Andrew McClelland
The Advocate
Jacques Nault is very honest about why he uses his knowledge to fight climate change.
“For my part, I’m a very climate-anxious person,” said the St. Chrysostome-based agronome. “It scares me. And the only way I can sleep at night is by taking action.”
It’s been a long road for Nault to reach the point where he feels he is making a change that can prevent, and even reverse, aspects of the current climate crisis. But after more than 25 years in business, his company has developed programs that can help agricultural producers take advantage of the Canadian carbon market and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
“My brother and I founded Logiag in 1999,” Nault said, referring to the company that is at the centre of his efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of the agricultural sector. “And a few years ago I gathered all our employees and said, ‘OK, we’re going to develop a service to help farmers in their climate transitions. We’re going to try to sustain a company that advises farmers who are interested in turning their farms around and facing the climate crisis that’s in front of us.”
That mission led the company to create its climate transition plan for farmers. The voluntary program starts by conducting a greenhouse gas inventory on a producer’s operation, and recommending cost-effective practices to reduce its GHG emissions and accumulate carbon in the soil.
Through anything and everything – from creating windbreaks, planting cover crops and optimizing nitrogen fertilizer application – participating agricultural businesses can build carbon assets that add value to their farms or invite non-farm businesses to purchase GHG reductions to offset their own emissions.
“That’s what people are talking about when they talk about the ‘carbon offset’ market,” Nault explained.
But as much as such programs work on paper, they can be abused and aren’t necessarily the smartest way for climate-conscious producers to work.
“If you reduce (your carbon footprint) by a thousand tonnes (of carbon), you sell it, you get money, and once you do it, it’s gone,” Nault said. “You cannot claim it again. You cannot say you’ve reduced because your credit has been sold, your effort has been sold somewhere else, and it can only be sold once.”
Focus on dairy
As an industry leader in climate transition and GHG reduction, Nault wanted to find a better way for dairy farms to reduce their emissions and create a roadmap for producers wanting to make an environmental difference. What they came up with is what they call “Dedicated Dairy Farms,” a voluntary program currently in its third year of operation that’s already showing great results.
“In dairy, 87 per cent of GHG emissions come from the farm,” Nault explained during a videoconference April 23 hosted by the Quebec Farmers’ Association. “That’s a lot more than from transport and from packaging and processing. So if we want to actually, physically reduce those emissions, we have to start at the farm.”
Dedicated Dairy Farms starts by doing some “greenhouse gas accounting” on a producer’s operation, taking into account all emissions and finding a baseline that all improvements can be measured from.
“We look everywhere for where emissions are coming from: in the barn, in the manure and in the field. And we go back three years to establish a baseline scenario. What are the usual practices on this farm, and what emissions are coming from its usual practices. That’s the starting point.”
Logiag also thoroughly tests that farm’s soil’s organic carbon and figures out the carbon footprint of its milk. On average, Quebec milk producers emit a kilo of Co2 per kilo of milk produced, Nault said.
Certified carbon reduction
That’s where Logiag gets active by having boots on the ground at the dairy farms involved in the program. Agronomes look at each farm and create a transition plan that considers the close links between animals, plants and soils, with a goal to increasing profitability, productivity while reducing the carbon footprint of the milk produced. Most of the 135 farms participating have measured a 15- to 33-per-cent drop in their greenhouse gas emissions.
“Once those reductions are made, we make sure that they’re certified,” Nault said, noting that all reductions in the program are verified by SustainCERT, a European carbon-emissions accounting and verification platform. “This is where each farm’s reductions gain value. And it’s important to protect the farmers and to recognize their efforts once it’s in the books.”
That certification makes the milk from farms in the Dedicated Dairy Farms program particularly attractive to milk processors. So attractive that the cost of the program is paid by them; General Mills was the first processor to sign on, with Costco following suit.
“Companies like that are under tremendous pressure to have a response to the climate crisis, and to answer a genuine request from customers to invest in real climate and carbon-footprint solutions,” Nault said. “Currently, it’s entirely paid by the food processors and the farmers are receiving a compensation for the time as well.”
As Nault notes, dairy producers in the program then have two sources of income: their milk and Co2 reduction.
It’s a system and a dream that Nault hopes will actively address the climate crisis and help the dairy industry get on a path to greater profitability.
“We want to make sure the reductions are real. And I want to make sure that it helps decarbonize the whole value chain,” he said.
“I believe that at the end, if the dairy sector, or agriculture in general, doesn’t do this, then there’s going to be other alternatives that are going to come and answer the needs of the customers and distributors.”