Winter
2016
Grains
West
40
around low revenue generation. He
farms 4,500 acres near Round Hill, AB.
Part of those complaints comes from
the fact that “the first payments [for
cropping] were made retroactively for
a number of years. They were bigger,
so a lot of producers got into that,”
Banack explained. “Now that they’ve
gone down to annual payments, a lot of
producers just backed away and said ‘It’s
one less thing for me to do,’”
Increasing the value of the carbon
credits, Banack said, should encourage
more producers to participate. The
Alberta government under Premier
Rachel Notley has promised to phase
in higher carbon prices—a promise
initiated in June.
Still, farmers shouldn’t look at this
as a major revenue generator, Banack
explained. “You’re not going to get
enough money out of here to build your
retirement.” Instead, he said, farmers
should regard the system as a form of
recognition that agriculture is doing its
part to benefit the environment and the
country.
Banack has used the conservation
cropping credit in the past, but said he
stopped after running into issues with
his aggregator. He said he intends to
resume using the credit, but simply
hasn’t gotten around to it yet. “It’s one
of the things that’s on my list of things
to get done,” he said. “For us it would
be about a $1,500 to $2,000 payment
every year. So, if you figure out my time—
it takes me about 10 hours to do it—I’m
making enough money to do it. I should
be doing it.”
The Alberta government insists the
offset system was never intended to
be a get-rich-quick scheme. “It’s not
a government support program, it
is a market instrument,” the Alberta
Agriculture and Forestry website reads,
adding, “The system presents new ways
for producers to consistently improve
their operations and earn some extra
dollars along the way.”
Still, the lack of income isn’t the only
complaint about the offset system.
Criticisms have surfaced on the beef
side, too, where some in the industry say
the current system simply does not work
the way it was intended to.
“What I’ve heard from producers is
that it is difficult to get verified that you’re
meeting the criteria,” Smith said.
“I did a presentation to the province’s
climate change panel on behalf of
the livestock sector, and I made that
comment about the beef offsets, and an
aggregator who was in attendance was a
lot more blunt than me,” Smith recalled.
“He said, ‘The beef offsets don’t work.’”
Smith added, “It hasn’t been very
relevant to beef producers.”
The government was redeveloping
the beef offsets, Smith said, but the
outcome of that work was dependent on
findings of a provincial Climate Change
Advisory Panel, struck in August by
Environment Minister Shannon Phillips.
The panel released its findings and
recommendations November 22.
A government spokesperson has
confirmed the review of the beef offsets
program is still ongoing.
There are also issues around
sustainability practices that aren't
recognized under the current offset
program, Smith said, such as grassland
conservation and forage production,
both of which have been found to
contribute significantly to carbon
sequestration.
“By being able to raise food on those
grasslands, we’re avoiding the other
way to make food on those lands, which
would be to plough up those grasslands
and try and grow crops on them,” Smith
said. “They [the government] are not
giving you credit for what you’ve done
already, which is encourage grass growth
and not plough it up.” Alberta is home to
some 50 million acres of agricultural land,
of which 28 million are range, tamed
pasture or forage land.
Producers aren’t the only ones
complaining about the system either.
Alberta’s auditor general has also
fiercely and repeatedly criticized the
offset protocol. In an October 2009
report looking into Alberta’s response
HERE’S THE BEEF:
According to Rich Smith, Alberta Beef Producers’ executive director, the offsets
available to the beef industry fail to recognize several common sustainability practices.
