by Darrin Qualman, Annette Aurélie Desmarais, André Magnan and Mengistu Wendimu
A scene typical to the Canadian prairies - a big farm at harvest time. A public domain photo by cj berry.
The ownership and control of Canada’s food-producing land is becoming more and more concentrated, with profound impacts for young farmers, food system security, climate change and democracy.
On the Canadian prairies, small and medium-sized family farms are often portrayed as the primary food production units. Yet, the reality of farming in Western Canada is quite different. In fact, a small and declining number of farms are operating the lion’s share of Prairie farmland and capturing the lion’s share of farm revenue and net income.
The authors analyse the extent of farmland concentration in Canada’s three Prairie provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba), where over 70 per cent of the country’s agricultural land is situated. They find that 38 per cent of Saskatchewan’s farmland is operated and controlled by just 8 per cent of farms. In Alberta, 6 per cent of farms operate 40 per cent of that province’s farmland, while Manitoba sees 4 percent of farms operate and control 24 per cent of the land. Such concentration makes it much harder for young and new farmers to enter agriculture, with the number of young farmers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba declining by more than 70 per cent within just one generation
The persistent decline in the number of farmers, farm size expansion, growing farm income inequality, and increased land concentration have other effects as well. Rural economies, communities, businesses, and services are also affected as there are fewer farm families to patronize local shops and services, while farmers lose their capacity to democratically influence governments and legislation as their voting numbers fall. Meanwhile, non-farmers lose their connections to farms and rural culture as fewer and fewer urban residents count farmers among their family members or friends. A series of policy measures are urgently needed to counter the market forces that will otherwise drive us toward even more concentrated farmland ownership and drive half of Canadian farm families off the land in the next one to two generations.
The Great Egret in a wetland in southwestern Manitoba, Canada. Canadian populations are said to be declining. For decades, the egrets have had to contend with major habitat loss and degradation, as well as threats like contaminated runoff from farm fields. A PinP photo.
Restoring 30% of the world’s ecosystems in priority areas could stave off more than 70% of projected extinctions and absorb nearly half of the carbon buildup in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
As the world focuses on dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, a landmark report in Nature pinpoints the ecosystems that, if restored, give us the biggest "bang for our buck" in terms of both climate and biodiversity benefits.
Despite being shown to be beneficial, shelterbelts are being systematically
destroyed by modern farmers. A PinP video.
Returning specific ecosystems in all continents worldwide that have been replaced by farming to their natural state would rescue the majority of land-based species of mammals, amphibians and birds under threat of dying out while soaking up more than 465 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Protecting 30% of the priority areas identified in the study, together with protecting ecosystems still in their natural form, would reduce carbon emissions equivalent to 49% of all the carbon that has built up in our atmosphere over the last two centuries. Some 27 researchers from 12 countries contributed to the report, which assesses forests, grasslands, shrublands, wetlands and arid ecosystems.
“Pushing forward on plans to return significant sweeps of nature to a natural state is critical to preventing ongoing biodiversity and climate crises from spinning out of control,” said Bernardo Strassburg, the study's lead author. “We show that if we’re smarter about where we restore nature, we can tick the climate, biodiversity and budget boxes on the world’s urgent to-do list.”
By identifying precisely which destroyed ecosystems worldwide should be restored to deliver biodiversity and climate benefits at a low cost, without impact on agricultural production, the study is the first of its kind to provide global evidence that, where restoration takes place has the most profound impact on the achievement of biodiversity, climate and food security goals. Restoration can be 13 times more cost-effective when it takes place in the highest priority locations.
The study focuses on the potential benefits of restoring both forest and non-forest ecosystems on a global scale. “Previous research has emphasized forests and tree planting, sometimes at the expense of native grasslands or other ecosystems, the destruction of which would be very detrimental for biodiversity and should be avoided. Our research shows that while reviving forests is critical for mitigating global warming and protecting biodiversity, other ecosystems also have a massive role to play,” said Strassburg.
The new report in Nature builds on the UN’s dire warnings that we’re on track to lose 1 million species in coming decades and that the world has mostly failed in its efforts to reach globally-set biodiversity targets in 2020, including the goal to restore 15% of ecosystems worldwide. Nations are re-doubling efforts to stave off mass extinctions in the leadup to the Convention on Biological Diversity COP15 in Kunming, China, in 2021. That's when a global framework to protect nature is expected to be signed. This new report will inform the discussion around restoration and offer insight into how reviving ecosystems can help tackle multiple goals.
Researchers assessed almost three million hectares of ecosystems worldwide that have been converted to farmland. Of these, over half were originally forests, one-quarter grasslands, 14% shrublands, 4% arid lands and 2% wetlands. They then evaluated these lands based on animal habitats, carbon storage and cost-effectiveness to determine which swathe of lands worldwide would deliver the most benefits for biodiversity and carbon at the lowest cost when restored.
Researchers were further able to identify a global-level, multiple-benefits solution—unconstrained by national boundaries—that would deliver 91% of the potential benefit for biodiversity, 82% of the climate mitigation benefit, and reduce costs by 27% by focusing on areas with low implementation and opportunity costs.
When researchers looked at the benefits if the restoration were to take place at the national level—which means that each country would restore 15% of its forests—they saw a reduction in biodiversity benefits by 28% and climate benefits by 29%, a rise in costs by 52%.
“These results highlight the critical importance of international cooperation in meeting these goals. Different countries have different, complementary roles to play in meeting overarching global targets on biodiversity and climate,” Strassburg said.
Responding to fears that restoring ecosystems will encroach on the land needed for crop production, researchers calculated how many ecosystems could be revived without cutting into food supplies. They found that 55%, or 1,578 million hectares, of ecosystems that had been converted to farmlands, could be restored without disrupting food production. This could be achieved through the well-planned and sustainable intensification of food production, together with a reduction in food waste and a shift away from foods such as meat and cheese, which require large amounts of land and therefore produce disproportionate greenhouse gas emissions.
“As government officials gradually refocus on global climate and biodiversity goals, our study provides them with the precise geographic information they need to make informed choices about where to restore ecosystems,” said Robin Chazdon, one of the report authors.
The approach developed is already supporting implementation at national and local scales. It’s attracting the attention of policy makers, NGOs and the private sector due to the substantial cost-benefit increase of restoration efforts. “We intend to help restoration achieve massive scales by aligning socioecological and financial interests, simultaneously increasing impacts for nature and people while improving returns and reducing risks for investors,” said Strassburg.
Overall, the study provides compelling evidence to policymakers seeking affordable, efficient ways to meet United Nations goals around biodiversity, climate and, additionally, desertification, that restoration, when well-coordinated and carried out in combination with the protection of intact ecosystems and the better use of agricultural lands, is an unmatched—though currently underused—solution.
“Our results provide very strong evidence of the benefits of pursuing joint planning and implementation of climate and biodiversity solutions, which is particularly timely given the landmark meetings planned for 2021 of the associated UN conventions on climate biodiversity and land degradation,” Strassburg said.
“The study also demonstrates a crucial but hitherto-unexplored application of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species,” noted Thomas Brooks, Chief Scientist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and a co-author of the study. “It will inform discussion next year at IUCN World Conservation Congress and fifteenth CBD Conference of the Parties regarding implementation of policy commitments, including the Bonn Challenge, the UN Decade of Restoration and the Sustainable Development Goals.”
“A new focus on prioritizing multiple outcomes of restoring ecosystems beyond forests, and beyond country level area-based targets, calls for intensifying international cooperation to realize globally important benefits of restoring the Earth’s precious ecosystems. We need to stimulate action for the sake of a healthy planet,” said Chazdon.
Trees, shrubs and debris are burned on the Canadian prairies to make way
for more cropland. A PinP photo.
Nature
Declines in terrestrial biodiversity from habitat conversion could be reversed by adopting a combination of bold conservation methods and increases in the sustainability of the food system, a modelling study published in Nature suggests.
Human pressures, such as the destruction of natural habitats to make way for agriculture and forestry, are causing rapid declines in biodiversity, and placing at risk the ecosystem services upon which we depend. Ambitious targets for biodiversity have been proposed, but it is unclear how these targets can be achieved whilst retaining the ability to feed a growing population. Using land-use and biodiversity models, David Leclère and colleagues show how this is possible.
Conservationists need to increase the amount of actively managed land, restore degraded land and adopt generalized landscape-level conservation planning. Meanwhile, we need to eat fewer animal-derived calories, waste less food and find ways to intensify food production sustainably.
If this double-pronged strategy is followed, more than two thirds of future biodiversity losses from habitat conversion could be avoided, the authors suggest. However, they caution that other threats, such as climate change, must also be addressed to truly reverse biodiversity declines.
High Alpine Tundra in Noatak National Preserve, Alaska. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
In a warming world, Canada's north may become our breadbasket of the future - but this new "farming frontier" also poses environmental threats from increased carbon emissions to degraded water quality, according to the first-ever study involving University of Guelph researchers. Story here.
A disastrous 2019 growing season in Manitoba included drought, rain and snow at the wrong times. Both seeding and harvesting of food crops like canola (above) were disrupted, yield and quality reduced. A PinP photo.
There are few bright spots in this body of research.
If developed countries don't reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a changing climate "promptly," it warns, a "perfect storm" will result. Food such as soy, corn, wheat and rice produced by the agriculture sector and seafood by marine fisheries, will go down for about 90 percent of Earth's population - more than seven billion, by 2100. Most of those affected already live in the most sensitive and least developed countries.
As overwhelming as the impacts would be, they wouldn't be universal. A scant three percent of the population would actually experience a food production increase over the same period.
And, if countries actually make those emissions cutbacks (a "best-case scenario"), "Most countries would experience net gains in both agriculture and fisheries production."
Even without concerted efforts, consequences for those living in high latitudes in North America and Europe may still not likely be as severe. Canada and Russia, for example, "will experience losses of lower magnitude or even gains in some cases." That's because residents of those countries do not depend on food from farming and fishing as much as others do.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change presents a sobering analyses addressing the substantial contributions of agriculture to climate change and the ways the climate crisis is projected to jeopardize global food security if urgent action isn't taken. Story here.
The Salt Humans must drastically alter food production to prevent the most catastrophic effects of global warming, according to a new report from the United Nations panel on climate change.
The world's top 10 crops— barley, cassava, maize, oil palm, rapeseed, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane and wheat—supply a combined 83 percent of all calories produced on cropland. Yields have long been projected to decrease in future climate conditions. Now, new research shows climate change has already affected production of these key energy sources—and some regions and countries are faring far worse than others. Story here.
A few months ago, the Government of Manitoba invited input from the public on a proposal to expand production of protein-rich food, whether plant or animal-based, in this province. It claims, meeting this fast-growing global demand offers much bigger opportunities than those which have existed before, for both farmers and investors. The province has embarked on a massive expansion of its industrial pork industry by relaxing both health and environmental regulations and obviously hopes through this new initiative, to make it even bigger.
In this in-depth article, long-time farm activist and livestock producer, Ruth Pryzer, offers many valuable insights into why this all needs to be taken with several grains of salt.
After PEI, Manitoba is Canada's largest potato-producing province. Over 1200 million pounds are processed here each year on about 80 thousand acres. A PinP photo. Desiccating summer heat, brought on by climate change, could have adverse effects on Canada's potato industry. In a recent study, researchers examined the heat stress response of 55 potato varieties to estimate how they might fare under changing climate conditions. The news is not good. Details here.
American researchers believe they've found a way to genetically-engineer a dramatic increase in crop production. They've conducted field experiments with tobacco, using a new method which makes the critical process of photosynthesis much more efficient. (Tobacco was chosen because it's easy to modify and test. The same methods are now being tested on other crops including soybean, potato and tomato.) Photosynthesis allows plants to convert sunlight into energy and help them grow, increasing crop yield.
To do this, most plants use the world's most plentiful enzyme, Rubisco, to capture carbon dioxide from the air and expel oxygen. But in a strange twist of nature, Rubisco captures more oxygen than it should. This produces a toxic compound in the plant which requires a lot of energy to get rid of. It could take more than a decade before this new technology can be put into widespread use. But, by fiddling with the internal pathways in the plants' cells, the researchers believe they can increase crop production by a whopping 40 percent! They liken the benefits of their discovery to food production to what the Panama Canal did for international trade many years ago! The research team was made up of experts from the University of Illinois and the US Department of Agriculture. Their findings were published in the journal, Science. Among those funding the research were the UK government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Crop losses for critical food grains will increase substantially as the climate warms, as rising temperatures increase the metabolic rate and population growth of insect pests, according to new research. More here.
Most harm will befall crops in the temperate zone (shown in green).
Two "big rigs" ready to begin work in western Manitoba. PinP photo.
Agroecology is a better alternative than large-scale agriculture, both for the climate and for small farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to researcher. This agricultural model preserves biodiversity and safeguards food supply while avoiding soil depletion. More here.
Combines in a wheat field in Manitoba, Canada. PinP photo.
By 2027 the world could be facing a 214 trillion calorie deficit, says Sara Menker, founder of an agricultural data technology company. In other words, in just a decade, we won’t have enough food to feed the planet. More here.
Investing in preparedness and building the resilience of farmers is fundamental to cope with extreme drought, because responding to such situations when they hit might be too late, the head of the United Nations agricultural agency said today. Story here.
"Look at this, our food is laced with poison - exactly what we had been saying. Our industrial world is killing us. No wonder people are dying. The cost of doing mass production is our souls and health of our nations."
This is Dave Daniels, Elder on Long Plain First Nation, Manitoba and specialist in wild plants and herbal medicines.
He was reacting to a recently-released finding by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. In studies conducted in '15 & '16, the federal food watchdog discovered traces of glyphosate, "a probable carcinogen," (World Health Organization) in almost 30% of food samples tested.
To better understand Mr. Daniel's story and his anger, please watch the video, below.
