Feds’ Emissions Reductions Target Cannot Be Met Without Cutting Fertilizer Use, Impacting Crop Yields: Expert Panel

Feds’ Emissions Reductions Target Cannot Be Met Without Cutting Fertilizer Use, Impacting Crop Yields: Expert Panel
A farmer drives a wheat planting rig, with the Rocky Mountains as a backdrop, near Cremona, Alta., on May 6, 2022. The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh
|Updated:
0:00
Canadian farmers will have to drastically cut their fertilizer usage, thus impacting crop yields and threatening food security, in order to meet the government’s planned target of reducing fertilizer emissions by 30 percent below 2020 levels before the end of the decade, say agricultural experts.
Speaking at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s webinar ”More Food Or Less Fertilizer? Policy Pain in Canada’s Agriculture Sector,” Gunter Jochum, president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, said Canadian farmers have already nearly maximized their fertilizer efficiency.