Hello, my name is Margaret Asmuss. I've been involved with
environmental issues since 1982, when I first was a summer student for
the Saskatchewan Environmental Society. That was also when I first
learned about climate change. I'm concerned about climate change because I'm a mother and a grandmother. My name is Glenn Wright, and I've been concerned about
climate change for almost 20 years. I farm near Vanscoy, Saskatchewan, and I've been trying to take every action I can to reduce my impact
to address the problem. Glenn and I are going to
be having a conversation about how the climate crisis
needs to make us evolve our culture, our attitudes,
and the way that we do things. But before doing that, we'd like to acknowledge
that we are on Treaty 6 territory, which is the traditional
territory of the Cree, the Saulteaux, the
Stoney Dakota and Nakota, as well as the traditional
homeland of the Metis. In recognising that we all have
benefits and responsibilities under these agreements, we also
acknowledge past and present harms and injustices, including the
degradation to the land of this territory. Anybody who watches the news knows that extreme weather events are increasing. Just today, a report was released by
the Copernicus Climate Change Service in Europe that confirms that 2023
was the hottest year on record, and that every day last year was at least
one degree above the pre-industrial level. And this has an impact on climate
and on weather patterns. And we can certainly see that
when we watch the news. Last year was full of news about wildfires,
torrential rains, heat waves. So, worldwide, we see that
there's a lot happening. In Canada, 80% of farmland
is currently experiencing extremely dry conditions, and we certainly saw the wildfires in B.C. last year and the spreading of that smoke throughout
North America, and some even into Europe. Here in Saskatchewan,
we've also had impacts. We have a number of regions that
have been experiencing extremely dry conditions. We've had record high temperatures, and certainly last summer we all remember the decreased air
quality due to fires here and elsewhere. So, the changes are clear to most people. But why is this happening? Well, we are emitting what are
called greenhouse gases. As a society, the majority
of these are fossil fuels, but not exclusively. And these greenhouse gases are
getting trapped in the atmosphere and making the atmosphere become
warmer, which is changing weather patterns. That's a very simplified
version of the science, but essentially, this
increase of greenhouse gases and the trapping of those gases
is changing weather patterns. What about Saskatchewan? Per capita, Saskatchewan is one of
the largest emitters in the world. We have just 3% of Canada's population, but we emit about 11% of
the greenhouse gas emissions. Why is this? Well, I don't think we
set out to be polluters, but Saskatchewan sits on rich reserves of
fossil fuels, including oil and gas and coal. And we use those reserves
for economic development to bring our province forward. And certainly, they were very useful and created a lot of benefits
to the people of Saskatchewan. But at the same time, they increased our
emissions of greenhouse gases without us really realizing
what the implications would be. Now that the climate crisis is here, we really have to pivot away from those ways of
life and the technologies that have been creating these problems. Most of us understand that as a society, we need to evolve away from fossil fuels through such things as
increasing renewables increased energy efficiency, improved mass
transit, improved electricity transmission. So, I think we understand
that as a society, that that is a necessary evolution
that we have to move toward that. And certainly that's
happening throughout the world, and needs to start happening here too. What is less understood is the role of agriculture and
food systems in climate change. And this is why I've asked Glenn to come and have this conversation with me, because as a farmer, Glenn has
been thinking about climate change and food systems for a long time and has done a lot in his farm, in his farming operation,
to address those concerns. So, Glenn, how has agriculture
changed the prairie landscape and what does it mean
for us and for our climate? Well, Margaret, the agriculture system in Saskatchewan
has changed, much like North America has. And that's really the result
of two revolutions. The first revolution would be
mechanization. So, this is moving from horse-drawn
equipment and draught animals to using diesel fuel to
run our big machines. So, that mechanization revolution was the first way that we
became very reliant on fossil fuels. The second revolution, though,
was a chemistry revolution, where we learned how to turn
natural gas into nitrogen fertilizer. And that brought the Green Revolution, the more productive land by applying
fossil fuel-based inputs to the land. So, these two things have really
transitioned our landscape. But at the same time, we've also made many land system
changes to the prairie landscape. What was once a grassland
with many wetlands and prairie potholes that would hold water, most of those potholes, in
many cases have been filled in. So, we've levelled the land and
we've drained some of the wetlands so that we can make
each acre more productive. So, we're now farming
from corner to corner. And so, this evolution of our
agriculture in Saskatchewan has really been to double down and focus on
fossil fuel for our inputs and producing our food. But at the same time, it's driven up risks, risks that are tied to climate change. Without those prairie potholes to buffer and hold water in extreme rainfall events, we now have more runoff that can go
into closed watersheds and cause problems. And we know that climate change is
only going to bring more extreme droughts and more extreme flooding. So, this is where these these acts to drain and fill in properties and level them causes more risk for our
agriculture system in Saskatchewan. But this is a complex issue, isn't it? It's related to all sorts of
other environmental problems and limits of our natural landscape. Absolutely. And we have to think, too, about
energy flows in our whole food system to begin with. And so, agriculture, the primary
production, is only one component of how our food goes from
production to the table in front of us. We have also all of the transportation. We have the processing,
we have refrigeration, we have the marketing and
the wholesaling and distributing, in addition to the preparation that happens in the home, where we use energy
to cook and prepare our foods. So, what's happened is our
whole food system has turned from what used to be an energy source, where we would get energy
from photosynthesis in the sun. It's now an energy sink, because we were so reliant on
fossil fuels to produce our food. And the real travesty here as well is about a third of our food is
wasted through the whole food chain. So, these are the things we need to tackle to make our
food system more sustainable. We have to replace the fossil energy with clean energy, and we have to
reduce our impacts and reduce the waste. Well, you're a farmer, and you've been thinking about
this for 20 years, as you said. What has to change and
what have you changed? Well, if I could take a step back, the first thing I would say is that
it is a very complicated system. And it's not just about climate change. Yes. And so I'd like to touch on a concept
called the planetary boundaries. And this was introduced by the Stockholm
Resilience Centre in Sweden. And so what they did in 2009 is they kind of took a look at the Earth, and they determined that there
were nine planetary boundaries that human-to-human
activity is influencing. But just last year, they finally quantified a
bunch of like an assessment of each of these boundaries and
found that six of the nine are actually operating outside of a safe space. So, beyond the sustainable
operation of the planet. And what's really
troubling for me as a farmer is that five of those nine
planetary boundaries impact our food system and our
food production and agriculture. So, these are things like climate change certainly is one of them. But fresh water, land system change, biogeochemical flows. So, this is the flows of nitrogen
and phosphorus. This is the inorganic fertilizer that we're applying to
grow our food system. And the last one is biodiversity. So, as we've taken over and evolved and changed these
landscapes to reduce the habitat and alter grasslands
and eliminate wetlands. We're at the same time reducing habitat and reducing the biodiversity
available for, you know, for nature and some of the
eco services they provide, like pollinating bees
and things of that nature. So, from my perspective and my farm, I've been trying to think always of how do I reduce my impact and how do I replace the fossil
energy with clean energy? Okay. Well, tell me about that a little bit and how that relates to the bigger picture, like what you think has to happen within
the agriculture and food services industry? Not food services industry,
but what's the right word? The food system. Yes. I think certainly as we electrify things, we're going to be using less energy because when you electrify something, it generally uses a third to a quarter
of the energy of a combustion process. So, think of the transportation, moving the food from the
fields to the processing plants. And likewise, if we
clean up our electricity instead of having fossil
energy driving our electricity, if it becomes clean electricity, then all of the refrigeration and
processing we do will become less emissions intensive. So, there's a real connection
between what we do on the energy side and what
we do on the agricultural side. If we clean up the energy picture,
we're also cleaning up agriculture. Absolutely, absolutely. And fossil fuels have been
a tremendous gift for us. They've allowed us to
to grow human enterprise at a massive scale. And it's because they're so energy dense. The amount of energy in one barrel of oil is about the same as a human working
for eight hours a day for four years, and that only costs $100 for a
barrel of oil in Canadian dollars now. So, that's why we've become so addicted. But the waste products are causing us to exceed those planetary boundaries. So, when I think about my own farm, I'm always thinking about how
do I reduce my emissions intensity, reduce the fossil fuel inputs, and also trying to think of ways to be more
efficient and to reduce the amount of waste. So, what we've been doing is trying to go to
what I would call a reduced input farming, because most of the emissions
tied with our primary production and agriculture are related to fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer and
phosphorus fertilizer. Nitrogen in particular is
one of the worst offenders because it's primarily
derived from natural gas. And it is one of the most potent natural
greenhouse gases, isn't it? That's correct, yes. So, I think as I mentioned before, we had two revolutions, the mechanical mechanization
and the chemistry revolution, both tied to fossil fuel. I think we're just
beginning a third revolution, which I'll call the biological revolution. And so, this is going to be a way for us to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel. So, for instance, certain plants are able to fix nitrogen from the air just because the
air we breathe is 78% nitrogen. So, these types of plants are often referred to as pulse crops. So, these are things like peas and lentils. So, if we can incorporate
more of those crops and grow them in an intercropping manner with others, then you can have
nutrients come from the-- Excuse me. You can have nutrients
coming from the pulse plants to make it bioavailable for others. Okay. Well what about the use of animals? I mean, certainly the grasslands
evolved with the buffalo. We no longer have them. What sort of role do they play
in all of this? Animals are one of the items
that often gets focused on as a distraction, I think, from the
oil industry and methane emissions. We typically see cattle being attacked
for their methane emissions. And it's true that we
probably have to move away from intensive livestock operations
where we're dragging all of the inputs in. Again, depending on transportation
and high emissions intensity. If we can get to animals
that more replicated what used to happen in nature,
grass-fed beef, for example. We also know that there's a
really important relationship between building soil health
and incorporating animals. So, this is about building
organic matter and providing, nutrient use efficiency and growing the diversity of the bacteria
and microbes and fungi in the soil. Building soil health is going to be one way
that's really important to be resilient to climate
change and extreme weather. Okay. Anything else that you want to add that we haven't been able to touch on? Well, I would say
that it's really important to think not only about
what individuals can do, but what the industrial system needs to do. And I think our farm has been
a good demonstration of that, because I did take time to focus
on installing renewable energy, doing a retrofit on my house and eliminating
the natural gas supply to our farm. So, we now save about
$6,000 a year in fossil fuels that we used to buy, and we've reduced our household emissions
by about ten metric tons per year. But the amount of change
that happened on the farm in the grain crops that I grow by using less fertiliser is probably
ten times the amount of emissions. And so I think this is why we have to do everything all at once. We have to have individuals taking action, but we need policy from
governments to drive us towards that clean future that
we that we need to accelerate. And how do we get to that future? Any last words of wisdom? Well, I guess my last
words of wisdom would be that when you learn
about the climate crisis and these other planetary boundaries, it's understandable to be afraid and to
sometimes even be paralyzed with fear. Or to become angry and get upset with corporations and governments. And that's justified. But I think of Doctor Martin
Luther King, for example, and he didn't win people over with speeches
talking about how he's fearful and angry. He never said, I have a nightmare,
for example. He said, I have a dream. And that dream we need to focus on is clean energy and reducing our impacts and
replacing fossil energy with clean energy. And I think it's possible
we just have to accelerate towards it. Okay. Thanks a lot. You gave us a lot to think about. Thank you.