Grainswest - Spring 2022

Spring 2022 Grains West 42 Hannah Konschuh believes farmers may be able to adjust field practices to benefit and protect wetlands so these areas continue to provide ecosystem services. “If we have the information to do that, we can make better decisions,” she said. Though some of the project’s target waterbodies dried up for a portion of the year, they also yielded the water samples central to the project. This sampling was carried out nine times at each site over the course of the year by Millennium EMS Solutions, an environmental consulting company. Monitoring for crop protection product levels will provide the farm sector with scientific data to inform Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) decision- making regarding farm chemistry. Data collected may help prevent unnecessary bans of crop protection products by the PMRA, which is a project collaborator. Chemistry levels measured in year one have not hit PMRA thresholds. These guidelines indicate the maximum allowable levels of individual chemicals for a range of species such as aquatic invertebrates and fish. Allowable limits are measured as acute, one-time exposures at a high level, and chronic, a level of toxicity present over a given period of time. “We haven’t had a single exceedance,” said Rosaasen. The water bodies being studied are surrounded by strips of vegetation from the minimum-three-metre buffer width required where pesticides are applied, to as much as 30 metres. Others are fenced off for grazing. “We’re trying to establish whether or not these wetlands continue to be healthy ecosystems for all of the critters that use them,” said Rosaasen. Because farmers have granted access to their private land, the study critically benefits from its pesticide use history. “Having a non-detect of, say, glufosinate—Liberty—means nothing unless we can prove Liberty was sprayed on that [adjacent] canola crop,” said Rosaasen. “And that’s the data the “No-till is recognized as a way to sequester carbon in farming. If managed properly, wetlands are able to sequester a lot more carbon at a much faster rate.” —HayleyWebster FEATURE