Written by Alan Lyons. Find him on Twitter: @lyonseed

Lately our agricultural press, be it written, digital or otherwise, has been inundated with articles about two subjects that, to this point, no one has been able to define with any degree of certainty. One is the entire idea of “sustainability” and the other is our federal government’s ideas on how to combat their version of “climate change”.

The term “sustainability” at this point appears to be at best, an advertising term used to make consumers think the products they are buying are produced in a sustainable manner, or are made from raw materials that were grown or produced sustainably. Not one of these companies can provide a sound definition of the term “sustainable” and while they all have their own corporate definition of what they want their customer to believe, none of them have the same definition as any other. In a recent “sustainability” report produced by a think-tank for an international food company, Canada scored number one for things like food waste and nutrition but in the middle of the pack for sustainable agriculture. As with many other reports, the criteria and specific areas of failure were not listed and could not be obtained from the authors. What value is a study that doesn’t report the areas where the participants failed? One critical area that few if any of these “studies” ever look at or report on is the profit portion of sustainability. Without a reasonable profit, what business can remain viable or sustainable, no matter how well their practices protect the environment?

When we look at our current federal government’s agricultural direction on climate change, we see a similar set of directives as have been touted by many as sustainable. Specifically, the use of cover crops, rotational grazing and reductions in the use of fertilizers, especially nitrogen.

What no one, be it government, think tanks or private industry has yet to devise is a valid method of measuring how these practices will improve sustainability or how much real impact any or all of the changes can have on GHG emissions.

In other words they are mandating a set of “best management practices” without really knowing what will be the “best management outcome”.

Will any or all of these practices work across the country, who knows?

Is the government willing to supply funding to prove or disprove their ideas, to some extent they are, but to what end result?

Will cover crops work for a vegetable producer in Bradford the same as it does on my cash-crop farm?

Will rotational grazing work for a rancher in the foothills of the Rockies the same as it does for a cow-calf producer in Bruce County?

Can we continue to feed an ever-increasing population by reducing our use of nitrogen fertilizer? Take a look at what has happened in Sri Lanka over the past years to see the answer to that.

The current situation in Ukraine is going to show very dramatically just how fragile the world food supply really is.

Even if we accept that Canadian farmers can have an extremely miniscule impact on world GHG emissions, for the sake of our soils, our water and our environment we do need to look at changing or developing crop management that is based on the best outcome. Scientific studies have shown that we can reduce our N usage by five to ten percent with little or no impact to yield. Work done by Dr. Claudia Wagner-Riddell at the Elora research station has shown a significant relationship between N uptake and rainfall. Split N application is a common practice with wheat, why not look at the same management for corn and canola based on rain events? I know that some growers are working on methods of split N on corn.

How much more effective can we be at utilizing our fertilizer dollars through the use of 4R programs?

This year of all years, should be teaching us that we need to do all we can to maximize the benefits of what we apply to our crops.

Our current methods of soils testing are the same ones we’ve been using since my fathers time, is that good enough? As we learn more about the benefits of cover crops and the interaction between the microbial populations in our soils, is the old standard N,P,K and micronutrient analysis adequate for twenty first century management? Now more than ever is the time to be looking at what constitutes “soil health” and how to measure it. New technologies exist or are being developed that can give us a much better idea of what our soil is capable of and how to manage to achieve that ultimate capability.

Even though the dust-bowl days of the early 30’s was almost a century ago, we haven’t learned much, we are still seeing dust clouds, not just in the American mid-west but in our own province.

What kind of best management practice tolerates that, when we know there are best management “outcomes” that can keep our best soils in the field where they belong? We still see instances every spring of unacceptable erosion from fields that were overworked in the fall or from flash rains in the spring. Why is that still an acceptable practice, or is it?

While our government has yet to achieve their lofty goals of impacting climate change or not and whether sustainability is seen as a corporate promotional term or an actual management method, practicing the status quo is not an acceptable “best management practice”. The old line “you’re either moving ahead or backward, there is no standing still” has never been truer.

Science is showing us more about our soils and the interaction with growing crops at a faster pace than ever before. It is up to us as managers to not only read and understand as much of that science as we can but to utilize the knowledge to our benefit as well as to the benefit of our overall society.

If we don’t develop our own “best management outcomes”, we may be forced by society to utilize mandated “best management practices” whether they work and apply to our farms or not.