Winter
2016
grainswest.com
39
Climate change by the numbers
A breakdown of Alberta’s greenhouse gas emissions
Agriculture, Forestry andWaste
Oil Sands
Other Oil andGas
Electricity
Transportation
Other Industry, Manufacturing andConstruction
Buildings andHouses
As the system developed, more were added, including a
conservation cropping protocol made available to farmers who
engage in no-till or low-till practices on their farms.
The Alberta conservation cropping protocol defines no-till
farming as “the use of openers and other land-disturbing
implements for only one pass with a medium-disturbance
opener (up to 46 per cent) or two passes with a low-
disturbance opener (up to 38 per cent) with any crop cycle.”
Under the protocol, landowners are also allowed to use
discretionary tilling on up to 10 per cent of the land on a site.
To ensure emissions are actually being reduced, the
province requires producers and aggregators to provide a mix
of records specific to each program. Those records include
proof of crop grown, proof of equipment used, identification of
field location and size and GPS data.
“Carbon in the ground, it’s basically your root material and
so on and so forth,” Jungnitsch explained. “It’s really hard to
actually measure how much exactly is in the ground. It’s very,
very expensive.”
Instead, he said, the government researched various
agriculture methods—be it around seeding technique or
livestock management—that could reduce emissions. Alberta
was also divided into two zones, northern and southern, to
take into account various environmental conditions that could
affect the amount of carbon generated.
Jungnitsch said producers don't have to show how much
their emissions have been reduced, but they do have to prove
that they are using the correct ecological practices.
Today there are 11 offset protocols available to farmers,
including several aimed specifically at livestock producers in
both the dairy and beef sectors.
Alberta Agriculture and Forestry estimates nearly 11 million
tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions “have been voluntarily
removed from the atmosphere by improving agricultural
management.” A department brochure equates it to removing
two million cars from the province’s roads.
Yet, according to Jungnitsch, the only offsets that have
really been claimed are the ones for biogas and conservation
cropping, with the latter accounting for nearly 40 per cent of
all credits awarded. The slow uptake, he said, is in large part
because of growing pains in the beginning, including issues
with aggregators, and the fact that there’s not a lot of income in
the system right now at the current carbon price.
The limited income generated is a complaint among
producers, and one that Rich Smith, executive director of
Alberta Beef Producers, said he’s heard before. “There’s not
a lot of money in them, you know, because you need to work
through an aggregator and, by the time all [the aggregator’s]
money is taken away, there’s not a lot of money,” he said.
Kevin Auch, vice-chair of the Alberta Wheat Commission,
agrees. He applied for the offset in the beginning, when it was
retroactive. He said it took him a week to gather the required
paperwork. He hasn’t applied for the credit since.
“I’ve looked into it since, but it’s a pretty small amount every
year and it’s like, well, is this really worth it?” Auch said. He
started doing no-till on his farm in the 1990s, long before the
offset program was even in place, because it made sense
business-wise.
“Basically [no till] helps me increase my production and
reduce my costs,” Auch, who seeds about 5,000 acres
annually on his farm near Carmangay, AB, explained.
Humphrey Banack, second vice-president of the Alberta
Federation of Agriculture, has also heard the complaints
