Climate Action Success Stories (videos)

[Upbeat music begins]

[Aerial view of several crop fields. White text appears at the center of the screen.]

[Text on screen: Climate Action Success Story: Rotational grazing]

[Text fades. Wide shot of cattle in a field. Close-up of a crop. Kevin Budd leans down to inspect the crop.]

[Kevin Budd sits and talks to the camera.]

Kevin Budd: Helping with that nutrient cycle and the carbon cycle, we're increasing our…

[Text appears in the bottom left corner of the screen.]

[Text on screen: Kevin Budd, Beef Cattle Producer – Woodstock, New Brunswick]

…soil organic matter, which is putting carbon down in the earth. It's a fertility benefit. It's a water holding benefit. It's just a win-win all the way around.

[A herd of cattle gathers in a field near a farmer.]

[Text on screen: About the farm]

[Kevin Budd walks away from the camera with his dog while an ATV passes by.]

We're a family operation. My wife and I are both veterinarians, and I was involved with food-animal practice here.

[Close-up of cattle walking and grazing in a field.]

And over the years, it's expanded. And we now have, you know…

[Workers drive an ATV with a rope attached to a spool, followed by someone carrying marking stakes.]

[A herd of cattle walks toward the camera in a field.]

…about a 300 head cow-calf operation, so 300 mother cows.

My eldest son has a broiler production operation that that kind of integrates well into our system because he's trying to produce some of his own grains, and the rotation is good for our forage production situation as well for these cows.

We're in New Brunswick, and historically it's got a six or seven months of winter. So we need a lot of feed to allow for that.

We’re working on this whole regenerative thing to extend that grazing season and having some success with that as well.

We own about 2,000 acres. If you're aware of kind of the geography of farmland in New Brunswick, most properties are probably at least half forest, and that would be approximately the case here, so about a thousand acres of productive land for forage production, grain production or pasture that we own, and we lease another 500 or 600 acres of fields, primarily for pastures.

[Close-up of a field. White text appears in the center of the screen.]

[Text on screen: The benefits of rotational grazing]

We’ve been doing some, but just developing that infrastructure was the limiting factor. It takes a lot of fencing, and a lot of, a lot of materials, a lot of input costs.

So, and it takes a fair bit of labour and management to make it happen every day. So the OFCAF kind of helped us with the infrastructure side of that and with reseeding and renovating some of that ground to improve the stands, that sort of thing.

So the benefits of the rotational grazing would be in just more resilience to our pastures and our forage production ground. In fact, if you're properly grazing and allowing the, allowing the grasses and the legumes to grow, is to improve the soil health, improve water infiltration and water-holding ability.

So ultimately, we're getting more production per acre, which translates into more animal units per acre.

So, we can we can keep that 300 cows on the number of acres that we're managing, where if we were managing it, managing differently, like with just set stocking, turning cattle out on large pastures, our capacity would probably be about half of what it is.

[Close-up of cattle standing in front of the camera. White text appears in the center of the screen.]

[Text on screen: About animal health]

If you're getting more production, they're getting a better diet of higher quality, fresher grasses and legumes in the vegetative kind of stage of growth. That's better than them either grazing stuff to the ground or grazing older stuff that's been stockpiled. There's a place for that in extending your season, but so and generally, you know, the rotational thing makes makes it healthier for parasite control, that kind of thing. It reduces those kind of burdens as well.

So yeah, we're, you know, there's a quite a variation in the formula, how you do that. Now, I mean, the really intensive grazing is pretty high-stocking density but very rapidly moving along, like, probably twice a day.

We're not at that heavy a stocking density, but our cattle, we tend to move them once a day or every second day. It's made a significant difference and just in the carrying capacity and the ability, you know, if we can improve the grazing, it also helps on the other side of being able to have a few more acres that are harvestable for winter feed.

So it's helped us have enough inventory, just because there's less pressure on that side of the operation. So there are a lot of advantages.

[Close-up of a hand picking a plant and holding it up to the camera. White text appears in the center of the screen.]

[Text on screen: Is rotational grazing for everyone?]

Well, everybody has to look at it as far as, you know, the impact in their own business. And for us, I mean, it's difficult to increase the size of your operation, and that's a big investment as well. There's obviously a cost in getting that infrastructure and having the people to manage it.

But if you get it set up right, it's not a big labour-demanding situation. It's just an everyday situation. So I would encourage people to look at it. And if you're in the beef production and you can increase your your production on the same land base, I think that's a win-win for everybody.

[Close-up of a hand holding a plant. A worker kneels in the field holding marking stakes, with a dog resting its paws on their knee.]

If you can do that and protect the environment at the same time.

[Close-up of cattle in front of the camera. A cow sniffs the camera lens. Kevin Budd stands with two workers in a field, with cattle in the background.]

[Cut to a blurred field under a pink and blue sky. White text appears in the center of the screen.]

[Text on screen: Learn more about the On-Farm Climate Action Fund – agriculture.canada.ca/farm-climate-action-fund]

[Screen fades to white. Logo and text appear: "Enhancing Soil and Crop Sustainability in New Brunswick – NBSCIA AASCNB."]

[Music fades out]

[Text on screen: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada – Agriculture et Agroalimentaire Canada]

[Government of Canada wordmark]

[End]

[Upbeat music begins]

[Aerial view of several crop fields. White text appears at the center of the screen.]

[Text on screen: Climate Action Success Story: Cover Crops]

[Text fades. Cut to a close-up of a crop field. A combine harvests the field, leaving a trail of freshly turned soil as it drives away from the camera.]

[Music becomes more upbeat]

[In a field, Brett Francis kneels to inspect soil and crops. Cut to him sitting at his desk, speaking to the camera.]

Brett Francis: Sometimes it's not always a paid-today good practice. It's more of an investment for the future years and the future generations.

[White on-screen text appears near the bottom of the screen as Brett sits at his desk and talks to the camera.]

[Text on screen: Brett Francis, Mixed Crop and Beef Cattle Producer – Lady Fane, Prince Edward Island]

We have less erosion and in the winter it cuts down on wind erosion the same as the spring. It cuts down a lot of water erosion.

[Close-up of a crop field; one side is dark and freshly plowed, the other lighter with crop cover. White text appears at the bottom.]

[Text on screen: About The Farm]

[Cut to Brett walking away from a tractor parked in a crop field.]

I’m the seventh generation on our farm.

We're a mixed farm. We grow seed potatoes, soybeans, corn, grains and we have a beef feedlot and a cow-calf operation.

[Close-up of fresh crops growing in a field.]

My father's always been a huge promoter of cover cropping and sustainable agriculture.

[Close-up of a combine harvesting a field.]

Before it was mainstream, my father practiced it in the fall after harvest of our potatoes and recently, with the help from the Federation, we started putting a cover crop in on our fall tillage.

And that's something new that we haven't done before.

[Close-up of the field. A combine harvests one side, leaving dark, plowed soil; the other side remains lighter with unharvested crops.]

[Text on screen: How we do our cover cropping]

We're just using barley right now.

And before we harvest our potatoes, we will go through with a broadcaster and put about 90 pounds an acre on of barley.

And as we harvest the potatoes that's what acts, that incorporates the seed into the ground, so that acts as our tillage.

And in a few, in a week or so after we harvest the potatoes, there’s usually a real nice green mass over all that ground and keeps it covered through the winter and the spring.

And then our fall tillage, the same idea, we go through with the broadcaster and broadcast about 90 pounds an acre of barley.

And then we go through with a machine called a Pottinger Synkro and it's a reduced-tillage practice and that works the ground up and works the barley into it, and same thing, about a week later there's a nice green cover on that ground.

[Close-up of soil and emerging crops. White text appears in the center of the screen.]

[Text on screen: Why barley?]

We grow it on the farm and it's here in tanks of storage. It’s just ease of access.

And it's particularly fairly hardy. It germinates quite quick and some winters too, when we don't have a lot of cold weather too, it’ll overwinter and you'll get a real nice cover in the spring from it, also.

[Close-up of a lush green crop field. White text appears in the center of the screen.]

[Text on screen: The Results]

In the winter months, when we have wind erosion here in the island, you can see it in the snow.

The snow will turn red the odd time, if we have a real big wind and not much cover and no snow, and the ground is frozen, the big wind will blow some soil around.

But the farms that are covered, that are cover-cropped – definitely, the snow is a lot whiter around those farms.

And the same as with the erosion in the in the spring and the fall, it definitely pays off. You can see the difference.

[Close-up of Brett driving a tractor toward the camera. On-screen text appears at the bottom.]

[Text on screen: Is cover cropping for everyone?]

Every farm is different.

Timing is a big thing also. If you're harvesting a late-season crop, you don't have time to put in a cover crop.

But just, if you're harvesting after October 15th, it gets too cold here. We have frost in the late fall and nothing will grow.

So if you are growing a later season variety of potato, or maybe a different crop that you're taking off later, it is really difficult to get a cover crop in there that will grow.

And if you do go through all the work of putting a cover crop in and nothing grows, right there, you're out quite a bit of time and money and your time is expensive.

If I was going to promote it, I would say it's the same thing: It's not a get-paid-today event it's building the soils and keeping them there for for your future, the next generation’s future…

[Close-up of a harvested crop field.]

…and it definitely pays off. It's the right thing to do.

[Close-up of Brett driving a tractor away from the camera. Cut to him standing in a field, arms crossed, smiling.]

[Cut to a blurred field under a pink and blue sky. White text appears in the center of the screen.]

[Text on screen: Learn more about the On-Farm Climate Action Fund – agriculture.canada.ca/farm-climate-action-fund]

[Screen turns white. On-screen text appears: Prince Edward Island Federation of Agriculture]

[Music fades out]

[Text on screen: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada – Agriculture et Agroalimentaire Canada]

[Government of Canada wordmark]

[End]

[Upbeat music begins]

[Aerial view of several crop fields. White text appears at the center of the screen.]

[Text on screen: Climate Action Success Story: Nitrogen management and cover crops]

[Text fades. A close-up view of the front of the farm’s main building ‘Fermes Jn Beauchemin & Fils’. Cut to a close-up of a cow sniffing the camera. Raphaël Beauchemin stands in a tall cornfield and pulls a cob of corn from its stalk.]

[Raphaël Beauchemin sits and talks to the camera. White on-screen text appears in the bottom left corner.]

[Text on screen: Raphaël Beauchemin, Producer – St-Ours, Québec]

Raphaël Beauchemin: But as I like to say to the producers around me, it's clear that reliable data is what's going to help us with our decisions.

[A wide shot of the farm’s main building ‘Fermes Jn Beauchemin & Fils’.]

[Text on screen: About the farm]

The JN Beauchemin farm is a third-generation farm, and I'm the oldest member of the third generation. It's a multidisciplinary farm that's mainly into dairy production, but also has field crops. I look after a bit of both, among other things.

[A herd of cattle stands together in a gated field. White on-screen text appears at the bottom of the screen.]

[Text on screen: About nitrogen management]

Since dairy production has evolved quite a bit in the last 15 years, we've had a lot more manure to manage in our nutrients, and it's always been a bit nerve-wracking for us to cut back on nitrogen, as we're always afraid that the plants won't reach 100% of their potential.

But the nitrogen sentinel gives us some assurance as to where we should cut, and gives us some idea of our ranges, what the manure could give us back for our crops so we don't have any losses, but still save on nitrogen, on inputs.

For the last few years, basically on the farm, what we've been doing is we've been spreading manure either in the fall or in the spring. And then in our rotation, we try to look at manures in a certain order of magnitude that equals not 100% of theoretical nutrients, but equals, well we try to get as close as possible to the biggest number.

But for that we validate our numbers by doing nitrate tests in the soil after applying our starter. Then we adjust our fertilizer quantities according to the mapping of the manure applied in the spring. We look at the elements that were spread across the field based on the geomatics, and where there were none, and where there was more.

We try to adapt our quantities to match our post-emergence quantities, to match the plants needs, but with a certain latitude with the start of the season to see what the start of the season looks like, if it's been a cold spring or a warm spring with lots of rain or less.

We try to adapt to be able to operate with the least added inputs possible to meet 100% of the corn's needs.

[Cut to a close-up of a corn cob emerging from its stalk in a tall cornfield. The camera slowly zooms in on the cob. White on-screen text appears near the bottom of the screen.]

[Text on screen: The results?]

Well, I think we've been working on a calculation grid for nearly five years now to evaluate each and every nitrogen fraction we use. Since then, we've reduced the amount of nitrogen used on the farm by a good two truckloads. Basically, we're trying to reduce the amount of nitrogen used as an input as much as possible without having a negative impact on yield. Considering that we have a lot of nitrogen that comes from liquid manure, we want to maximize that and minimize the nitrogen we buy with the best performance possible. And to do that, you really have to keep up with manure applications, the weather and recalculate several times at the start of the season. For example, since we've been managing nitrogen a little more closely, we've reduced the inputs we have to buy from the farm by 40%, which is the equivalent of two truckloads, which is worth a lot of money. When we know that manure produces a certain amount of the total nitrogen that has to be managed, it tends to be more and more organic. We just need to be able to adapt to this fertilizer value, which is a little more variable over the course of the season, and a little harder to control when it will be released during the season. That's why we're also trying to work with cover crops, so we can roll nitrogen over from one season to the next, and then we're always trying to get a good nitrogen value all season long.

[A wide shot of a tractor pulling a trailer past a large building on the farm. White on-screen text appears along the bottom of the screen.]

[Text on screen: The combination of practices]

We think it comes down to cover crops and then keeping the soil healthy. We've also started strip tilling, reduced tillage of fields in the fall, then strip tilling in the spring to reduce the impact of soil destructuring and soil erosion in the areas where we're not planting a crop.

For us, direct seeding has always been hard because we have springs with soils that are a bit cold. They need to be warmed up to ensure good germination and good even emergence. So far, strip tilling seems to be giving us good results. So we get emergence in warm soil while still keeping good soil structure in our rows.

Then we add cover crops either intercrops or in the open field, depending on the crop, so we can conserve the nitrogen and nutrients we manage via manure, and be able to roll over to the next crop as much as possible.

[A close-up of young crops in a field.]

[Text on screen: The overall results]

So there's no doubt that for our cover crop, the results are that it helps with the equipment, with the harvest. Whether it's silage corn or grain corn, the harvest happens all the time with a better bearing capacity, and it dirties the machinery less. And that really helps us get into the fields without damage or the yield increases the following year without having a negative impact on the current year. That's really the second finding, that at the start, we were scared we were going to lose throughout the current year to benefit the next year, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Otherwise, our weed management, which is still a challenge, seems to be going well despite the more limited tools we can use when we use a variety of cover crops, but it seems to work.

[A close-up of a cornfield.]

Otherwise, the last thing I would say is that nitrogen seems to be part of the equation all the time, whatever the season.

[Raphaël leans down to look at the crops in the field. The camera zooms in on the stems and grass.]

It seems that if you have green crops between fall and spring, you have to manage them. But we have some that overwinter.

[The camera moves through a cornfield, with the tall crops forming a tunnel.]

Then the following year when we do nitrate tests, we also have a lot of residual nitrogen in the soil.

[Close-up of a field with rows of young crops.]

That leads us to believe that juggling with these tools helps to reduce our intensive field work, play with intercrops or cover crops, and then at the end of the day, be able to manage our nitrogen to save money and have better margins.

[Wide shot of a crop field and the farm in the distance.]

Well, the general advice I would give is it's worth a try. Every dairy farm like us, theoretically, we already have a lot of nitrogen and minerals from the liquid manure and organic fertilizers.

[A herd of cattle walk out of a barn.]

If we calculate this value, which is substantial, that's in the manure, but we don't take advantage of it.

[A herd of cattle stand in a field, in front of the camera.]

Well, that's a big economic loss, I think, for the farm.

[Cut to a wide shot of a field.]

In our case, it's the little push we needed to move slowly but surely towards an increasingly organic agriculture, in our case, with less and less minerals, trusting our soils and trusting the nitrogen that somehow rolls into our crop rotation, and that we need to be able to take the lead on a little.

But as I like to say to the producers around me, it's clear that reliable data is what's going to help us with our decisions.

[Raphaël walks into a large brick building on the farm. Cut to a close-up of the building sign that reads ‘Fermes Jn Beauchemin & Fils’. Raphaël stands in a tall cornfield, holding a corn cob, and smiles at the camera.]

[Cut to a blurred field under a pink and blue sky. White text appears in the center of the screen.]

[Text on screen: Learn more about the On-Farm Climate Action Fund – agriculture.canada.ca/farm-climate-action-fund]

[Screen turns white. On-screen text appears next to a green and blue logo: Agrisolutions climat]

[Music fades out]

[Text on screen: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada – Agriculture et Agroalimentaire Canada]

[Government of Canada wordmark]

[End]