Environmental Goods and Services

by Shane Sadorski

Folks in the cattle business have always had an unspoken appreciation for the many environmental benefits that come from their responsible stewardship of the land.

Cattle producers have long provided good things like wetland preservation, soil conservation, water and nutrient management, and animal and plant biodiversity on the prairie landscape by their decision just to be cattle producers. Rather than trying to put every square inch of their available land under the plow, cattle production keeps huge tracts of the Canadian Prairie under a perennial green cover of enormous environmental value – all the while producing a healthy, high quality agricultural product.

Equally unspoken has been how all of us in society benefit from keeping these vast prairie spaces under perennial cover. We as a society all benefit from the reduction in nutrient loading in our lakes and streams from wetlands and perennial cover, the reclaiming of carbon from the atmosphere by grasslands, and the habitat for diverse animals and plants that give the prairie its renowned natural beauty. We as a society get so much more than just beef from the family cattle farm.

The thing is, until now, the cattle producer has really only been paid for their cattle. Always left unpaid have been these many collective benefits of producers managing the land for the public good: the valuable ecological goods and services (EG&S) produced through wise farm management and good land stewardship.

No one has offered any financial compensation for this type of EG&S production before because no one really has had too. As long as there is a viable cattle industry that continues to make use of the land sustainably, a lot of these benefits happen on their own because of the producer’s decision to run cattle on the land responsibly.

But what happens when running cattle responsibly and sustainably becomes a financial liability for too long? Barring a financial return for producing all those ecological goods and services, you make the necessary production decisions to change your output and therefore your land use.

After years of economic and regulatory challenges that would have long since done in any other industry, between the signals sent by both the market by way of cattle prices and by government by way of regulation and policy, many cattle producers have reached the point today of downsizing their cattle operation and putting more and more of their land under the plow – or exiting farming entirely.

From the point of view of pure farm economics, it is absolutely logical to contemplate changing your production and land use in such conditions. But from an environmental point of view, this change in production and land use transition is a pending ecological disaster for society.

Environmentally, we desperately need these vast stretches of perennial prairie land dotted with wetlands to remove carbon from the sky, purify and regulate our water, and provide habitat. Converting to crop production from cattle means tearing up vital grassland carbon sinks and increasing nitrous oxide emissions at the very time when we are trying to deal with climate change. It means increased nutrient management problems for our water at a time when we are trying to save Lake Winnipeg and others from nutrient loading. It means less habitat for prairie biodiversity and endangered species. It means draining even more of the remaining 30% of wetlands left in the settled parts of Canada.

Environmentally, we desperately need you to continue raising cattle so we can keep receiving all these ecological goods and services. Yet, as a society we have never paid you for it.

That has got to change.

This was the message that MCPA took to the provincial government this past month when we provided Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives with a detailed, 52 page proposal for a province-wide EG&S program for agriculture in Manitoba. This heavy technical document outlined our industry’s proposal to have you start receiving fair value for the many unpaid environmental benefits that you provide to society as a cattle producer.

It is our hope that the Province sees what we do on the land; namely, that if Manitoba is going to achieve its climate change and water stewardship targets, it must act quickly to hold back the huge land use transition from perennial cover to annual crop forecasted for coming growing seasons. If we are going to save vital animal and plant habitat, society is going to have to end the practice of off-loading the whole cost of producing environmental benefits on the backs of farm families. Society – and its representative, namely government – must step up to the plate to share in the act of preserving our natural prairie landscape.

In my next article, I’ll talk about some of the details of our proposal. Until then, keep warm.