Down to earth
Federal government announces funding for Dal AC soil health program
The federal government is investing $1.7 million into a program through Dalhousie’s Faculty of Agriculture to help farmers grapple with soil health and its potential in mitigating climate change.
Bill Casey, MP for Cumberland-Colchester, was in Bible Hill Friday to announce the funding as part of a countrywide Agricultural Greenhouse Gases Program (AGGP).
The $27 million, five-year program started in 2016 and is intended to help the agricultural sector adjust to climate change and improve soil and water conservation by developing new farming practices and methods.
Associate professor Dr. Derek Lynch told Casey that soil is a big storer of greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.
“And so even a small adjustment in soil storage of carbon gas will go a long way to mitigate climate change,” said Lynch.
Drs. Lynch and David Burton of the Atlantic Soil Health Lab will be leading the research with help from graduate students.
The researchers will be working directly with the agricultural community to assess soil health, carbon storage capacity and soil nitrogen supply as a basis for greenhouse gas mitigation planning.
The four- to five-year project will involve visiting farms across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and P.E.I., testing soils and talking with farmers about the soil management practices they
are currently using.
Researchers will also be adapting existing models for testing soil and predicting soil storage capacity to the specific regional soil types here, as well as adapting software applications that farmers could use to plan their soil management.
“The idea is make the research and technology useful to farmers,” says Lynch.
Dr. David Gray, Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture, thanked Casey for the funding, saying it will go a long way to increase the resilience of Atlantic Canadian soils to climate change and extreme weather events.
“There isn’t another sector that impacts our lives both individually and collectively more than agriculture. It is our future.
It’s that simple,” said Gray. “The solutions to the challenges we are facing as a region, a nation and a global community are grounded in agriculture.”
Other partners on the project include Fertilizer Canada, Perennia, the P.E.I. Department of Agriculture and the Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island Federations of Agriculture.
Casey said the funding was a reflection of the work and proven track record of the Faculty of Agriculture.
“For decades, the Agricultural Campus has led the way in agricultural innovation and rural economic development,” said Casey. “Dalhousie’s Faculty of Agriculture continues its leadership in tackling climate change, and now with this investment
from our government into their valuable project, they will be able to do even more. This is good news for both farmers and the environment, which we all depend on to sustain our livelihoods.”
The AGGP is supporting 20 new projects across Canada from the University of British Columbia to collaborative research with conservation groups in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
CoveR photo By Jonathan Riley/ tRuRo Daily news
Graduate student Carolyn Mann shows Bill Casey, Member of Parliament for Cumberland-Colchester, a test for determining the amount of nitrogen in soil.