Canada’s energy transition a challenge for farmers: CFA

The president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture says he worries what the energy transition means for his 190,000 members who rely on diesel to fuel tractors and who are often without access to natural gas to heat livestock barns and power grain dryers.

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Keith Currie, president of the national farm organization, spoke in Point Edward Thursday as guest speaker at the annual meeting of the Sarnia-Lambton Economic Partnership about the outlook for energy and agriculture.

“Natural gas is something that is really key to agriculture,” but farm access to the energy source’s distribution systems is limited, he said.

Farmers “don’t have a lot of options” when it comes to energy sources so “getting natural gas expansion through rural Canada, in particular, is very important to us,” he said.

It could help promote economic development in rural communities, as well as improve food security, an issue more people became aware of during the pandemic, Currie said.

“We didn’t see empty shelves, but we saw the product we always bought maybe not there,” he said. “Maybe we had to buy a different brand, Maybe, we had to wait a couple of weeks to get something.”

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For farmers, “food security starts with economic development and a good energy plan right across the country,” Currie said.

As Canada moves in the direction of electrically powered vehicles, the county’s aging and limited electricity grid is a concern, he said.

“How do we make that system supply electrified vehicles effectively?”

Currie believes agriculture is “at least a generation away” from having access to effective electric farm vehicles.

Challenges include the horse power required and the need for farmers to work in fields around the clock at times and refuel quickly, he said.

“When I go, I go 24 hours a day,” he said. “Can an electrified vehicle actually do that.”

It’s something politicians didn’t appear to be thinking about when they set policies aimed at ending the sale of diesel and gasoline-powered vehicles in the coming years, Currie said.

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Farms also need sources of energy to heat livestock buildings during cold months, as well as dry grain, and natural gas is the most effective choice but access varies across Canada with farms near urban areas having some access, and many areas without it, he said.

Currie said his experience in Simcoe County is that there’s a natural gas line “two concessions away” but he was told he would have to pay $10 million to connect it to his farm.

There are alternatives to connecting each farm property, including creating condensed natural gas “hubs” able to deliver the fuel to farms much like propane is delivered now, he said.

“The energy sector has really been demonized,” Currie said. “But natural gas is one of those fuels that shouldn’t necessarily be lumped in the same category as oil.”

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“Natural gas, if we actually get the infrastructure in place in Canada to supply it, is really the near, and maybe the long-term, opportunity for us,” he said.

Access to natural gas distribution systems could also allow expansion of renewable sources of the fuel made from farm byproducts or methane from landfills in rural communities, he said.

Hydrogen, an emerging energy sector the economic partnership is focused on, is another option that “could be that intermediate step between what we have now in combustible energy and what we are going to have in electrification,” of farm vehicles in the future, Currie said.

“These are things that really require a good hard, long look” but “not a lot of governments are.”

Because of that, farm organizations have to continue talking to legislators about the need to “walk before we run” during the energy transformation, Currie said.

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