The question of who should pay for farmers who maintain natural waterways and treed areas has been one asked for a number of years.
There is a recognition that in many areas of Canada, and in particular on the Canadian Prairies, farmers own a lot of the remaining natural sloughs, potholes, tree bluffs and riparian areas.
With today’s equipment, the potential to drain wetlands, tear up trees and one day plant those areas to crop is increasingly possible.
While the claim areas might never be high-producing acres, having them gone from the landscape does allow farmers easier use of modern, large scale equipment.
In that respect, farmers gain convenience and farmland acres by draining sloughs or cutting down a bluff.
But there is a cost in terms of nature every time that happens.
Deer use bluffs as cover.
Ducks need sloughs as nesting habitat.
Foxes and racoons look to duck eggs as a food source.
And the intricate web of an ecosystem spreads on from there.
There is a fairly general understanding that the public would like to see natural habitats and wildlife protected.
The sloughs, potholes and riparian areas also play a role in the filtering of run-off water, and exist as holding places to mitigate high rainfall events.
If the on-field holding capacity is lost, the water rushes further down the system, creating a greater chance of flooding and damage.
So there are good reasons for the greater good to retain natural waters and woods.
But, if it’s for the greater good, should farmers alone bear the costs?
One much talked about solution is what is known as Alternative Land Use Service (ALUS), a program whereby public coffers would compensate farmers for doing things which help retain or redevelop natural systems.
While some individual municipalities across Canada have ALUS projects, larger-scale programs are just beginning to emerge.
Prince Edward Island has the only province-wide ALUS program at present, and it is, of course, Canada’s smallest province, with some 620,000 acres of farmland.
A much larger-scale program is now being discussed by the Progressive Conservative government in Manitoba, which has committed to a province-wide ALUS type program.
Under the program, landowners would be paid to retain or re-construct natural areas such as wetlands and grasslands. The payments compensate landowners for critical ecosystem services, such as wildlife habitat, and flood mitigation, among other possible program triggers.
The program has not had an official price tag attached to it, but it is expected to be significant. PEI invests about $1 million in its program, and Manitoba has more than 19 million acres of farmland, so the math is rather obvious.
The question is whether a public which wants nature preserved will accept their tax dollars going towards compensating farmers to ensure that happens.
Clearly the benefits of retention of natural ecosystems extend to a broader society than the individual farmer, so a program such as ALUS is a step toward fairness in terms of costs. But the politics of where tax dollars go may also become an overriding factor. The Manitoba process will be interesting to watch from that perspective.
