeSmog Canada that British Columbians have always been supportive of the ALR.

"Support for maintaining or even expanding the Agricultural Land Reserve is very high, especially among older voters,” McAllister said. “However, this support is really nothing new.”

“B.C. voters have always expressed strong support for the ALR, regardless of political stripe.”

He added, “what is striking this time however, is the strong linkage between public discomfort with changes in the ALR and rising concerns about food security.”

McAllister said concern over contaminated food imports plays a role in local support for B.C. farmland and food production. “Concerns about…food products imported from countries like Mexico and China are higher than I've seen in 15 years,” he said. “Concerns around the food supply are hard-wired to some very basic survival instincts, and that is never something to ignore."

The survey was conducted after Bill 24 — The Agricultural Land Commission Amendment Act — was passed in the B.C. Legislature in May. Essentially, Bill 24 split the 40-year-old ALR into two zones.

Zone 1 consists of the Fraser and Okanagan Valleys and southern Vancouver Island, an area representing about 10 per cent of the original ALR. According to the Liberal government, decisions in Zone 1 will continue to be made on the basis of the original principle of preserving agricultural land.

Zone 2 covers the rest of B.C., the government says, where growing seasons are shorter and there are lower value crops. In Zone 2 “decisions will now, in addition to the original principle, include additional considerations to provide farmers with more flexibility to support their farming operations.”

Critics have pointed out that Bill 24 threatens critical farmland by opening up previously protected areas to non-agricultural uses, including oil and gas development.

In August farmers from the Kootenay region demonstrated outside the B.C. legislature, saying they hadn’t been consulted on the changes.

Wendy Holm, a professional agrologist with 40 years experience in public policy and agricultural politics told DeSmog Canada Bill 24 “opens the door for Site C,” a controversial megadam project that will impact 13,000 hectares of farmland in the ALR if approved.

With the changes made under Bill 24, “the land reserve will be considered toothless,” Holm said.

“There’s tremendous potential in the north,” she added. “There’s enough land to produce fresh fruits and vegetables for a million people.”

Among those organizations criticizing the passage of Bill 24 was the BC Food Systems Network.

“We are, of course, deeply disappointed in the passage of Bill 24 and this closure to the huge outcry from the B.C. public to protect farmland in our province,” Abra Brynne, BC Food Systems co-chair, said in a statement.

Farmland advocates fear changes from Bill 24 will increase the price of farmland for young farmers and will also increase the removal of viable farmland for commercial, industrial and real estate development, the statement said.

“This would result in reduced capacity for provincial food security in the face of climate change, as well as increased reliance of imported food, concerns over safe and sustainable agricultural practices in other jurisdictions, and increased food prices due to rising transportation costs.”

The poll released Wednesday also showed that respondents identified, when asked about the priority uses for land in British Columbia, “natural freshwater systems” (83 per cent), closely followed by “farming and growing food” (81 per cent).

It also showed that 80 per cent of respondents were concerned about dependence on other countries for our food security. In addition, 73 per cent said the ALR is a cornerstone of food security and the B.C. economy.

In a media release accompanying the poll findings, Jack Wong, CEO of the Real Estate Foundation of BC, said local, sustainable food systems are a priority issue for the foundation because of the link between food security and community well-being.

“With challenges such as development pressure on agricultural land and changing weather patterns, it is of vital importance to have forward-thinking policies that protect land for growing food, now and for future generations.” Wong was quoted as saying.

Kevin McCort, CEO of Vancouver Foundation, said the survey demonstrates that British Columbians believe strongly in safeguarding our farms and green spaces to ensure long-term health, well-being and resilience in our communities.

“The Agricultural Land Reserve is a vital public asset contributing to our ability to reliably produce fresh food, preserve local farmland and freshwater supplies, and to support local B.C. farmers and ranchers,” McCort said.

Image Credit: B.C. farmland by Kris Krug via Flickr

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