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Spring
2017
grainswest.com11
In November, agriculture industry stakeholders from across the country gathered in Ottawa for the first National
Environmental Farm Plan Summit.
BY KARIN OLAFSON
STEPPINGTOWARDSUSTAINABILITY
NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL FARMPLAN ISONTHEHORIZON
FARM ORGANIZATIONS, BUYERS
and governments from across Canada
came together in Ottawa at the begin-
ning of November last year to discuss one
thing: the formation of a National Envi-
ronmental Farm Plan (NEFP). According
to Erin Gowriluk, government relations
and policy manager for the Alberta Wheat
Commission and chair of November’s
summit, there is strong support for the
concept of a national program—94 per
cent of surveyed participants see value
in a national environmental farm plan
program now and into the future—and its
development is already underway.
Environmental farm plans (EFPs) aren’t
new. The first EFP was in Ontario and
it rolled out in 1993, while the EFP in
Alberta started in 2003. But the ones that
currently exist are all provincial, rather
than national.
Paul Watson works for the Agricultural
Research and Extension Council of Alber-
ta and is the director of the Alberta EFP.
He’s also the interim chair of the NEFP
Steering Committee. He describes EFPs as
voluntary, whole-farm environmental risk
self-assessments that are done by produc-
ers. Regardless of which provincial EFP
a producer is working with, the goal is
sustainable farming. A national program
will harmonize the various provincial
programs.
A harmonized national program will
also take into account how varied farming
is in Canada. “That’s critical,” said Gowri-
luk. “This is not a one-size-fits-all solution
in Canada.”
According to Watson, the two main
reasons a national plan is in the works
now are to provide a simple sustainabil-
ity solution to producers and to provide
consistency.
“Buyers want to be able to tell people in
the outside world specifically what a farm
plan means. An NEFP will mean that there
is a Canadian industry-defined minimum
standard,” said Watson. “It doesn’t matter
if you’re in the Yukon or Quebec or British
Columbia or elsewhere in Canada. If you’ve
done a farm plan, then you’ve met a base
standard—and we’re currently working on
defining that national base standard.”
In a nutshell, this is all because sus-
tainable farming matters now more than
ever to consumers—a fact that hasn’t been
lost on the companies buying agricultural
products. “The demand [from buyers] for
sustainably sourced products has been
increasing over the past six years and will
certainly continue to increase further,”
said Watson.
With a national program, buyers will be
supplied with ample data to prove to their
customers that they are supporting their
sustainable sourcing claims. Simply, one
of the goals of the NEFP is to demonstrate
that farmers are meeting buyers’ environ-
mental objectives.
Gowriluk said that if provincial EFPs
aren’t harmonized into a national solu-
tion, then buyers are going to come to
producers with their own set of require-
ments, which isn’t ideal. “EFPs are made
by producers, for producers, and EFPs
are already recognized and trusted by
farmers,” said Gowriluk. “A new program
would be a major uphill battle for compa-
nies in terms of farmer uptake.”
Consider that 35 per cent of Canadi-
an producers have completed an EFP,
covering 50 per cent of the arable land in
Canada. Based on that, companies can see
that farmers and ranchers are already on
board with the EFP concept.
Progress on the NEFP continues, and
the program should be up and running
by 2018. Once the national program is
launched, participating producers will
be well positioned to meet international
market requirements.
“Farmers are already doing a lot of
good things when it comes to sustaina-
bility,” said Watson. “If we can capture
exactly [what they’re doing], I think
Canada will become a preferred supplier
in world markets. We just have to be able
to tell the buyers our sustainable growing
story.”