Better data, management of water needed for Canada’s agri-food sector: report | CityNews Calgary

The Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute is recommending that governments throughout the nation develop a nationwide plan to sustainably handle and use water for the agri-food sector.

In a report launched Monday, the institute referred to as for formidable commitments from governments and partnerships with stakeholders to prioritize the important pure useful resource.

“Water is a strategic asset for Canada, and an increasingly critical and important one,” stated Tyler McCann, CAPI managing director and report co-author.

“We need to do a better job understanding its value, understanding that it’s an asset that can and should be leveraged, but an asset that also needs to be conserved and managed.”

The report calls water “the challenge of the 21st century.”

“The urgency of the need to produce more food, more sustainably, while adapting the food system to extreme weather and climate change should be felt by governments, farmers, food processors and everyone that is involved in the food system from field to fork,” the report stated.

Immediate motion is required to put the groundwork for efficient water administration, the institute stated in a press launch, together with to develop uniformity in knowledge assortment concerning groundwater and floor water, and funding in analysis. It additionally recommends launching an professional panel subsequent 12 months and releasing a nationwide motion plan by July 2025.

Canada has “a fragmented and siloed model for water management,” in keeping with the report, with knowledge assortment and reporting “far from standardized or complete.” It recommends utilizing watersheds as the premise for analysis and innovation.

“Because water is typically managed at a provincial level you get differences in how data is collected,” defined McCann. “We need to do more to make sure that the data collection that we’re doing, the reporting that’s going on, is standardized across the country.”

One of the report’s suggestions is for an everyday report on the state of agri-food water, he stated, offering “a clear accounting of how much water agriculture and food is using across the country, how that water is being protected and managed, what kind of investments are being made.”

Water is a vital useful resource for the manufacturing of meals in Canada, and farmers on this nation have been grappling with drought for a number of summers in a row, with irrigation typically the one factor protecting crops moving into some areas.

In 2021, a very unhealthy 12 months noticed manufacturing of some crops fall to their lowest stage in additional than a decade.

McCann stated farmers and the remainder of Canada are more and more coping with extremes: droughts, but in addition heavy rains and floods. That’s why versatile infrastructure will probably be key to managing water provide, he stated.

The price of utmost climate and rising warmth runs to the tune of billions of {dollars}, the report stated, together with on farmers and all the agri-food sector.

Water — its high quality, and the supply of it — has the facility to redefine worldwide meals commerce and home agricultural manufacturing, the report stated. “Without water, the equation is very simple: there is no agriculture. And without agriculture, no one is fed.”

Food manufacturing around the globe is going through main challenges associated to local weather change, biodiversity loss, geopolitical instability and illness, the report stated.

As a serious meals exporter, Canada can be house to a fifth of the world’s freshwater reserves, the report notes. And because the world’s inhabitants grows, there’s rising stress to provide extra even because the climate-related challenges going through farmers mount.

This nation has an obligation to imagine a management position in managing its water, and its strategy should be a collaborative one, involving all ranges of presidency, the report argues.

There are a number of points affecting water high quality and availability in Canadian agri-food, the report stated. In the west, entry to water for irrigation is the dominant concern, with agricultural manufacturing at stake, notably within the Palliser Triangle, which incorporates a lot of southeast Alberta, a few of southern Saskatchewan, and the southwest nook of Manitoba.

Alberta has two-thirds of all Canadian irrigated land, the report stated, even because the province generates round a 3rd of whole agriculture gross sales.

The federal authorities this 12 months has promised to replace laws that governs water use, and formally introduced that the brand new Canada Water Agency will probably be headquartered in Winnipeg.

More communication and readability concerning the position of the company is required, the report stated, noting it will doubtless turn out to be extra clear when new laws is launched.

— With recordsdata from Amanda Stephenson

This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Oct. 23, 2023.

Rosa Saba, The Canadian Press