Happy Birthday CANZA

From droughts and extreme storms to increased pests and disease, intensifying climate change is threatening our food system. This is impacting everyone from farmers and families to businesses and governments. Together, we must improve the resilience of the agri-food system through decarbonization efforts to ensure Canadians have a secure food supply, farmers are profitable and productive, the entire value chain is competitive, and businesses and governments can achieve climate commitments. 

While vital work is being done in these areas, farmers currently bear the majority of the risk, responsibility, and cost of achieving a net-zero agri-food system. And there is a lack of coordinated action across the value chain in removing barriers and scaling solutions that makes it challenging to systemically share the risk and value of decarbonization. Fortunately, a group of stakeholders across the value chain identified the need for a coordinating body to harness industry-wide leadership and collaborative partnerships between farmers, governments, academia, and stakeholders across the value chain to drive Canada’s agri-food sector to net-zero by 2050. 

Thus, RBC, Loblaw, Maple Leaf Foods, Nutrien, McCain Foods, and BCG Centre for Canada’s Future partnered with Generate Canada (formerly The Natural Step Canada), the Smart Prosperity Institute, and the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute to form CANZA. (To hear more about the challenges CANZA is tackling, as well as hear from our founding partners and project collaborators on the potential that collaboration and innovation has to create a resilient, sustainable, competitive, and secure agri-food system, check out our launch day video).

And on October 10, 2023 – a year ago today – CANZA launched publicly. With a strategic focus on two areas – the Climate-Smart Farming Initiative (CSFI) and the National Biodigester Initiative (NBI) – we set off on our work to catalyze and accelerate collective action to adopt and scale solutions that will reduce and remove emissions. In honour of our first year in existence, we wanted to share (and celebrate) some of our key accomplishments!

A Year in Review

Almost immediately after our launch in autumn, we introduced CANZA on the international stage at COP28 and spoke about how CANZA will drive agricultural decarbonization in Canada, but also be a key contributor to international efforts. That same month, we released the ‘Framework for Buildng a Monitoring, Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) System for Soil Organic Carbon’ report under our Climate Smart Farming Initiative. The report provides an overview of CANZA’s approach to developing a MRV system, which is a key pillar to support farmers in adopting and scaling climate-smart farming practices. 

We started 2024 with a bang as Nick Betts took the helm as our Managing Director, joining Barb Swartzentruber, CANZA’s Strategic Advisor. And in the dreary month of March, we published the ‘Taking Action on Methane E-Book’ under our National Biodigester Initiative. The report explores the major environmental and economic opportunity biodigests offer farmers, their communities, and the country as a whole, as well as informs CANZA’s strategy in supporting farmers in implementing and scaling biodigester projects across the country.

We headed into spring with a warm welcome to Shelley Seed, who joined CANZA as the Senior Program Manager, as well as our Communications Specialist, Rebecca Babcock. We also finished the initial stage of our pilot project at Hebert Grain Ventures in Saskatchewan! With a goal of identifying a cost-efficient and easy-to-implement Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) framework for measuring soil carbon sequestration, our findings lay a strong foundation for scaling and developing future projects. 

As spring turned to summer, our team continued to grow, with Emma Ohirko joining the team as a Project Manager. CANZA supported the creation and launch of Generate Canada’s podcast: The Ag Podcast! This podcast explores the greatest challenges and opportunities facing farmers and their communities. (ICYMI: We now have four episodes out, with four more on the way). We also welcomed another member to our team, Priya Roy, who joined us as a Project Manager.

And with the return of bright autumn leaves, CANZA’s first year comes to an end. Upon reflection, it would appear our year was a true success! Our small but mighty team laid the foundation for CANZA’s work in the coming years, and set us up to continue driving meaningful work towards a net-zero agri-food future.