Improving the health of agricultural rivers requires paying farmers for the services rendered to the environment by converting some of their intensive cultivation, experts believe.
These rivers are suffocated and filled with pesticides, as demonstrated by our file on the health of our rivers published these days.
“In watersheds where there is less than 30% natural vegetation, water quality is systematically degraded,” explains Stéphane Campeau, professor at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières and member of Rive, a research center on watershed-aquatic ecosystem interactions.
However, in the basins where corn and soy crops dominate, the natural vegetation is often reduced to 15% of the territory, adds the professor. In addition, these crops, which occupy half of all cultivated area in Quebec, require large quantities of pesticides. No wonder the worst rivers in Quebec are found in these basins.
“The kidneys for watersheds are natural vegetation,” says the professor. We may try to change fertilization or change practices… there is a limit to what we can do when a pond no longer has the necessary kidneys to filter everything we put in it, “continues Mr Campeau.
Replace corn and soy
“We have to find solutions that will be win-wins for everyone, and one of them is to reward agricultural producers for the services they provide to nature,” adds the professor. These services are, for example, using part of their field to plant trees and plants or other crops, rather than corn.
The Legault government’s 2020-2030 Sustainable Agriculture Plan, with a budget of $150 million, already includes certain financial incentives to encourage farmers to use fewer pesticides, plant cover crops, windbreak hedges and riparian strips.
- Listen to Annabelle Blais, journalist at Quebecor’s Bureau of Investigation, in which she talks about the lamentable state of our rivers via QUB-radio :
But compensation mechanisms can go even further.
“It could be interesting to make a less intensive culture in several places,” explains Raphaël Proulx, director of the Rive Research Center at UQTR.
“On sloping land, the edge of a watercourse, a farmer could plant grassland-type crops,” he illustrates.
Carbon credits
In exchange, as this new crop is less profitable, the farmer is rewarded with carbon credits.
“If with the new crop, he has lost 50% of his profit margins compared to what he would have with corn, it can be partly offset by the sale of carbon credits, explains Mr. Proulx.
“We have to pay them for ecosystem services as if it were corn, but instead, it will be hybrid poplar or other species that will sequester carbon,” illustrates Mr. Campeau.
The farmer can therefore continue his trade, receive equivalent income, or almost, and achieve great environmental benefits, because in addition to storing C02 and combat climate change, it also improves water quality and creates wildlife corridors.
No violation has been observed within 250m around this establishment
* 1st quarter of 2023 only
250m perimeter
Statements of offense“Our only chance is to make a turn and say to producers: “We will pay you for the ecosystem services that you provide and that will compensate for the loss of yield”, adds Mr. Campeau. It’s going to be difficult to improve the situation without going through this. […]. If we don’t succeed in bringing back the natural vegetation along the watercourses, we will not succeed in having healthy watercourses; there is a limit that we have exceeded.