Ontario environment commissioner wants phosphorus strategy

by SUSAN MANN

Ontario needs a phosphorus strategy that encourages farmers to focus on the four Rs of the crop nutrient – reduce, retain, recycle and replace, says Ontario Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller.

The province needs a phosphorus strategy because “if you lose phosphorus from land it has severe environmental consequences.” Moreover, the supply of phosphorus is limited and it “is becoming more expensive and hard to get all the time.”

Miller made the comments in connection with the release of his 2012/13 annual report in Toronto on Thursday. The strategy was a suggestion and does not form one of the 189-page report’s seven recommendations.

The strategy should involve efforts to retain more phosphorus and reduce the need to add the crop nutrient, he says. He also calls for measures being conducted in a specific sequence:

1. Farmers should initially reduce their need to add phosphorus and then retain as much as they can;
2. The nutrient should be recycled from whatever on- or off-farm sources are available, such as compost;
3. Once those steps have been completed farmers could consider applying commercial phosphorus, if needed.

The phosphorus management hierarchy of the four Rs should be incorporated into all of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food’s policies, programs, research and extension activities, he says. And the ministry should bring in the strategy, which Miller says is a different way of thinking about phosphorus rather than a set of regulations.

Mark Cripps, communications director with the Ontario agriculture ministry, says by email the ministry is pouring over the report and it’s too early to say what policies, programs, research and extension activities might happen.

The ministry continues to work with the federal government and the Ontario Environment Ministry on phosphorus management to address water quality problems.

Eastern Ontario cash crop farmer Shawn McRae says the approach of changing farmers’ thinking about phosphorus would work for him. In the 1980s many farmers became frustrated with their soil eroding “so they looked for alternatives to tillage, which gave rise to no-till, reduced tillage and conservation tillage.”

Miller says in his report Ontario made significant progress in reducing phosphorus pollution in the 1970s and 1980s but ongoing water quality problems in the province clearly demonstrate the problem of phosphorus loading in waterways hasn’t been permanently resolved.

McRae says the clean up evolved from farmers not wanting to see their land “bleeding,” rather than them being told they must change their practices. McRae has an 800-acre farm near the Quebec border where he uses a no-till system and pays attention to soil health.

“If we have more biologically active soil, which means we adopt no-till systems, and we work with them for a longer period of time we increase the biological activity,” he says. The net result is reduced reliance on fertilizer to provide phosphorus.
 
But farmers need the freedom to work out their own management systems that suit their operations in conjunction with continued access to good scientific advice, he says. “We need that liberty in the equation. Self-directed ownership works, you just have to let it work.”

Miller says the phosphorus strategy would be similar to the province’s long-standing waste management strategy that promotes three Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle. Over the years, the strategy has transformed how people treat their waste and garnered strong public support, he says.

“Nobody went out and told them they had to do this.” Nor did the strategy have to be enforced, he says. “People just started doing this.”

Continuing with traditional land management techniques leads to a high loss in phosphorus, and farmers will have to keep adding it to their soil, he says. A much better option is to start developing techniques and technology “that allows you to retain and recycle the phosphorus and lower your inputs in advance of it getting much more expensive.”

Miller notes that phosphorus deposits are being depleted. Farmers mainly get their phosphorus from the phosphate rock in Florida and “it will run out. Then we’ll have to go over to Africa to get it but obviously that’s more costly.”

Healthy, living ecosystems retain their nutrients. If an ecosystem is losing its nutrients, that means “it has been damaged or is somehow under stress or harm,” he says. “You have to look at that soil as a living ecosystem and the healthier it is the more it retains and internally recycles its own phosphorus so you lose less and you have to add less.” BF