Ontario farms provide significant ecological benefits, often through the adoption of beneficial management practices (BMPs).
There’s increasing discussion among governments around the world as to how these contributions can be recognized given that markets pay farmers for their farm production only.
The fact farmers are not paid for providing these environmental benefits is referred to as a market failure.
In the production of food and fibre, farmers manage land and resources to grow products sustainably. In doing so, they depend on the ecological goods including healthy soil and clean water.
The environment provides to produce marketable agricultural products.
At the same time, farmers have an opportunity to manage ecological services like wildlife habitat, air and water filtration, scenic views as a public good in the course of sound farm stewardship practices – but these efforts are rarely captured in the price farmers receive for their products.
By adopting beneficial management practices, farmers have an opportunity to produce the safe and nutritious food the public consumes while reducing the impact on ecological goods, or even enhancing existing ecological services.
It has always been difficult to put a dollar value on purifying air and water or providing wildlife habitat.
The remedy may be in the various forms of payment for environmental goods and services that are intended to incentivise farmers and other land stewards to adopt BMPs for the public benefits.
This is not “money for nothing”.
Any payment should require a tangible change with a measureable and verifiable benefit that requires ongoing management and supervision.
The difficulty, however, is determining the appropriate balance between incentives and regulations, which are responsible to both farmers – the benefit producers and tax-payers – the benefit receivers.
Ontario farmers have had the benefit of an Environmental Farm Plan Program for the past 20 years that has enabled them to determine how they could reduce the environmental impact associated with agricultural production practices.
Other programs have provided funding assistance for the adoption of BMPs to address identified concerns.
These programs have benefitted from federal, provincial and municipal funding and do fit the EG&S concept.
A recent report by the MacDonald-Laurier Institute, The Greening of Canadian Agriculture, that details some of the policy challenges and opportunities in EG&S, is welcomed.
It helps to reopen the discussion on EG&S and makes some valuable recommendations
In general, farmers want a fair system of incentive-based policies that recognize the significant environmental contributions that result from the adoption of beneficial management practices on the farm.
While the OFA recognizes that government must be cautious with the dispersal of public funds, we believe an investment in an EG&S program would be defensible for activities that deliver validated and measurable ecological benefits.
The OFA encourages Ontario’s government to take a serious look at EG&S and work with farm organizations to develop pilot projects to investigate the many unanswered questions associated with offering Ontario farmers ongoing payments for the provision of ecological goods and services deemed to be of value to all society.
Don McCabe is vice president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
