Livestock methane reduction offers a compelling opportunity for Alberta leadership in sustainablity and productivity

On 2024-09-18, The Simpson Centre released the policy paper (the paper) “Navigating Climate Change: Alberta’s Carbon Program for Sustainable Agriculture”.

The paper provides accurate, complete, and current documentation of the topic.

But Flokk completely disagrees with the recommendations offered.

There is no need for, nor any value in, more research for solution discovery, or years in delay and millions in costs resurrecting obsolete bureaucracy.

The in-progress Government of Canada “Agricultural Methane Reduction Challenge” (either overlooked, or intentionally omitted, from the paper) provides $12M funding for discovery of livestock methane reduction solutions. The papers recommendation for further research for solution discovery, a recommendation Flokk does not support, is regardless already addressed and requires no further investment.

The unaddressed challenge, and opportunity, in the space is applied research in support of solution commercialization and adoption, and investment to commercialize rancher and feeder focused solutions that facilitate their practical and affordable participation in offset markets.

Alberta has the progressive livestock producers, innovative companies, emission offset market, enabling institutions, and industry leadership in place and executing that would enable Alberta to both prosper and reduce GHG emissions by being the leader in sale of high quality emission offset credits for livestock emission reduction.

What Alberta requires to seize this opportunity is coordinating leadership, and reallocation of existing resources, to mobilize a collaborative program (the program) with the objective of realizing broad application of current, and emerging, livestock GHG reduction solutions.

It is very unlikely that Canadian retail carbon pricing will be sustained. Going forward Alberta’s industrial emission offset market will be core to demonstrating the proof of GHG reduction necessary for Canada to retain access to export markets. We can have confidence there will be robust and sustained demand for the offset credits offered as a result of this program.

This program would rapidly and affordably deliver:

• impeccable GHG offsets that economically deliver significant, provable, and sustainable GHG reductions without compromising consumer (or voter) experience
• significant new revenue to Alberta’s 19,000 cattle ranching and feeding families
• Alberta companies holding overwhelming advantage addressing urgent demand from global markets because they, uniquely, can offer solutions proven in field, at market, and at scale, in Alberta

Alberta is uniquely positioned globally to execute this program because:

• Alberta institutions Results Driven Agriculture Research, Emissions Reduction Alberta, Olds College of Agriculture & Technology, and Lakeland College offer the capacity to rigorously, and independently, validate solution efficacy and administration practices.
• Industry leadership such as Canadian Cattle Association, Alberta Beef Producers, and Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef are headquartered in Alberta.
• Alberta has its own emissions market in TIER, providing a venue to experiment in, prove at scale, and globally market, the necessary offset sale, proof of emission reduction, and remittance protocols
• Alberta is headquarters to major companies that currently, and in future will increasingly, seek high quality emission offsets, providing opportunities for collaborative customer discovery and market validation unavailable to other jurisdictions

What is required for Alberta to seize the opportunity is:

• applied research that delivers consistent, authoritative, and independent confirmation of primary and ancillary impacts of livestock GHG reduction solutions and the associated administration practices and proof of administration protocols
• aggressive capital seeking to drive commercialization of emission reduction, and proof of impact, solutions in, and to, Alberta
• a collaborative initiative to design, implement, and take to market tools for producers (i.e. cow/calf ranchers and feed lot operators) to participate in emission offset markets, provide proof of mitigation application, and receive incentive remittance.

Livestock GHG reductions will never be realized with the current top down, outside in, approach where solutions are endlessly discussed at conferences and explored in academia but remain irrelevant to ranchers and feeders.

Securing significant livestock emission reduction requires a bottom up approach where the fiscal, labour, operating environment, and infrastructure constraints of livestock producers are considered first, then solutions selected and driven to market that provide compelling value propositions.

Flokk is uniquely positioned to facilitate the required producer engagement, and deliver the necessary producer focused digital platforms and tools, required to deliver this program.

Flokk is keen to engage with others that share this vision, and is actively pursing engagement with industry leaders and stakeholders.