In a world of trade wars and tariffs, Canada’s food systems are more important than ever. By adopting regenerative best practices, farmers can boost food security and minimize the environmental burden of feeding the nation.
One in nine jobs in Canada is tied directly to the agricultural sector, and Canada’s agricultural industry contributes more than CAD 143 billion to the nation’s GDP. The business of food is big business, but not all paths to the table have an equal impact. Some farming practices are less safe and more costly than others, measured in both hard dollars and environmental impact.
Of course, farmers don’t intentionally choose less-than-ideal production methods. Often, these choices are the product of generations of policies and industrial practices that were never intended to be problematic. There have also been real cost constraints and technological limits. However, a new push for regenerative farming is underway, and these “smarter” farming practices have the potential to help farmers feed everyone while reducing the environmental strain and enhancing the nation’s food security levels.
Unlocking new levels of food security
While Canada has a reputation as a food exporter, the reality is that national food systems are vulnerable to disruption. There are external disruptions, such as borders closing, which can’t be controlled, but also many more localized and controllable issues. For example, monoculture farming can degrade soils, and frequent tillage can leave lands vulnerable to climate destruction, such as dust bowls and erosion.
Understanding these localized vulnerabilities helps make the case for regenerative farming practices. For example, mixed cultivation supports soil health, leading to healthier plants that need less chemical fertilizer support and which attract more natural pollinators. Letting land sit fallow or practicing minimal tillage can also help restore root systems that prevent erosion and nutrient stripping. This helps keep Canadian farm yields up without depending on external inputs that may need to be imported, improving the nation’s food security at both local and national levels.
Restoring Canada’s soils with regenerative farming
Along with boosting food security, regenerative farming helps restore Canada’s soils. Over the decades, as farms have industrialized and specialized, the traditional biodiversity of Canada’s soil has been lost. While some farmers turn to chemical enhancements to try and boost soil quality, regenerative farming offers a more lasting solution, though it does require shifts in how farms are managed.
Take animal integration as an example. In plain English, this means practices like letting managed herds of animals graze cornfields post-harvest to munch down stalks and snack on errant cobs. It’s usually cows, but it can be other animals or even wild animals if they’re present in sufficient numbers in the area. By leaving the stalks in the ground instead of plowing them under at the end of the season, farmers reduce the wear and tear on their soil and attract natural fertilizer in the form of manure.
There are also larger impacts. Healthy soil holds more water than soil that’s been frequently plowed up or stripped of natural surface composts. This prevents erosion issues and also requires less fertilizer to generate a good yield, which reduces environmental pollution. Further, healthy soils can act as carbon sinks, turning farms from net greenhouse gas emitters to net-zero or even net-positive operations.
However, this kind of regenerative approach requires partnerships between different types of agricultural operations. Though historically common among neighborly farmers, links between large-scale crop farmers and large-scale livestock operations in the modern era aren’t as typical. Choosing animal integration as a part of the regular year-end proceeding thus requires a shift in how things are done and frank conversations about the value of cover crop and roughage feed that may take more time than just plowing under a field or ordering a load of feed corn. Still, the investment can be well worth the trouble, especially when the impact is measured over decades and lifetimes vs. just a single fiscal year.
The Prairies lead the way
As evidence of how well this can work when it is intentionally done, Canada can look at experiments and new ventures underway in the Prairies. Long considered a key part of Canada’s breadbasket, what happens in the Prairies has an outsize impact on the overall results of regenerative farming programming.
Take wheat, the crop that has made the Prairies so famous for so many years. Swapping wheat for legumes in some seasons will shift the nitrogen composition of the soil up, reducing the need for outside chemicals. Legumes hold more water in the soil than wheat, reducing the need for supplemental irrigation, preventing wind erosion and dust storms, and boosting the overall water content of the soil. Last but not least, legumes help hold carbon in the soil, transitioning many fields to a net neutral or net positive state.
As a result, a farmer who has been growing wheat as a monoculture crop in the same area for years will see significant benefits to switching to a regenerative rotation. Though wheat and legumes don’t bring the same market price, costs can be offset by changes in the need for fertilizers and herbicides, as well as carbon credits for becoming a carbon sink instead of a net emitter. Thus, it can be financially rewarding to make the move as well as environmentally beneficial.
The financial rewards also grow over time. According to research from Nature United, farmers who switch to more sustainable and regenerative practices can see profits increase by up to 30 percent by the fifth and sixth years. The key, of course, is ensuring that farmers have the financial incentives and capital credits to make it to those tipping point years of enhanced profitability. If Canada as a whole can come together to do that, through supportive policies, subsidies, and strategic investments, then the nation’s farmers can shift the country to a more regenerative and sustainable production model, ensuring a secure and environmentally friendly food supply for years to come.