Agriculture has always played a large role in Canada’s geography and history and continues to influence the Canadian economy. It takes nearly 2.1 million Canadians – farmers, suppliers, processors, transporters, grocers and restaurant workers – to bring food to tables in Canada and around the world. In the last 25 years, the total number of farms in Canada decreased by 28% while the number of large farms (gross farm receipts over $250,000) increased threefold due to advances in technology and optimal production efficiencies.

Seeking Solutions through S&T

The National Agri-Environmental Standards Initiative (NAESI), a collaborative initiative from 2004–2009 between Environment Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, was established to gain a better understanding of relationships between agriculture and the environment and to develop a suite of science-based agri-environmental performance standards for water, air, biodiversity and pesticides.

NAESI developed two types of performance standards: Ideal Performance Standards (IPS) and Achievable Performance Standards (APS). An ideal standard can be thought of as a long-term goal describing the desired level of environmental quality. An achievable standard specifies the environmental quality achievable with currently available technology through application of beneficial management practices (BMPs) and/or alternative land management practices. 

Water quality

Research conducted under NAESI has helped develop national, non-regulatory water quality and quantity performance standards to guide agri-environmental decision making for agriculturally dominated watersheds. Environment Canada researchers and partners used several different methodologies to develop the standards, including evaluation of lethal and chronic effects caused by toxic stressors such as pesticides and nitrate; change in the abundance and composition of aquatic communities caused by stressors such as phosphorus, sediments and water withdrawal; E. coli benchmarks to identify low levels of waterborne pathogen occurrence; and modelling to simulate the effects of implementation of BMPs on water quality. 

Impact on decision making 

Water quality standards may have an important role in defining environmental outcomes for some watershed management programs, prioritizing BMP options, and setting risk thresholds.

Defining environmental outcomes
As an example, NAESI research identified standards for nitrogen, phosphorus and suspended sediments in streams to protect aquatic life. If these standards are achieved, then excessive algal growth and adverse effects caused by excessive sediments (for example, infilling of fish spawning beds and abrasion to fish and insects) should rarely be observed.

Prioritizing BMP options
Although BMPs bring about tangible benefits at the individual farm level, achieving any particular IPS or APS will require a collective approach to BMP within a particular geographic area: that is, all landowners within a watershed may need to work together to attain ideal water quality. NAESI research identified an approach to guide selection of the most effective type of BMP and/or its location, thereby helping tailor water programs. For example, research in the Raisin River watershed in Ontario showed that 30-metre riparian buffer strips would be required to meet the IPS for total suspended solids. If this option is viewed as impractical in the short term, NAESI presented an approach for determining APS that showed implementation of other BMPs could move the current situation toward the ideal situation (IPS), thereby reducing impacts to the environment.

Setting risk thresholds
The National Agri-Environmental Health Analysis and Reporting Program (NAHARP), led by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, uses science-based agri-environmental information at a national scale, along with Census of Agriculture data, to develop a series of agri-environmental indicators. The indicators are mostly risk-based and assess the environmental performance of the agriculture sector. NAESI results can be used to help define risk categories for many of the indicators.

Transforming Knowledge into Action

Who can use these results?

NAESI water standards can be used to support management decisions and actions that will help ensure the viability of Canadian agriculture and protect the environment. Three types of organizations or programs can benefit from their use, and some are already applying them.

• Watershed-based organizations or initiatives:
• Standards are being used as benchmarks to help inform various initiatives of watershed authorities such as LaSalle Redboine Conservation District, Manitoba; Raisin Region and Grand River Conservation Authorities, Ontario; and the Watershed Based (WEBs) program in Black Brook, New Brunswick.
• Provincial environment and agriculture departments working with local partners to establish environmental standards and environmental quality monitoring programs:
• NAESI standards are being used to inform the water quality monitoring and modelling program of the Lake Winnipeg Basin Initiative.
• Some Areas of Concern on the Great Lakes are considering the standards to refine criteria for delisting.
• Lake Erie’s Lakewide Management Plan is beginning to use NAESI results to inform and influence program actions related to nearshore water quality.
• Broader regional or national programs:
• NAESI data on benthic invertebrates will become part of the Environment Canada Canadian Aquatic Biomonitoring Network (CABIN) program’s database used to assess the biological health of freshwater in Canada.

Continued research is important and validation and refinement of the standards continues. Work is in progress to incorporate NAESI standards into NAHARP indicators and to examine the success of achieving the NAESI standards through BMP attainment. The work of identifying linkages and possible synergistic effects of multiple NAESI standards has begun and will help to determine which BMPs will be most efficient at achieving positive results.

Benefits to Canadians

Although only approximately 7% of Canada’s land area is used for farming, agricultural activity is found throughout virtually all of the settled Canadian landscape. NAESI’s contribution to a greater understanding of the interactions between agriculture and the environment provides a valuable foundation for further research and agri-environmental management.

In conjunction with information on the economic costs of changes to environmental quality, NAESI standards can help optimize or balance environmental and economic endpoints for a given range of land use scenarios. Overall, NAESI water standards have the potential to inform agri-environmental decision making, bringing environmental, economic and social benefits to Canadians. 

For more information:

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s NAESI website

S&T Liaison | Tel 905 315 5228 | Fax 905 336 4420 | www.ec.gc.ca/scitech/S&Tintoaction
© Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, represented by the Minister of Environment, 2010.