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In mid-February, B.C.’s northeast was shaken by a series of earthquakes that both the province’s energy regulator and Natural Resources Canada say were linked to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas. 

To release oil or gas from rock formations deep underground, companies blast a mix of water, chemicals and sand into the earth, a process that can sometimes trigger earthquakes.

Honn Kao is a seismologist, or earthquake scientist, who leads a Natural Resources Canada research project on “induced seismicity,” which refers to earthquakes caused by human activities. He says the whole point of hydraulic fracturing is to cause very, very small earthquakes, known as microseismicity, to fracture rock and release gas. “That is totally normal, because that’s the purpose of it.” 

“It is not a particular surprise to see induced earthquakes that happened in the area where you have a lot of hydraulic fracturing operations or wastewater disposal injections,” Kao says in an interview. The two, he says, “usually go hand in hand.”

Naturally occurring earthquakes happen when underground rock suddenly breaks and there is motion along a fault. The sudden release of energy causes seismic waves that shake the ground. 

When fracking fluids are injected into the earth’s subsurface at high pressure, they sometimes cause faults to slip earlier than they would naturally, inducing an earthquake, Kao explains. “So quite often [when] you have an increased level of hydraulic fracturing operation in the region, then the level of seismicity becomes larger, higher as well.” 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean bigger earthquakes will occur. The vast majority, Kao says, are “small events that can be located or detected by seismometres, but not necessarily felt by local residents.” 

The issue, Kao says, is when earthquakes are large enough to be felt in nearby communities. “That means the energy released by the earthquake is way bigger than the energy that we input through fluids.” The implication, he says, is that it must have triggered a fault where energy is already building up for an earthquake … “and you just simply make it happen earlier.” 

And that has long concerned local residents, from ranchers to people worried about their well-being and drinking water. Some northeast B.C. residents affected by fracking can no longer get earthquake insurance. 

How do experts determine if an earthquake was caused by fracking?

Determining if an earthquake is induced by fracking requires investigation and research that includes examining the rock properties where the earthquake occurred and the injection history for nearby fracking operations, Kao explains. An earthquake is generally deemed to be induced if it occurs near an active fracking injection operation, he says.

Injection operations take place at relatively shallow depths, while many natural earthquakes occur at deeper depths. “Generally speaking, most of the induced earthquakes occur at or slightly above the injection depths.” But sometimes they are deeper, so seismologists have to examine different factors to infer whether a quake is caused by industrial activity. 

Induced earthquakes usually occur in clusters, like the February earthquakes in B.C.’s northeast, Kao adds. “Once the hydraulic fracturing operations finish, they die down very quickly.”

The BC Energy Regulator requires any fracking operations that trigger an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.0 or greater to immediately suspend operations. In an emailed response to questions, the regulator said the operations may continue with written permission “once the well permit holder has submitted operational changes satisfactory to the BC Energy Regulator to reduce or eliminate the initiation of additional induced seismic events.”

Do fracking earthquakes cause damage?

Kao says B.C. hasn’t experienced induced earthquakes large enough to cause significant damage to buildings or infrastructure. Most earthquakes causing damage to buildings and infrastructure have a magnitude of 5.5 on the Richter scale or higher, Kao explains. 

That doesn’t mean smaller earthquakes can’t have impacts. A B.C. family says a 4.3 earthquake on Feb. 11 precipitated a rush of calf births on its ranch, including premature twins, and the loss of most of their main water supply. While the quake may not have caused damage to buildings and infrastructure, Kao says “it certainly is a warning sign.” 

He says it’s important to make sure a robust regulatory framework is in place that will prevent fracking-induced earthquakes from becoming large enough to cause significant damage in the community. “I think that is really the ultimate balance we want to achieve between public [safety and concerns] and the economic benefit of the industrial activity.”

The regulatory framework appeared to be working in the case of the February earthquakes he says, because they died down once the fracking operations responsible ceased.

Can fracking companies prevent earthquakes from happening?

Fracking companies can take steps to prevent earthquakes by controlling the number of injection wells or the volume of injected fluids. If an earthquake occurs, Kao says the operator can immediately change the injection pattern by reducing the injection rate, “or even completely shut down their injection operation.” 

Kao and other researchers are studying the spate of February earthquakes in northeast B.C. 

“We want to figure out why it happened, what we have missed, what kind of sign can we actually see beforehand? And hopefully we’ll build that into the regulatory framework, so that we can prevent these kinds of things … in the future.”

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Rancher Matt Hedges was trying to catch a few hours of sleep during calving season in mid February when an earthquake rattled his home on Dead Horse Creek Ranch in northeast British Columbia.

“The whole house just started to shake, the pictures, windows, the mirrors and everything,” he says. It felt like a large truck was rumbling past, even though the Alaska Highway is nine kilometres away from the ranch where his parents Marilyn and Bill have lived for more than 40 years, and where Matt grew up and also works. 

The ranch’s 300 cattle were “all in a dither” after the quake struck at eight minutes to midnight. Matt stayed on his feet most of the night as cows went into labour and the temperature dropped below -30 C. “That night, we got a whole pile of calves, and some were premature.” 

The Feb. 11 earthquake was 4.3 on the Richter scale, according to Natural Resources Canada, and felt across a wide area. It was followed by another quake less than two hours later, with a magnitude of 3.8. Matt was so busy hauling damp newborn calves into the barn to keep them warm, taking extra care not to upset their “riled up” mothers, that he didn’t even feel the second one.

In the hours following the earthquakes, the spring that supplies drinking water for the cows and the main ranch house slowed to less than a quarter of its regular flow. 

“We’ll see whether this water comes back,” Matt says in an interview with The Narwhal. “We might need a new water spring there. If suddenly we’re out of water, then we’ve got to spend a bunch of money developing it again, right? … Personally, I’m really fed up with basically the whole oil patch, everything to do with it.”

According to an email from the BC Energy Regulator, the two earthquakes in the Peace Region were caused by hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, for natural gas by Tourmaline Oil, Canada’s largest gas producer. To release the gas from rock formations deep underground, fracking companies blast a mix of water, chemicals and sand into the earth, a process that can sometimes trigger earthquakes.

The two earthquakes were bookended over a five-day period by four other earthquakes in the region, each measuring 3.0 or higher on the Richter scale, as well as nine smaller quakes. All are “suspected industry-related” events, according to Natural Resources Canada’s earthquake database.

As northeast B.C. gears up for a fracking boom to supply new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities, Hedges and his family have unwittingly found themselves at the epicentre of growing friction between the ranching and oil and gas industries. Some northeast B.C. residents affected by fracking can no longer get earthquake insurance, while others worry about potential health impacts, contaminated water supplies and incursions on their land. February’s spate of earthquakes has escalated their worries and underlying stress. 

Ranchers across western Canada also worry about the health of their cattle, and potentially losing their livelihoods. Alberta farmers told a University of Alberta researcher that fracking-induced earthquakes have led to “sick and dying cattle, stillborn calf births and reduced reproduction rates.

Animal behaviour experts also say earthquakes can cause stress and premature births — as they seemingly did on the Hedges’ ranch.

Forty calves were born on the ranch in the two days following the Feb. 11 earthquake, as two other earthquakes struck, up to double the number expected during that time. 

One cow delivered twins born approximately two weeks early. “They’re just tiny little things but they seem to be doing alright,” Matt’s brother Bo says in an interview. “But it does take more time when you have little, little premature calves that need a bit more attention. And then when you have everything else going on with the herd at this moment in time, it just strains everything that much more.”

Ranchers and animal experts say oil and gas operations put cattle at risk 

The BC Energy Regulator, which oversees oil and gas operations in the province, orders fracking companies to suspend operations if they are known to have triggered an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.0 or greater. In an email, the energy regulator confirmed Tourmaline Oil, the company the regulator said was responsible for the two earthquakes that preceded the Hedges’ water woes, suspended the fracking operations in question. Tourmaline did not respond to an interview request sent via email, or a voicemail message left at the company’s regional office in Fort St. John, B.C., about an hour’s drive from the Hedges’ ranch.

The regulator also said it is working closely with researchers, including at Natural Resources Canada, to enhance induced seismicity regulations for the fracking industry.

But that’s cold comfort for the Hedges, who say they have spent $50,000 in time and other expenses over the past several years trying to protect their cattle from the impacts of nearby oil and gas operations carried out by different companies.

Late last year, the family’s fears about the future of the Dead Horse Creek Cattle Company escalated when Bill and Marilyn, who are in their 80s, received notice from Calgary-based oil and gas company Yoho Resources that fracking will soon take place immediately adjacent to their ranch. The main fracking well pad will be about two kilometres away from the ranch houses, next to the property. Because private property owners in B.C. don’t own the rights to minerals and oil and gas under their land, drilling could occur beneath the Hedges’ ranch. 

This past week, with their water supply still affected by the quakes, the Hedges had no option but to put up with Yoho’s preparatory drilling. (Yoho did not respond to an email from The Narwhal.)

Matt worries the cattle, which number about 600 in the summer, will be unsettled by the nearby drilling and fracking, affecting their fertility. “If it’s during our breeding season, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

He says a different fracking company induced an earthquake last spring, “and it really screwed up our breeding program with the heifers. It stirred them up so bad. I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

Ronaldo Cerri, a professor in animal reproduction at the University of British Columbia, says the correlation between stress in cows and calving is documented. “Even the physiological process by which cows deliver the baby starts with an internal stress, a stress from the baby that communicates with the mother and the calving process starts,” Cerri says in an interview. “So if you do start having things around that causes stress, you can actually have premature deliveries.” 

He says it makes sense for animals to be stressed by earthquakes. “If there are earthquakes around, they will be stressed. They will be more restless. …. That’s not normal for them. These are routine animals. So anything that gets them away from that state, that will cause stress to them, and then that could possibly trigger calvings.”

The earthquakes are only part of the Hedge family’s mounting issues with the fracking industry. About three years ago, fracking started on and around the Crown grazing lands the family has leased from the province for the past 40 years. Companies built pipelines and access roads across a swampland and creek that had functioned as a natural barrier for the family’s cattle. 

Cows will be cows, and the Dead Horse Creek Ranch bovines wandered away from their grazing lands. Bo says the family has experienced “a ton of stress” over it. Last summer, the Hedges found about 100 cows and calves less than 1.6 kilometres from the former natural barrier. The summer before, cattle were found grazing on the verge of the busy Alaska Highway multiple times, where they posed a threat to motorists and traffic made it dangerous to round them up on horseback, Matt says. 

While fracking operations on the Crown grazing range are fenced, Bo says, the loss of the natural barrier means cows can also access unfenced fracking operations on nearby land. 

“Our cattle get in there and they can drink whatever crap has been left around,” Bo says. In recent years, he says, calves have occasionally been born with deformities — the brothers say this year’s calves included a dwarf, who lived only a few days, and others born with genitalia “oddities.”

After the Hedges complained to the BC Energy Regulator about the loss of the natural barrier, Bo says they were drawn into a frustrating and time-consuming process that’s already lasted more than a year without resolving the issue.

The energy regulator ordered the three fracking companies involved to each build part of a 2.8-kilometre fence — with gaps between each company’s section. But the Hedges say they need an unbroken 6.4-kilometre fence to protect cattle from the highway and unfenced fracking operations.

The shorter fence was finally built last August, but Bo says it won’t help. “The cattle will hit those lines, walk along, come to the end of the fence and just walk around those fence lines to the end of the fence and continue on. It doesn’t really do anything.” 

In late August 2024, almost a year after the Hedges first asked the regulator for help with the fence, the brothers expressed their frustration in a letter, recently seen by the Narwhal. 

“We are tired of subsidizing the BC Energy Regulator and oil and gas companies involved with our time, money and resources to try to solve a problem that falls under the job description of the BC Energy Regulator and is the responsibility of the companies involved,” Matt and Bo wrote, restating that the shorter fence with gaps would not keep cattle away from either the highway or nearby unprotected oil and gas facilities. 

In response to the family’s frustrations, Patrick Smook, vice-president of compliance and operations for the regulator, told Matt to stop emailing and phoning regulator staff in a November letter reviewed by The Narwhal. Smook told Matt to instead send an email to a general community engagement address, and to call the regulator’s emergency line to report incidents or complaints.

That doesn’t sit well with the Hedges.

Bo doesn’t dispute that his family has called and emailed the regulator a lot. But their repeated attempts to make contact were because they were “worried about the public, worried about our safety, worried about our animals,” he says, and kept waiting for updates on whether companies would be directed to build a sufficient fence. 

“They may feel that they were being badgered by us, but if they had only picked up the phone or only answered the email and given us an update of what was going on, then we would have known where they were at with things,” Bo says. “It’s really hard for us to understand how a government agency that’s supposed to be regulating the oil and gas companies can not engage with the public.” 

The only options the Hedges have now, he says, are to spend about $60,000 to build the rest of the fence, or to fight deep-pocketed oil and gas companies in the courts, an option Bo says could end up being even more expensive.

The family’s herd of reddish Simmental and Simmental cross cattle are normally “pretty quiet animals,” Bo says. But they’ve been “a little worked up” since this month’s earthquakes.

“Some of the cows that you would never think would be a little ‘heads up’ are pretty restless right now,” he says. People working with them “have to be that much more wary and cautious.” 

Researchers studying how to mitigate fracking-induced earthquakes 

Bo, who felt the biggest earthquake in his apartment in Fort St. John, says he was surprised to hear on a local radio station that the recent earthquakes hadn’t caused any damage. “I have no idea why the BC Energy Regulator would downplay the effect and the potential impact that it would have.” 

In an emailed response to questions from The Narwhal, the BC Energy Regulator said it is “committed to reviewing and following up on complaints and concerns.” The regulator also said it can’t comment “on the issue of liability in the unlikely event of damages caused by an induced seismicity event.” The regulator, a government agency largely funded by the oil and gas industry, said such questions “are best directed to the province” — but the B.C. Energy Ministry didn’t respond to The Narwhal’s questions.

Responding to a question about potential future earthquakes from increased fracking in the region, the regulator’s email said it requires companies to suspend injection activities if they cause an earthquake of 4.0 magnitude or greater. Operations can resume, however, the regulator noted in a separate email, with written permission — “once the well permit holder has submitted operational changes satisfactory to the BC Energy Regulator to reduce or eliminate the initiation of additional induced seismic events.”

The regulator also said approval orders are required for each fracking disposal well, “all of which operate under strict pressure and reporting conditions.” 

The regulator said it maintains a seismic monitoring network of 35 stations positioned near energy resource activities and has collaborated with seismologists to define a local magnitude calculation for northeast B.C. that reflects the region’s geology (as a result, the regulator’s calculation of earthquake magnitudes frequently differs from Natural Resources Canada’s). It also pointed to its partnership with Geoscience BC and the BC Oil and Gas Research and Innovation Society to research induced earthquakes and provide analysis used to regulate fracking activities.

With fracking operations poised to begin adjacent to the Hedges’ ranch, the family is more worried than ever about earthquakes and other impacts on their cattle. Bo says it shouldn’t be up to affected ranchers and others to “have to negotiate and fight and go through the court system to get the oil patch to fix [what’s wrong].” 

The Hedges’ most immediate worry is their greatly diminished water supply. When Marilyn and Bill bought the land for their ranch almost 50 years ago, they built their log house and cattle corralls near a naturally occurring spring that runs out of a nearby hillside. 

The spring fills the water tank that supplies the house, while the overflow goes into a trough for cattle to drink. The trough overflow is channeled into a dugout where it’s kept for emergencies, like a fire. From the dugout, the spring water flows into Dead Horse Creek, ebbing and flowing at different times of the year. 

Since the earthquakes, “there’s barely enough water for the house,” Bo says. And the Hedges have had to move their cattle from a corrall whose drinking trough relied on the spring “because there’s not enough water … whether that water system comes back to where it was or not remains to be seen.” 

He says the family is in discussions with Tourmaline Oil to see “how they can help us mitigate some of the impact,” adding, “We will see what comes of that.”

Bo says it’s often possible to work something out with oil and gas companies for small things. “But when you’re starting to talk about a water source that allows a ranch to function and that sort of thing,” he believes oil and gas companies are going to question how much money they’re willing to spend. “They try to keep you a little bit happy and throw you some breadcrumbs here and there, but they’re in to make money for themselves.” 

“And I get that that’s business, right? But when their business starts to drastically affect and change the livelihood of other businesses and people in the community, that’s where it starts to cross the line.”

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Last week, the Alberta government released a draft map outlining new buffer zones prohibiting new wind energy developments, saying “wind projects are no longer permitted in the buffer zones due to the impact of their vertical footprint.” 

Speaking to the media in late February, Alberta’s Affordability and Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf had announced the government’s plan to establish 35-kilometre buffer zones around protected areas and other “pristine viewscapes.” Neudorf added there is no universal definition of what constitutes a pristine viewscape, but generally refers to “areas that are unobstructed, natural landscapes.”

The buffer zones in the draft map encompass much of the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, extending as far east as Calgary. It’s an area dotted with oil and gas facilities and coal mines. Much of the area has been farmed or logged.

In other areas not totally off-limits, the government said renewable energy projects will have to pass through increased regulatory scrutiny in the form of “visual impact assessments.”

As Evan Wilson of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association has pointed out, the Alberta government’s new rules — from pristine viewscapes and beyond — apply only to the renewables industry. “Why is this something that is just impacting wind and solar?” he asked, speaking to CBC. 

Wind turbines have been getting larger, with towers double the average height compared to 20 years ago, and some new turbines stretching upwards of 200 metres tall. Other permitted activities are not as tall as a turbine, but that doesn’t mean they should be treated differently, according to the Alberta Utilities Commission. 

The commission, the regulator of power development in the province which conducted the government-ordered inquiry into renewable energy development, said in its first report any prohibition to “achieve viewscape protection” should be “industry agnostic” and “apply to all forms of development within the restricted zone.”

A spokesperson for Neudorf confirmed only new wind energy projects would be barred from the buffer zones, but said all forms of generation, including natural gas plants, would be subject to visual impact assessments in other specified areas.

Geoff Scotton, a spokesperson for the Alberta Utilities Commission, said the organization has no information on when areas off-limits to wind development will be more clearly defined and that it is “up to the Government of Alberta.”

With wind energy likely off the table in large swaths of the province — and new restrictions on solar farms in others — here’s a look at some of the things Albertans can still do in those “unobstructed, natural landscapes.”

1. Urban sprawl is continuing in Alberta’s draft ‘pristine viewscape’ regions

As the Alberta government seeks to create buffer zones around many of the Rocky Mountain national parks — extending as far east as Calgary — there has been no indication that construction would be stopped on new developments and urban sprawl. 

In Canmore — approximately five kilometres from the boundary of Banff National Park — plans have forged ahead for a massive new development that would take up almost all of its remaining developable land, nearly double the population and eat into critical wildlife habitat.

In Calgary, numerous new communities have been approved on the city’s outskirts extending west towards Bragg Creek. Cochrane too has seen rapid population growth — a 23 per cent increase in five years and much faster than officials had predicted — and now predicts “increased demand for land to support this growth.”

All of this means urban boundaries are likely to sprawl farther, into land that is part of the government’s buffer around pristine viewscapes and protected areas. 

2. Logging applications are ongoing in Kananaskis Country — now off limits to new wind energy projects

Kananaskis Country is something of an iconic outdoor destination for Calgarians and tourists alike — more than four million people visited in 2023. In Kananaskis, provincial parks are knitted together with public lands and recreation areas with varying levels of protection: some are off limits to most activities while others are open to industry. Just 60 per cent of the region is fully protected.

That means logging continues in the area — with cutblocks often earmarked smackdab in the middle of wilderness destinations. According to the Alberta government’s new map of buffer zones, no wind turbines will be allowed in Kananaskis Country, but the government has made no similar move to create a blanket ban on logging. Plans to log areas like West Bragg Creek, for example, are moving ahead. Canadian forestry company West Fraser Timber, which recently bought Alberta-based Spray Lake Sawmills, is allowed to log approximately 800 hectares in the area in 2026.

3. Investments in pulp mill is being celebrated by the government just outside of Jasper National Park

Farther north, West Fraser Timber also has rights to log a wide area along the border with Jasper National Park, and just days after the buffer zone map was released, the government celebrated investment in an existing pulp mill in Hinton, within the no-go zone for wind turbines.

“Our investment-friendly policies, competitive corporate tax rate and highly educated workforce continue to draw in world-class companies that can feel confident about spending their money here,” a government statement said as the new investments in the pulp mill were announced.

4. Coal mining is not explicitly prohibited under Alberta’s new draft ‘pristine viewscape’ plans

The eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains were the focus of much outrage when the previous United Conservative Party government tried to open up large swaths of them to coal mining in 2020. That decision was ultimately reversed, but a number of projects — essentially grandfathered in — were allowed to carry on. Coal mines are currently operating in communities from Grande Cache to Hinton, which are areas that overlap with the Alberta government’s new draft map of buffer zones around protected areas, with a large focus on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. 

In March 2022, the Government of Alberta decided four “advanced” coal mine proposals would be allowed to proceed despite a moratorium on coal development in Alberta’s eastern slopes. 

Those advanced proposals include Summit Coal Mine 14. That new project will be four kilometres northeast of Grande Cache on Grande Mountain, a forested peak popular with hikers, horseback riders and snowmobilers, that is within the new no-go zone for wind turbines. The mine would create a footprint of 53.5 hectares on the mountain and would involve 91 drill holes, creating an underground footprint of 512 hectares.

The Northback Grassy Mountain open-pit coal mine is currently being considered by the provincial regulator even after it was rejected twice in previous years, and new mining activities are underway at the Vista Mine near Hinton — both of which fall into the buffer zones on the government’s draft map.

5. There are no blanket bans on what landowners can do with their land, from RV storage fields to mega mansions

The Alberta government’s ban on wind turbines in buffer zones around protected areas and pristine viewscapes includes large swaths of private land. Landowners will no longer be permitted to agree to lease their land to a renewable energy company to build wind turbines — but they can’t say no to leasing it to an oil and gas company. 

The government has also made no moves to restrict other uses of private land: from building mega mansions to starting RV storage lots, both of which can be a common site along some stretches. Landowners must apply for the necessary development permits but face no blanket ban based on their impacts on the viewscapes or protected areas.

6. Drilling for oil and gas continues across much of the province, including in wind energy no-go zones

Oil and gas wells are a common sight on Alberta’s landscape, stretching from the mountains all the way into Saskatchewan to the east. 

In 2024, there were 328,436 wells in Alberta that had not yet been reclaimed. Approximately 157,000 of them are currently active and producing fossil fuels. 

The Alberta government has not announced any new restrictions on oil and gas development in the buffer zones now off limits to wind turbines.

7. Fracking is using increasing amounts of water in areas off-limits to new wind energy projects

The buffer zone is a hotbed of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in Alberta.

The major formations where oil and gas is held in tight, rocky spaces far underground all kiss the edge of the western buffer zone. This includes the Cardium formation, which extends the length of the zone from Grande Prairie in the north down to the U.S. border.

Fracking activity is sparse in the south, picks up west of Calgary and then intensifies dramatically moving north adjacent to Jasper.

As drought threatens the province, new drilling continues to be approved by the Alberta Energy Regulator — though some areas are facing the possibility of such an intense water shortage that fossil fuel companies have been warned they might be forced to cut back. 

Overall water use for fracking saw a 252 per cent increase between 2013 and 2022. Intensity of water use has increased even more, a 260 per cent change, according to the regulator. 

In 2022 producers used 25.4 billion litres of water for fracking.

Updated on April 4, 2024, at 2:44 p.m. MT: This story was updated to say the pulp mill near Hinton is not new, as previously stated, but will receive significant investments under a new owner.

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When Yoenne Ewald’s hay supply fell through this spring, she was devastated. Without hay, she can’t feed her cattle. Like most farmers, she’s tough and used to troubleshooting unexpected problems but the stress this year has been on another level.

“The options are to sell them for nothing or watch them starve,” she says on her farm just outside of New Hazelton, B.C. 

Under frequently smoke-choked skies, the ground is thirsty in the northwest. After a sudden and late frost, summer came early this year. With it came forest fires and drought. For much of the region, rain has been in short supply for months. Sporadic showers and cooler temperatures have provided some relief but the recent rain hasn’t reduced widespread impacts on the farming community. Plants are dying or stressed or all coming up at the same time.

Ewald says her farm, where she has been raising livestock since 2021, needs about a decade of careful rejuvenation before the soil can support natural pastures for her cattle, especially during drought. She picks up a hay bale with her tractor and takes it to her hungry herd.    

“They’re getting old hay that I thankfully managed to secure by the skin of my teeth,” she says, explaining the low nutritional value of the feed means her animals are far skinnier than they should be this time of year. “It’s a shitty place to be in the middle of summer.”

Like the weather, the price of hay is erratic. With supply scarce across the province and persistent, severe drought conditions, prices are skyrocketing. Ewald says she’s been quoted numbers she calls “astronomical,” more than double what she paid last year, adding that it would be cheaper for her to send her cattle to Manitoba for the winter. Farmers are scrambling to get enough to keep their animals alive — or they’re culling them months early, downsizing and hunkering down in the hopes that next year will be better.

Curt Gesch, a semi-retired rancher who leases land to hay producers, says only one of the three fields on his property in the rural community of Quick, B.C., got a decent crop this year.

“That’s fairly typical of what’s happening around here,” he says. “Or they’re spending more on fuel than the hay is worth. The price jumped up way, way, way, way high.”

Ewald recently sold three heifers at a loss because she can’t afford to keep them and doesn’t know what’s going to happen to the rest of her herd. Sitting at her kitchen table, dogs milling about around her feet, she runs through the sunk costs of raising the animals to this point: feeding the pregnant mothers, calving and feeding baby animals since the spring. It’s bleak, she says. Just getting calves born cost her about $650 each, not counting her time, and she’s selling them for around $300 to $400. 

“It doesn’t feel good on a daily basis to not know how you’re going to provide for their basic needs — let alone make your living,” she says.

Ewald is what’s known as a direct-market producer. She sells meat to consumers through the likes of farmer’s markets or local shops not via wholesalers. This means right now her back is against a wall because she doesn’t breed the type of cattle people buy at auction. Plus, she says, the only abattoir in the area is fully booked so she can’t even cull her herd.

“It’s been a really stressful week,” she says, fighting back tears. “The long and short of it is we’ll handle it, we’ll come up with something that can handle these seasons.” 

‘It’s been awful’: B.C. agriculture minister

For any farmer trying to raise more than a few animals, the situation is getting desperate. Pam Alexis, B.C.’s agriculture minister, says she’s keenly aware food producers are in rough shape right now. 

“It’s been awful,” she says on a phone call with The Narwhal. “This summer is just off the charts.”

“The main issue that we are directly hearing from people on the ground, with respect to drought, is that farmers and ranchers are having to use their fall and winter feed now,” she says, adding the ministry is working on both short- and long-term solutions to support producers.

“We have a regenerative committee that’s looking at soil health and just provided recommendations. There’s talks about water and conservation and who needs to be at the table. But, you know, it means having hard conversations: is this really the right crop for this region, at this stage in the game, when we’ve had so much drought? We just have to approach it logically, in my opinion, and figure out what’s going to work.”

In the short-term, B.C. is providing $150,000 to support a new access to feed program through the BC Cattlemen’s Association. Kevin Boon, general manager of the industry group, says it’s doing what it can to source hay from out of province and across the border. The association isn’t purchasing hay for anyone — the program helps connect buyers to sellers and tries to keep costs as low as possible.

“We’re kind of like a dating game for hay,” he chuckles.

States like Washington, Utah and Montana have had bumper crops this year and in some cases have a significant surplus buyers can get at a reasonable rate. The real challenge, he says, is transportation.

“The trouble is, how do we get it north?” he says, explaining the further hay has to travel, the more it’s going to cost the farmer. The association is in talks with the government about getting financial support to offset transportation costs, but nothing is finalized, he says. 

If drought impacts weren’t so widespread, farmers from the southern half of the province would be sending hay north to help, Boon explains. In 2021, when B.C. was hit with a catastrophic atmospheric river and numerous farms were flooded out, producers from the northwest worked together to gather extra feed to send down south.

“It was so generous,” he says. “They didn’t ask for a dime for it. Right now, when everybody up there is suffering, our guys down here are saying, ‘I’d love to put a load of hay on and send it up there — but I gotta buy five loads myself.’ We’ve run out of excess.”

The province is also working with the federal government to provide financial assistance to impacted producers. While the focus of the government’s efforts is partnering with industry groups, the ministry says it can also help small-scale producers directly and encourages anyone struggling to call AgriService BC. But life on a small farm is busy and many food producers running smaller operations don’t have the time to search out grants or other means of support. They also can’t wait for funding — their animals need to eat every day. 

So far Ewald has cobbled together some half-rotten hay, substandard blends and even picked up some small square bales, not normally used for cattle, because they were a decent price. But her barn is half-empty and she says her cattle complain when fed the low-quality stuff.

“Last night, I made them pick through the worst of the hay,” she laughs. “They yell at me every time they see me.” 

What’s happening right now will impact her farm for years to come, she says. She had plans to grow her herd over the next few years while working to improve soil health. 

“That’s out of the question, I think, at this point,” she sighs. “The way to go is to just pare down the herd to a small quantity of animals so that no matter what the weather dishes, it’s going to be a sustainable system.”

The repercussions of choices like this extend far past farmers’ fences.

“If I can’t feed my animals,” Ewald says, “I can’t feed my community.” 

B.C. farmers facing ‘an infinite amount of problems’

Feeding community and supporting local food security is a lifelong passion for Mark Fisher, a farmer in Telkwa, B.C. As the former director of the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako, he’s worked for years to support agriculture and food networks in the northwest. He says what’s happening on the land this year, while not entirely unexpected, has been nearly impossible to prepare for.

“It’s not like it’s a surprise,” he says. “You can see these things coming. But now that it’s here, there are no certainties. And it’s much more than just water.” 

On his farm, perched on a hill overlooking the river valley, he’s been increasing his water storage systems, developing new planting techniques and experimenting with different timing and cycles of crops. He’s been farming in the area for more than 20 years and says he knows every inch of his land — what it needs, which plants grow where and how best to nurture them. But the erratic weather patterns and unpredictable climate are triggering a complex and cascading series of impacts.

“There’s an infinite amount of problems,” he says. “I was prepared for the [lack of] rain; I wasn’t prepared for all these other things.”  

He talks about how photosynthesis was hampered this year by spring pollen not getting washed off leaves until a few weeks ago. The prolonged heat led to early plant harvests, which means he now has food storage and refrigeration issues.

“Food security is the one that scares me the most,” he admits, explaining he doesn’t just grow food for the community, it’s also how he feeds himself. “I don’t generally go to the grocery store a lot. But all the stuff I’m going to be harvesting normally in August and September, that’s coming now. I’m not going to be able to store that [for] an extra two months, I’m going to try to sell it off to recoup some of my costs of labour instead. I just don’t know what to do.”

People come together in times of crisis

Ewald says one of the things she’s most concerned about is social dynamics. In a crisis, people tend to react in two ways: coming together to support one another or isolating and protecting what’s closest.

“When you’re in a very bad position, it breeds suspicion,” she says. “You start having these kinds of uncomfortable, ugly feelings about people in the community.”

As hay prices continue to climb, she says it’s hard to know whether folks are taking advantage of the situation or, like Gesch said, losing money on the hay they’re selling, even at inflated prices. 

But she says as bad as it all feels right now, she’s grateful for the people who are trying to help.

“I have had people that I only know sort of by association, going out to bat and searching their contacts trying to find hay for me.” And if she finds herself in the unlikely position of having a surplus of hay, she plans to help her neighbours.

Fisher says that spirit of cooperation and support is one of the reasons he lives in the north.

“We live in an amazing place and we know that coming together is going to happen,” he says. “I’ve been here so long and I still cry at how beautiful people are here — even people that I can’t stand and disagree with, they will come together, we just know that.”

Ewald says it’s important to remember why she and other farmers continue doing the work.

“I don’t know many people who produce food that aren’t 100 per cent committed to it, that aren’t passionate about it,” she says. “I think that if they’re able to make it through those people will double down on the practices that we know we need to implement.”

She walks into an area where she’s been trying to get more organic matter into the soil and says seeing a diversity of plants starting to grow there gives her hope.

“What keeps me going honestly changes each day,” she says. “Some days I’m not going — I’m a fucking mess.”

“We’ve all talked about these kinds of problems and difficulties ahead — and now here they are. This is where all the theory and chit-chat gets real.”

The Narwhal is continuing to look into the implications of drought and wildfires on farming and food production. If you’re experiencing impacts, please reach out to reporter Matt Simmons: matt@thenarwhal.ca 

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.

Laura Laing can’t imagine how her family would run their cow-calf operation without their Mount Livingstone grazing allotment.

These native grasslands, nestled among the hills and peaks, with Cabin Ridge Mountain rising above the pastures, support a large percentage of the Plateau Cattle Company herd from early June to the beginning of October.

“Year after year, it’s been our best-producing pasture,” said Laing, who values the benefits of the native grass, clean water and open spaces in this area for her family’s herd.

This third-generation ranch west of Nanton, Alta., like many others in southwestern Alberta, relies on being able to graze its cattle in the Mount Livingstone Range. This breathtaking landscape has been vital to numerous beef operations for decades, and it’s unfathomable to Laing that this place could soon be changed beyond recognition.

But this could be a devastating reality for many ranchers on the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains if a proposed open-pit coal mine is given the green light this fall. This is becoming more likely due to a recent change in a 44-year-old policy on coal mining in Alberta.

“You really have to fight to stay in this industry,” Laing said. “We try not to get overly emotional about it because that makes you quite reactive…We say to ourselves, ‘how could this even be a thing?’ It’s disastrous to the landscape.”

Laura Laing says she can’t imagine how her family would run their cow-calf operation without their Mount Livingstone grazing allotment, now threatened by a coal mine proposal. Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal

On June 1, the province of Alberta quietly revoked the Coal Policy, which had previously restricted coal mining exploration and development in areas considered environmentally sensitive. Enacted in 1976, this legislation had regulated coal mining over four categories of land. While former Category 1 lands in the Rockies are to remain protected, the provincial government stated, Category 2 lands are now open for coal development. The change came without a public consultation period.

The lifting of restrictions on Category 2 lands, covering 1.4 million hectares of land in the foothills and Rockies deemed moderately to highly environmentally sensitive, including the Mount Livingstone Range, is especially troubling to those who rely on these lands to pasture cattle. Until now, open-pit mines had been prohibited on Category 2 lands, and underground mines were only allowed if surface impacts were considered acceptable for the environment.

“They opened up a huge swath of land that historically Albertans have said needs to remain in its natural state and be available to multiple users, to now be available for what we call mountaintop removal mining,” said Bobbi Lambright, secretary of the Livingstone Landowners Group.

This type of mining, often used for surface mines in the Appalachian Mountains of the southeastern U.S., requires the removal of all vegetation and top soil, then explosives are used to blast all the rock above the coal seam to expose it. Waste rock is moved into massive piles, and the blasting is known to release toxic elements from the rock into the environment.

A mountaintop removal metallurgical coal mine, owned and operated by Teck Resources in B.C.’s Elk Valley. The Grassy Mountain Coal Project near Blairmore, Alta., would also be a mountaintop removal mine. Photo: Jayce Hawkins / The Narwhal

This comes as the Grassy Mountain Coal Project, just north of Blairmore, Alta. Australia’s Benga Mining Limited moves through the application process for its plans to develop an open-pit metallurgical coal mine with a production capacity of up to 4.5 million tonnes of coal per year, with a lifespan of 25 years. The Grassy Mountain project is located on the site of a former coal mine on Category 4 lands so was not protected under the Coal Policy, even before it was rescinded. Benga has sought provincial and federal approval for this mine since 2014, and a public hearing is scheduled to start in October.

Mines like these raise numerous concerns for Laing, with the impact on water quality at the top of her list, as well as loss of native grasslands and the spread of coal dust toxins in an area of extreme winds.

“We’re not anti-development at all, but you’re not going to put a mountain back, you’re not going to put the native grasses back and you’re definitely not going to revert it back to pasture land after. That’s just not going to happen,” she said. “For the general public, if they look west when they’re driving the Cowboy Trail, that landscape’s going to change.”

The original extent of Canada’s native prairie grasslands. Between 75 and 90 per cent of the grasslands have been eradicated. Map: Alicia Carvalho / The Narwhal

Potential for widespread impact across Oldman River watershed

The lack of public knowledge about both the rescission of the Coal Policy and the Grassy Mountain project alarms Laing, who said she only learned about these when notified by the mining company, not the provincial government. “Everybody we speak to in the area or in the community or public users up in our grazing allotments have no idea that this passed,” she said. “The public awareness has been very low, and I don’t think that that’s a coincidence.”

This comes in the midst of a difficult economic situation, when the impacts of COVID-19 are the latest challenges facing beef producers already concerned about the financial viability of their operations. “As producers we continue to feel pressures from all areas,” said Laing, who foresees many negative affects on her grazing allotment due to coal development, such as “stress on the animals from equipment, drilling, personnel, wildlife relocation (and) predation.”

John Smith and Laura Laing cross the Livingstone River. Ranchers are concerned about the potential impact of a new coal mine on water quality. Open-pit coal mining can increase levels of selenium in rivers, which can be toxic to fish populations and contaminate drinking water. Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal

The Livingstone Landowners Group is among those raising concerns about the provincial government’s sudden shift in coal development policy. This organization represents ranchers, residents and businesses in the Livingstone Range and Porcupine Hills who want to see sustainable development and good land stewardship.

Development in formerly protected Category 2 lands, Lambright stated, could have many negative affects on its ecosystems. “It’s been designated through multiple land use plans as an area that’s got a lot of native prairie, it’s got a lot of unique habitats that support endangered and at-risk species.”

This would affect all users of the land, she continued, who currently work in what can be seen as a symbiotic relationship. “If you’ve got a cattle rancher using the land, his cattle are in there, they’re grazing the native grass, they’re mitigating potential future fire hazards, they’re providing food for people through their cattle and the grassland also supports things like reducing our carbon footprint.”

Grazing animals like cattle are an essential component of a healthy grasslands ecosystem. Less than 25 per cent of Canada’s grasslands remain intact. Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal

In addition to those benefits, other public users make their living on this area through guiding, outfitting and tourism, as well as those who enjoy the land for fishing, hiking and hunting. “There’s a lot of uses of that land today that essentially would be eliminated or irrevocably changed if this coal mining were to go ahead.”

The potential impact on water quality is an area of great concern for both human health and the ecosystem, Lambright said. The element selenium can be released into water and soil as a result of open pit coal mining, and currently there is no known solution to wholly mitigate its impact once in a body of water.

This proved disastrous in B.C.’s Elk River Valley, after five coal strip mines operated by Teck Resources discharged selenium and other toxic chemicals into the river. In 2018, the company was fined $1.4 million for this selenium release, which was found to have caused a collapse of the local cutthroat trout population and the contamination of several private and community wells.

Availability of water is another issue. The Grassy Mountain project is near the headwaters of the Oldman River, a vital watershed for southern Alberta. More than 45 per cent of the province relies on this watershed, which is already facing considerable supply pressure due to natural flow reductions.

“There’s been no new licences that are supposed to be issued for water out of that watershed, and the water is fundamental to people’s livelihoods in all of these other areas,” Lambright said. “This level of intense mining would require a lot of water, and it’s a bit unclear at the moment how that need would be met.”

The Milky Way above the Livingstone Ridge. Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal

A complex economic issue

When the provincial government announced the Coal Policy’s rescission this spring, officials said this decision would create new opportunities for investment as well as certainty for the coal industry.

“Rescinding the outdated Coal Policy in favour of modern oversight will help attract new investment for an important industry and protect jobs for Albertans,” said Sonya Savage, provincial energy minister, in a press release.

Even before the rescission of the coal policy opened up the possibility of new mines in the eastern slopes, the economic benefits of coal were being lauded. Benga Mining officials stated the Grassy Mountain mine would create approximately 400 full-time jobs when at peak production. With the current economic challenges increasing Alberta’s ongoing unemployment, some locals see this project as a positive move. Blair Painter, mayor of Crowsnest Pass — a town founded on mining — has expressed his support for new coal projects in the area. “This community is in desperate need of industry,” Painter stated in a letter in 2019.

Although the Alberta Energy Regulator will now approve coal projects individually, it’s worth noting that the Grassy Mountain project, as well as mines proposed in former Category 2 lands, will not mine the lower-quality thermal coal mined in other parts of the province for power generation. This is higher-quality metallurgical coal, which is used to make steel and in demand from international markets. Several other Australian companies have shown interest in mining metallurgical coal in Alberta.

John Smith and Laura Laing during the Plateau Cattle Company’s fall round-up on their Mount Livingstone grazing allotment, with Cabin Ridge Mountain in the distance. Laing says the Alberta government’s decision to open up coal mining on economic grounds is short-sighted. Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal

Laing sees the government’s economic argument as short sighted, given that it isn’t Alberta’s energy industry that will ultimately benefit. “Some of [the Australian companies] privately own some of the mineral rights up there, so there’s zero royalties back to Alberta, and for the ones that are getting royalties, it’s pennies on the dollar.”

Lambright agrees, adding that jobs may not be as secure as hoped in the long run, due to the fickle nature of the coal market and the industry’s push towards cutting costs through automation. In the case of Grassy Mountain, Benga Mining’s owner, Australia’s Hancock Prospecting, is “a world leader in automating mining,” she said. For example, the company owns an iron ore mine in northern Australia that is in the process of automating all its trucks, and the mine is monitored from a control centre in Perth, on the other side of the country.

‘Our mountains are who we are’

Laing and other beef producers in southwestern Alberta are working to understand the scope of this policy shift and make the wider community aware of its potential impact on the Eastern Slopes. To help create awareness, local ranchers are collaborating with a film company to create a short film for social media that highlights the area and its history. Laing hopes the film will help to drive home the importance of this place to so many Albertans.

“Our mountains are who we are,” she said. “It’s really about coming together as a community to say, ‘our grass is disappearing, and this is our environment and our watershed. This is really a very big deal.’ ”

Laing says Alberta was built on agriculture. “Agriculture is the beacon in this economic recovery. Where’s the support for that?” she asked. Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal

Laing would like the provincial government to consider the impact on agriculture in these development decisions, especially when it touts coal projects as necessary to Alberta’s post-pandemic recovery. “The province built its backbone on agriculture,” she said. “Agriculture is the beacon in this economic recovery. Where’s the support for that?”

It’s even more dire given that the loss of cattle producers in Western Canada often results in the loss of endangered native grassland, something that greatly concerns Laing from both a stewardship and business perspective.

“We don’t have somewhere else to go, and that will greatly reduce the sustainability of our operation. Where are we going to find grassland for over 155 pair that go up there for the summer months? So where’s the support to the cattle industry or the ranching operations when we’re selling out these native grasslands?”

Read more: Meet the people saving Canada’s native grasslands

Updated at 9:45 a.m. on Oct. 20, 2020 to remove a quote that implied Alberta’s coal would be shipped to Australia.

Updated at 10:00am on Feb. 9, 2021 to reflect the fact that the Grassy Mountain coal project is located almost entirely on category 4 lands and the application was underway before the Alberta government rescinded the 1976 coal policy.

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.

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