Ottawa—The Sustainable Canadian Agriculture Partnership (SCAP) struck by the federal and provincial agriculture ministers last month needs to be tracked closely until all the details are worked out, says Brendan Byrne, Chair of Grain Farmers of Ontario.While the five-year agreement, due to start at the end of March, provides a framework for funding farm programs, it appears to lack a badly-needed balance between producing food and protecting the environment, Byrne said.“Ontario grain farming has always struck a delicate balance between providing the most food we can for the world and having minimal impact on the earth itself in order to ensure future generations will be able to produce food.”The communications from governments about SCAP don't reflect how the world has changed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he said. Farmers face a new set of realities and GFO is “concerned that there is no priority on helping to mitigate global food shortages.”Governments need to ensure that “farm productivity and competitiveness are part of every decision as the final agreement is struck.” As well, lower fertilizer emission targets should not result in reduced food production and higher costs to farmers, he said.GFO also wants an impact assessment of adopting cross compliance with any of the Business Risk Management programs in SCAP. “Environmental objectives need to be funded separately to ensure that the primary objective to grow abundant and healthy food on farms is not short-changed.”As well, there should be increased funding to the Ontario Risk Management Program so that grain farmers have the security they need to invest in their farms when the cost of production increases beyond the commodity price, Byrne said. “This is essential as the changes announced to AgriStability do not provide any insurance for grain farmers.”Ontario grain farmers have worked consistently on ways to improve their environmental impacts including, reduced tillage, cover cropping, and adopting new technology. During the last 30 years, they have reduced the climate impact of corn production by 45 per cent and wheat production by 36 per cent. They have increased land use efficiency in corn production by 39 per cent and by 37 per cent in wheat production. They have reduced energy use by 43 per cent in corn production and 37 per cent in wheat production.“Agriculture productivity and competitiveness have become more important than ever as global food shortages are worsening, and geopolitical events are impacting the world's agriculture market,” he said. “Canada's farmers have a role to play in helping feed people around the world and Canadians.”