Christopher Bonasia
The Advocate

Recent polls of Canadian farmers underline how climate change, farm inputs and government policy are inter-linked challenges that will be key issues facing the sector.

Last month, in a poll entitle Producer Perceptions of Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change released by Farmers for Climate Solutions (FCS), farmers in Quebec, Ontario and eastern Canada ranked climate change as the agriculture sector’s top challenge in the next 10 years, followed by input costs and government policies. Those three challenges were also at the top of the list for western Canadian farmers, though in a different order. Input costs ranked highest for them, followed by government policies and then climate change.

Brent Preston, FCS’s president, said the poll results are “fascinating” for what they indicate about the close links of climate adaptation and the business-side of farming.

“Becoming more resilient and reducing our emissions on farm is often really closely tied to reducing our dependence on inputs, especially fertilizers and fossil fuels,” Preston explained.

Research matches poll results

The top outcomes highlighted by FCS align closely with other 2024 research — an Agri-Food Risk report from the Angus Reid Institute in partnership with the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute (CAPI), which incorporates responses from members of the government and other stakeholders across the industry.

FCS says the joint outcomes “recognize the impact of climate change and severe weather events, (though) a broader group of stakeholders appears more concerned about regulatory and trade issues.”

In CAPI’s poll the top three reported challenges are the policy and regulatory environment, extreme weather, and trade barriers and protectionism. And in a second tier of risks, top challenges are input affordability, farm income and debt, human resources, and climate change, which were all chosen by at least one-in-three survey participants.

As CAPI points out, “climate change overlaps with extreme weather, placing the natural environmental conditions for farmers as paramount.”

Policy changes needed

Responses to other questions in the CAPI poll indicate an overall low-level of confidence in the government to deal with these issues. Overall, 82 per cent of respondents reported low confidence that the current policy framework could address any of the three top challenges, especially among farmers and non-farming members of the agriculture industry (government respondents showed higher confidence, though fewer than three in 10 said they thought it could effectively address any of the above issues). Confidence in the private sector was higher, but still low — especially regarding extreme weather. 

That trend carried over into the second-tier concerns, though there was somewhat higher confidence in the private sector to address those.

Both polls further revealed that farmers are already experiencing climate change and extreme weather events and perceive it as an immediate threat. And in FCS’s poll, western Canadian farmers were more likely to report significant impacts from severe weather events than those in eastern Canada.

According to FCS, there is also a strong interest among farmers for adopting new practices that can help improve climate resilience and lower emissions, though ensuring that those practices make sense for their bottom line — such as by increasing profitability and improving productivity — were important for motivating their adoption.

Technical support important

Producers also indicated they need better access to technical support and training. FCS suggests that the low emphasis for seeking technical support from universities or government may “reflect cuts to extension services in recent decades.”

Preston recounted that 86 per cent of respondents said they get information, technical support and training from other farmers.

“I think it really shows that there is a need for more kind of formal extension knowledge sharing programs, but there’s also a need to support the existing networks of farmers that are so important for spreading that peer-to-peer information.”