Farm-Scape, Episode 2158

The Canadian Pork Council is planning a test, beginning this summer, of the greenhouse gas quantification protocol being developed for the pork industry. The greenhouse gas quantification protocol is a package of formulas designed to calculate greenhouse gas offsets generated by hog farms in Canada resulting from the introduction of environmentally friendly agricultural practices.

The tool has been under development since early 2004 and is just about ready for widespread introduction. The test will involve about fourty farms across Canada encompassing a wide array of production systems.

Canadian Pork Council environmental programs coordinator Cedric MacLeod says each operation's production records will be examined to determine its 2000 emissions baseline which will be compared to its current emissions, taking into account changes in equipment and management, to determine its emission reductions. What this will do is, we'll finally be able to go in with a protocol with some calculations that are recognized by the government of Canada that will give us a hard and fast number on the level of emissions reductions that we are able to achieve from the pork sector. What this allows us to do is to, with some confidence, go out into the carbon market and offer carbon for sale into that market.

Up to this point, without the protocol, we've certainly put some effort into doing some quantification and calculations on a number of practices but they've all been somewhat disjoint. The protocol allows us to bring all of those practices together and analyze the entire farm as a unit and any management practice changes that have been put into place there, the quantification protocol will recognize that and so when we get done with the protocol we're going to have that hard and fast number.

MacLeod says the test run will begin in August-September and is scheduled to run for one year.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.