Author (#31): March 2011 Archives

With snow persisting across much of southern prairies this week, probably the last thing farmers want to read about is wetland management. If ducks can’t find a prairie pothole to nest beside this year, they shouldn’t be out there reproducing anyway. I suspect for many, the challenge will be to find a dry spot to lay eggs.

My wife said the other day me getting an honorary membership in the Alberta Institute of Agrology is much like the Scarecrow getting a brain from the Wizard of Oz — there was nothing in there to begin with, and now I just THINK there is something in there. (I am further reminded of that Mark Twain quote: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”  But my new brain has overruled that common sense approach.)

In my last blog, I described how speakers at the recent AIA conference emphasized the importance of protecting, maintaining and restoring wetlands, whether they be prairie potholes and sloughs, or vast tracks of muskeg and swamps in northern regions. And I don’t doubt that conclusion — evolution, nature and/or God created all this for a reason.

With the oil and gas sector, or any industrial activity, my simple view is if you make a mess clean it up. If it is worth disturbing five or 25 acres of a farmer’s field, or a million acres of muskeg to extract a resource, that’s great, just put it back the way it was, as best you can. Too often the excuse for avoiding or minimizing the disturbance in the first place, or in properly repairing what was torn up is that it is too expensive. Well, “duh”, let’s call that the cost of doing business. An AIA conference speaker from the Pembina Institute, an environmental think tank, said their economics showed the cost of restoring or replacing oilsands wetlands — what they refer to as a no-net-loss policy — would cost the energy industry 50 or 60 cents for every barrel of oil removed. If these guys can’t find 50 cents or even $1 from every $100 barrel of oil to repair the environmental damage, they shouldn’t be out there in the first place.

Now, for the poor old farmer, I think they should be allowed to rape and plunder the landscape because they are good people doing God’s work! Let’s not pick on them.

Okay, on a more serious note, farmers need to do a proper job of land management and that includes protecting and preserving wetlands on their land. And I believe most do that now. I believe they respect permanent lakes, ponds, rivers and streams and riparian areas, and begrudgingly tolerate usually-seasonal sloughs and potholes, not so much because they love ducks, but because these wet areas are a fact of farming life.

Three big differences I see between agriculture and the oil industry: 1. Farmers operate on private land they bought; 2. I don’t think too many producers sit around at the proverbial coffee shop, or curling rink comparing notes on whether this fourth quarter profit was larger than the last; 3. And I haven’t heard of any producers making applications to drain the 9500 square mile Lake Winnipeg so they can snatch an 80 bushel canola crop off that prime growing sight.

For the most part, farmers are just trying to be as efficient and hopefully as profitable as possible producing crops on their land, working around and with the natural landscape as practical as possible. In a perfect world they might embrace every slough and pothole as a wonder of nature, but in reality they have to optimize their land use to be as efficient as possible. Saving every slough and pothole may be nice in theory, but that warm feeling that comes with knowing that through your efforts another 27 ducks were able to fly south, really doesn’t pay the fertilizer bill.

To me it comes down to, if society thinks every slough and pothole is important and wants to direct producers on how to manage their lands, then society should pay for it. And that could be through either direct compensation for loss of production or inconvenience, or perhaps through tax incentives. Someone came up with this goofy carbon credits system that pays farmers to do a good job of land management to cover the ass of some industrial activity that can’t or wont. So maybe there should be a Duck Credit that pays one producer in Pothole Alley to maintain as many sloughs and wet spots as he can on his land, while his neighbor farms fencepost to fencepost.

I don’t want to see either the energy sector or agriculture disabled or disadvantaged to a point of non-profit. I enjoy driving someplace to have a coffee and a donut, so I rely on them both. It may sound like a double standard to on one hand expect the oil and gas industry, for example, to clean up the mess it makes, and on the other say society should pay or compensate farmers to protect potholes. But in my logic it is really the different edges of the same wetland management sword being applied.

Lee Hart is a field editor for Grainews in Calgary, Contact him at 403-592-1964 or by email at lee@fbcpublishing.com

Arrived home yesterday from the two-day Alberta Institute of Agrologists (AIA) meeting in Banff, where I was made an honorary member. Not sure if they are trying to “buy” the media with this award, but I can’t be bought. However, I can be rented at a very nominal rate. So feed me lunch and give me an award and AIA has just earned a large number of Media Reward Points, which can be used towards many future stories. Anyway, it was a very nice honor and I thank AIA for the recognition. (I just checked my calendar and I have quite a few openings if anyone else would like to honor me).

AIA also asked me to give the closing remarks to the conference — the conference wrap up— and while I am not a great speaker, I didn’t hesitate to give my two cents worth.

While the conference theme was managing wetlands and agriculture, there wasn’t a huge agricultural component – it surprised me just how many agrologists now are involved in the environment side of things. Many are involved in oil and gas reclamation, as opposed to straight crop production.

Various speakers at the conference focused on the importance of wetlands, whether they are potholes, sloughs, ponds, riparian areas along creeks in farm and ranch country, or vast tracks of swamps and muskeg in the northern Boreal forest regions of the Prairie provinces — they are all wetlands.

Nobody denied that ALL these wetlands are important and have varying degrees of value. They play an important role in flood control, purifying surface water, providing habitat for waterfowl and wildlife, and other benefits.

I think most farmers and ranchers see value in wetlands. A lot of ranchers see direct benefit as sloughs and wetlands provide water, feed and shelter for cattle. As long as the site isn’t producing a ton of poison plants, they are generally good.

Most farmers learn how to manage crop production around ponds, lakes and creeks, but being such a profit-driven, time-sensitive horde, I suspect most view the temporary potholes and sloughs that appear in fields largely as a pain in the ass.

They can’t seed them, if they get too close with machinery they get stuck, and even with GPS and autosteer they are still a pain to work around. I remember doing stories several years ago now with a young Alberta Agriculture conservation specialist Douwe Vanderwel and the focus then was on landscaping fields for slough consolidation and developing grass waterways to carry water off fields without erosion.

Apparently those approaches are no longer kosher and the thinking is to embrace every slough and wet spot as an important part of an ecological system.

Much of the conference focused on the importance of all wetlands, creating a value system to rank some wetlands more important than others, developing a provincial government policy on wetland management, and the need for more research. Everyone emphasized it is a very complex issue that needs to be studied and talked about — we need more dialogue with a wide range of stakeholders — two buzz words that drive me nuts.

Regardless of my last comment, I agree that it is an important and sometimes complex issue. But I really do think that wetland management can get bogged down in the process.

As I told the AIA folks, you can research proper wetland management until the cows come home, but unless there is a strong commitment through government policy, a serious commitment from industry to fix what has been damaged, and a buy in from private land owners who see value in preserving every pot hole, the research isn’t going to have much value.

I have some specific solutions that I will reveal in a later blog, but this one is getting too long and I have to go polish my honorary AIA member plaque.

Lee Hart is a field editor for Grainews in Calgary, Contact him at 403-592-1964 or by email at lee@fbcpublishing.com

I was just reading the Vancouver Humane Society newsletter which announced its Raising the Barn awareness program (www.raisingthebarn.ca) aimed in part at getting consumers to stop or at least reduce meat consumption.

The campaign focuses on pretty well every type of meat production — beef, chicken, pigs — and is pushing for five freedoms in livestock production.

Animals should have:

Freedom from hunger and thirst

Freedom from discomfort

Freedom from pain, injury or disease

Freedom to express normal behavior

Freedom from fear and distress.

The campaign has heading that says” Cattle are crammed into feed lots where they are fattened on food that makes them sick.”

The campaign also urges consumers to buy organic meat, poultry and eggs as a better alternative as organic producers are viewed as using more humane production practices.

Along with animal welfare issues, the VHS website also plays heavily on the environmental impact of agriculture, which may catch the attention of consumers who still like to eat meat.

One message on the website says:

 “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.

“When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for nine percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

“And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

“Livestock now use 30 per cent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 per cent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.”

It is a pretty direct and compelling message available to a total B.C. Lower Mainland population of about 2.5 million people, many of which have no idea what a farm looks like.

Lee Hart is a field editor for Grainews in Calgary, Contact him at 403-592-1964 or by email at lee@fbcpublishing.com

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I work for the most inane, whiney, inarticulate, editor who can barely put two words together, and doesn’t have a clue about agriculture (have you seen her pathetic excuse for a garden), and keeps everyone guessing on her true hair color and on top of that I craft these near-genius and compelling articles that generate millions of dollars for Canadian producers, and they are jammed into this snot-nosed rag of a publication, that epitomizes the definition of hackneyed, yellow tabloid journalism and isn’t even worthy of being at the bottom of my bird cage.

I don’t REALLY believe any of that, but I thought I would go with this new Charlie Sheen winning formula on “how to keep your job and get a pay raise.” I am getting about $380 per issue of Grainews now and I am hoping to push that up another 50 bucks. And if management tries to maintain the high road position of “Lee has been under a lot of stress, and is having a bad day” baloney, I will just crank up the insults even more.

I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night, and I can see what has to be done to insure my celebrity status as dean — and dare I say — as KING of agricultural journalism in the galaxy and beyond. It is time I let these bozos know not only what, but where the bear did it in the buckwheat.

You’re my man Charlie! Thank you for opening my eyes and the eyes of those millions of dough-headed, androids who clomp to work or sit on a tractor every day, even with the slightest notion they are happy doing what they are doing for perhaps a little less than the $1.8 million you earn per week for sitting on the couch drinking or bedding some bimbo. Man, that is a caliber of acting you don’t find every day.

I plan to rail on in this column for another few weeks, in hopes of really sticking it to these dopes — ah, hell, I am going for 75 bucks more. Just keep checking my blog for progress reports, and if you don’t mind, Charlie, let me know how things are going for you. And I am sure you will.

Lee Hart is a field editor for the world’s worst farm publication Grainews in Calgary, Contact him at 403-592-1964 or by email at lee@fbcpublishing.com