Over the last few years, agricultural producers in British Columbia (BC) have experienced multiple climate anomalies that have had devastating impacts on their businesses. At the same time, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to increase globally, including within the agriculture sector in BC. Meeting GHG emission reduction targets designed to minimize the impacts of a rapidly destabilizing climate system will require commitments from all sectors of society. Agriculture in BC, while contributing a relatively minor proportion of the province’s emissions, has the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to emissions reductions through innovation and the adoption of new practices that offer multiple benefits for the climate and producers’ overall sustainability. Given that agriculture is already feeling the impacts of shifting weather patterns and is likely to remain one of the hardest-hit sectors, emissions reductions must be achieved without further strain. Instead, emissions reductions need to result in improved resiliency and, ideally, increased profit margins for the sector. This report provides foundational information and recommendations for a cross-commodity set of Beneficial Management Practices (BMPs) with the potential to reduce BC agriculture’s net GHG emissions while also improving farm resilience, profitability, and/or other aspects of environmental sustainability, and ideally all of these outcomes. This work was designed to assist the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Food (AF) in tailoring programming to support the adoption of evidence-based BMPs that are most likely to have the broadest positive impact. The specific objectives of this work were to: 1. Identify 30 BMPs with strong potential for GHG reduction in BC agriculture. 2. Quantitatively assess the GHG benefits and co-benefits of these BMPs. 3. Highlight data gaps and identify research priorities. Methodology and Results Starting with 183 BMPs, the list was narrowed to 30 prioritized BMPs using selection criteria, a systematic review of the scientific literature, and expert consultation. For each of these 30 prioritized BMPs, details were developed through further literature review to estimate their potential for GHG reductions and co-benefits in the context of BC’s agricultural systems.
Smukler et al. (Thu,) studied this question.