Profitability of soil and water conservation in Canada: A review

ABSTRACT:

Canada has had a short lived and low key experience with agricultural activity related resource degradation problems because its agricultural production potential began to be realized only during the last 100 years or so. The problems are nevertheless critical, given the small landbase suitable for agriculture and a precarious climate (Dumanski et al.). The bastion of Canadian agriculture in the prairies was opened to farming only early in the 20th century, but severe drought in the 1930s combined with farming activities to produc extensive erosion problems. More moderate climatic conditions and modified farming practices lessened degradation problems until the reemergence of severe drought conditions in the 1980s. Heightened concerns about degradation are associated with organic matter depletion, wind and water borne erosion, and rising salinity resulting primarily from summer fallowing practices (Cann et al.; Rennie), but also from increasing cultivation of marginal lands, largely instigated by government support programs (Van Kooten and Kennedy). Elsewhere in western Canada, degradation problems are associated with surfeits of livestock manures in southwestern British Columbia, pesticide residues from intensive fruit farming in the Okanagan Valley, and aquaculture wastes in coastal water bodies (Van Kooten and Kennedy).