Canadian farmers want a clear, common definition for sustainable agriculture and its associated practices, according to a recent survey from the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute.
That would make it easier to navigate the programs and incentives available to encourage widespread adoption of those practices, said comments from those who participated in the survey.
CAPI managing director Tyler McCann said the institute wanted to hear the farmer voice in this discussion.
“We think that there’s a lot of talk about farmer perspectives when it comes to sustainability,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think that there’s much of an effort to actually go out and try to speak to a large number of farmers and try to understand where those perspectives are the same and where they’re different.”
McCann said it was a surprise to find that while a significant majority of farmers see themselves as good stewards of the land they also see lots of opportunity to improve.
Farmers said they would participate in sustainability-based incentive programs. They have moderate awareness of programs and think they are inflexible and insufficient; they prefer outcome-based incentives.
For example, there are programs that pay producers to plant cover crops, but they would rather be paid to improve soil organic content because cover crops don’t work in all regions.
“There’s a prevailing perception that current incentives are insufficient to warrant a shift in farming practices,” the report said. “Policies should be oriented towards flexible payment structures that incentivize actual outcomes, not just specific practices.”
The survey found farmers would prefer tax credits and also support non-financial incentives such as better extension services.
McCann said there might be too many programs.
“I think there’s a bit of a fog that gets created as people try and figure out what’s out there and what is available to them. Some programs are trying to do the same thing, some are different, and so to try and cut through all of that to find out what is actually out there, what might work for farmers in a particular situation and what are the benefits, what are the costs of the different programs can be difficult to sort through,” he said.
Some farmers have questioned whether the incentive programs are worth doing the paperwork.
McCann said the willingness to look beyond financial incentives to things like better extension services indicates money may be better spent in other ways.
He added farmers want governments and the private sector to work together more effectively. This happens more in the United States where government money often flows through privately delivered programs.
“In Canada, we tend not to see that same thing happening,” he said.
Canada requires a better public-private partnership in policy development and delivery and farmers will benefit from as much alignment as possible, said McCann.
Instead of having a dozen different programs, there could be ways to stack public and private payments that encourage the same results.
The survey was conducted in March with RealAgristudies Insight Panel, which includes 720 farmers across the country. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus four percent at 95 percent confidence.
The survey includes a comments section and McCann said the surveyor reported more comments than usual on this topic.
“One of the comments that came through loud and clear is that the lack of a common definition for sustainable farming and sustainable farming practices is an issue and it’s a barrier to progress,” he said.
McCann said the results build into CAPI’s work on how to build a program framework that leads to long-term change.
“How do we make sure that we’re not creating programs or policies that have an immediate short-term benefit but once the funding runs out the producers go back to how they were working,” he explained.
CAPI earlier issued a report on federal-provincial-territorial relations and how governments could work together. The survey adds producer perspective.
“Our hope is that together this helps create a better environment that gets to some better policy and program outcomes that help farmers on their journey to become more sustainable,” he said.
