I would like to address some significant points in order to expand on the potential for soils as carbon sinks. For action to happen, we need to consider: 1. The crucial role of farmers. 2. The remarkable contribution soils can make in achieving targets. 3. Agricultural strategies that can be undertaken right now.
Farmers must be included to enable carbon sequestration in soils. It will be up to thousands of farmers like me to turn the abstract into reality. Carbon sequestration, potentially a successful part of our nation's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Plan is essentially an agricultural program. Farmers will be needed at all stages to make this proposition work.
In parallel with the development and refinement of the carbon sequestration initiative, farmers' constraints and concerns need to be taken into account because it will be farmers who are the implementers of the important work needed to achieve our carbon sequestration goals.
There must be a systematic approach with all of us in society who are concerned for greenhouse gas management to fully understand and share in the risks and rewards from this important work.
On the farm, we have a saying, "many hands make light work". It's the same for carbon sequestration. We need organizations like the Soil Conservation Council of Canada, the Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association and the Alberta Conservation Tillage Society.
These organizations were formed by farmers to promote good soil stewardship. It is clear that good soil stewardship can have a significant and positive effect on the atmosphere. As producers, we take the perspective agricultural soils are the most effective and most immediate solution to reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Conservative estimates show that most soils have the capacity to store between one and a half to three tonnes of carbon per hectare if conservation farm management practices such as continuous cropping and reduced tillage are implemented and carried out over a ten year period.
A Statistics Canada census tells us that eight per cent of farmland in Alberta, twenty per cent in Saskatchewan and seven per cent in Manitoba is being farmed without tillage right now. That's over four million hectares or a sink capable of storing from between six to 12 million tonnes of carbon ... roughly equal to storing the carbon dioxide released from burning between 10 to 20 million tonnes of coal or 15 to 30 billion litres of fuel.
These are conservative estimates, more important; they are in place today and come at very little cost to society. We are talking about 10 per cent of Canada's 150 million tonne greenhouse gas target that can be accounted for right now. We have a 9 million acre functioning greenhouse gas mitigation system - a system that functions well and includes other benefits like reversing soil degradation, a stop to water erosion, an improvement of water quality and the provision for wildlife habitat.
Some studies suggest soils in Canada can potentially remove 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - other sources cite different figures, none the less these are very, very significant numbers.
What can we do now to optimize the capabilities for agricultural soils to sequester carbon? I want to offer you four key points...
First, we can reduce acreage under summerfallow. This has already begun and will mainly affect Canadian prairies, as summerfallowing is not widely practiced elsewhere in Canada. For example, there was a 21 per cent reduction in summerfallow from 1983 to 1993 with further reductions in the past five years estimated at about another five per cent. A continuing trend would result in about four million hectares less summerfallow by the year 2005.
Secondly, we can reduce tillage in crop production. This practice has a double-barreled benefit - it increases carbon content in soils and reduces the use of fossil fuels used in crop production at the same time.
Third, we can increase forage production and achieve more diversification and also reduce the use of fossil fuels.
Fourth, we can initiate value-added enterprises. New and expanding uses for crop residues will result in other forms of carbon sequestration - for example, the manufacturing of fiberboard.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to share my views about the importance of the role of the farmer, the remarkable potential contribution soils can make in achieving greenhouse gas targets and agricultural strategies that can be undertaken right now. I want to leave you with these thoughts:
Burdensome regulation must be avoided. If you want to increase conservation practices, incentive and supports should be used, not regulation. As evidence of this point, just look at the remarkable agricultural carbon sequestration achievements to date - all without regulation.
Finally, as stewards of the land, farmers must be involved in creating a strategy to enhance carbon dioxide sequestration.