Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is slated to impose a 30% reduction in fertilizer emissions in the country, sparking intense backlash from farmers and provincial agriculture ministers, who argue the target will decrease crop output, increase prices, and cost farmers billions in lost revenue.
The new target, which seeks to “reduce absolute levels of GHG emissions arising from fertilizer application,” is part of the Trudeau government’s goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
But the news has been met with disdain by farm and agriculture groups in the country that argue imposing such restrictions will shift production to higher-cost, less efficient countries.
“The world is looking for Canada to increase production and be a solution to global food shortages. The federal government needs to display that they understand this,” Alberta Minister of Agriculture Nate Horner said last week in response to the news.
Farming is a major sector of the Canadian economy. In 2021, the country exported nearly $82.2 billion in agriculture and food products, and the agriculture and agrifood sector accounts for roughly 6.8% of its annual gross domestic product.
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“Farmers don’t need the government to tell them how to properly use fertilizer. We engage crop consultants, soil tests and use the latest technology available to us,” Gunter Jochum, president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, said in a statement. “Our government should be strongly supporting the agronomic techniques that we have put into practice.”
A recent study commissioned by the association found that the new targets would cost Canada’s so-called “prairie provinces” billions in lost grain revenue by 2030— including $2.95 billion from Alberta, $4.61 billion from Saskatchewan, and $1.58 billion from Manitoba.
“We’re really concerned with this arbitrary goal,” Saskatchewan Minister of Agriculture David Marit said in a statement.
The new reductions target comes just weeks after the Netherlands introduced a similar proposal — touching off a wave of protests and angry crowds that shut down bridges, food distribution centers, and other export hubs across the country.
Analysts say that by reducing output from countries such as Canada and the Netherlands, each among the world’s most sustainable and environmentally efficient producers, leaders risk redistributing global production to countries that require more land and more fertilizer, likely resulting in higher nitrogen pollution overall.
“Global agriculture, in some sense, is zero-sum,” Ted Nordhaus, the executive director of the Breakthrough Institute, a global research center, told the Washington Examiner in a recent interview.
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“So, if productivity and yields go down,” he said, the demand “gets taken up somewhere else.”
