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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Stewardship by Regulation?
  • Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 12:51:55 -0600


Corner Post
Farm & Countryside Commentary by Elbert van Donkersgoed
August 5, 2003

Slowly, the road to better stewardship on Ontario farms is shifting to
regulations.

Last week, at an information session for farm leaders involved in the
Ontario Farm Environmental Coalition, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture
and Food introduced many of the steps it is taking to implement the Nutrient
Management Act. Staff is in place for education and training, for advising
farmers, for certifying applicators, for approving nutrient management plans
and for enforcement. OMAF staff demonstrated an upgraded version of the
nutrient management computer program. The transition from municipal rules to
provincial standards officially starts on September 30.

It has been a long road to provincial regulations. It is also just a small
first step. It will net a small number of farmers: the larger livestock
farms with more than 300 nutrient units and those that are starting new
livestock sites.

This new approach to stewardship - stewardship by provincial regulation -
faces some major challenges.

First, Ontario agriculture is so diverse that every rule must be both
detailed and flexible, to accommodate the many ways in which we do the
business of farming. There are at least one hundred different kinds of
livestock or livestock groupings, each needing some specific attention in
the rules. The inevitable result? 300 pages of regulations and protocols.
OMAF has promised 120 to 150 accessory fact sheets.

Second, this is not the first or the only layer of the regulated approach to
stewardship. Minimum distance separations already exist. Source water
protection is under discussion. Soon agriculture's contribution to
greenhouse gas emissions will need a management approach. Each layer adds
complexity to farm management.

Third, this issue remains: how to bring the thousands of small and moderate
size farms under the act. The biggest change on many of these farms will be
the paper trail needed to demonstrate compliance with the act. Compliance
with regulations, by its very nature, takes time and money, even if there is
no significant gain in environmental stewardship.

Fourth, if farmers take only a due diligence approach, hire professionals to
craft nutrient management plans, and delegate monitoring to certified
applicators, what will we gain? Environmental stewardship is most meaningful
when it is both a commitment and an integral part of day-to-day farm
management. Commitment and regulations are often poles apart.

If I could make just one change in this program... I would send neither the
300-page regulation/protocol document nor the fact sheets to any farmer.
Rather, to every farmer brought under the provincial rules I would send a
well-trained advisor with a simple mandate: help farmers write their own
nutrient management plans. In the process train them to think stewardship
and challenge them to environmental commitment.
__________
Elbert van Donkersgoed is the Strategic Policy Advisor of the Christian
Farmers Federation of Ontario, Canada. Corner Post can be heard weekly on
CFCO Radio, Chatham and CKNX Radio, Wingham, Ontario. Corner Post has an
email subscriber list of more than 3,000 and appears regularly on @g
Worldwide Correspondents at
www.agriculture.com/worldwide/correspondents/index.html. Corner Post is
archived at www.christianfarmers.org/commentary/Corner-Post.htm. To be added
to the electronic distribution list of Corner Post send email to
evd@christianfarmers.org with SUBSCRIBE as the message. To remove your name,
send email with UNSUBSCRIBE as the message.






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