Classifieds

Message Board

Weather

Public Notices

Outdoor Corner: Carbon capture and trees – USA and Canada contrasted

Gene Plihal
for Smoky River Express

In recent weeks my interest in the new carbon capture regimen piqued my desire to “look into it.”

After extended phone conversations with Alberta government officials, the bottom line, as it stands, is that there is no incentive whatsoever, financially, to keep trees that are already existent on farms under the new Carbon Offset Market program.

Indeed, one official told me, “Unless it is a newly planted shelterbelt or forest, no carbon credits could be realized.” In other words, if you own a couple hundred acres of bush, the present program offers no financial remuneration.

Why? I didn’t scream it, but felt like it. Because, I am told, present growths of trees on privately owned land also have deadfall which releases carbon instead of capturing it, and since trees are already in place, it would be difficult to measure old trees and ascertain what growth, and therefore carbon capture, occurs.

So, the bottom line is this. If you own several hundred or thousand acres of trees on your land, you could leave it stand or, with the present price of cleared land, in excess of $1,200 an acre in most of the Smoky River area, much more the farther south you travel, you could clear the whole works, pile it, burn it and release the thousands of tonnes of carbon held in the trees and it’s of no concern to this program. What? What is this nonsense? No credit to farmers for existing trees but no penalty, in fact significant financial reward, for clearing and burning trees! It’s hard to believe or fathom.

After listening to several vocal, local neighbours who also have significant timber stands, miraculously, still on their land, I too begin to wonder, what policy would allow the exacerbation of the carbon problem (piling and burning), and not reward a farmer who keeps trees on his land? Call it lunacy, I don’t know. So, the political pressure to pay farmers to keep old growth trees on their land is starting to mount.

Meanwhile, what is happening in the U.S. with trees on farm land? Quite to the contrary, this country is going full speed ahead with incentives to farmers to replant trees or keep the old growth in place. Evidence?

On my family’s homestead in South Dakota, I planted 5.2 acres of trees on prime farm land at government’s expense, $11,402 US (for blankets, soil preparation, seedlings, mostly cedar and berry trees with a sprinkling of cottonwood, pine and poplar.) Additionally, the CRP (Conservation Resource Program) in the U.S. pays the farmer an annual rental based on land value ranging from $80 – $200 per acre to keep the land in trees. And old growth trees can be qualified under the same program. The only condition? Those 5.2 acres can’t be farmed. No, the berries can’t be picked and the trees can’t be cut down for firewood.

In 1996, I learned a hard lesson on this U.S. land that perhaps we should learn here as well. As a result of too little cover for the land, a good share of the country in which this land is found (Bon Homme) was subjected to a horrible wind storm which resulted in some wind erosion. Hundreds of farms were affected. Fine top soil ended up in the ditch which county officials promptly scaped out of public ditches and reinstated on the land at land owner’s expense. Believe me, subsequent to this penalty, many farmers started planting trees, moving to zero till with strip farming, or went to leaving more corn stubble which was previously disced down each year.

The lesson for us is what government policy exists concerning erosion in ditches here? Do we simply turn a blind eye and let taxpayers pick up the tab on ditch clearing of soil after major flooding and erosion occurs? Something to think about? And taxes on land are too high already, some will say? I pay property taxes of farm land in both the U.S. and Canada and comparably cleared land runs about eight times as high per acre for property tax and yet there is no reluctance whatsoever on the part of county officials there to impose stiff penalties, fines and costs on a land owner allowing his land to erode.

Land erosion, carbon release problems and land desecration are all interrelated. Unless the government starts valuing conservation and decent land husbandry, the present practice of clearing into the horizon with the accompanying incendiary fall rituals will continue. Land values are too high o keep trees on them you say? In the U.S. land values for farm land are too high not to keep trees on them. That’s official government policy and in a country which was mocking our medical system as too socialistic for adoption, it’s ironic how the U.S. Government has stepped in to either dictate control of soil erosion or has encouraged tree planting. We could learn something about tree conservation from them as they apparently have learned something about government health from us.

It’s unfortunate that disasters in health care provision or to the environment are necessary before governments take action.

Express editor Emily Plihal stands, before her maternal great, great grandmother’s homestead, in front of a newly constructed fence. The background in intensely farmed land, shows shelterbelts and tree stands in abundance, along with newly planted tree stands barely visible, a trend which is taking hold in many parts of the U.S. With the financial encouragement from the government to farmers.