Canada’s Ag Industrialists to Look at Environmental Stewardship
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Some of Canada’s top agriculture industry players will be looking at ways that environmentally-conscious farmers can start reaping rewards for their conscientious ways at the Environmental Stewardship in the Global Marketplace meeting in April.
The meeting will bring together different facets of the agriculture industry, including food companies, suppliers, conservation groups, lenders and commodity groups.
Janette McDonald, a consultant in the agricultural industry, gave an update on the meeting at Edmonton’s 2010 Farm Tech conference, saying: “In the very simplest form, we have all these primary producers in Western Canada who are doing this tremendous job of looking after the land and the natural resources. Just the progress that has been made in soil conservation in the last 25 years is amazing.
“On the other hand, we have consumers, society in general, food corporations placing more value on environmental management, sustainability, proper production practices. So if that has value to the end-user, is there a way to transfer some of that value back to the primary producer? That’s the essence of what this project is about.”
McDonald has been part of the Environmental Stewardship in the Global Marketplace project for two years now, and interviewed farmers across the nation about their views and practices when it comes to environmental stewardship and sustainability. After the interview, she spoke with a variety of commodity groups, conservation associations and agricultural companies to discuss their approach to environmental stewardship and what they saw as future opportunities for Canada’s agriculture sector. Among the groups she spoke to were Weston/Loblaws, Richardson International, Syngenta Crop Protection, the Canadian Canola Coucil, Seed Hawk and McCain Foods.
The meeting in April is the step in the project and is intended to bring the involved players together to discuss the plans going forward. Among the questions on the table, says McDonald, are: the need to create a new organization to address Canadian environmental stewardship and its impacts on agriculture, the interest level of the Canadian agricultures industry in exploring this idea, and the possibility of bringing existing groups together and building on work that they’ve already done.
According to McDonald, the first step is to bring the players together just to make sure the concept is worth talking about. After that, it’s a matter of outlining how to proceed.
