Local farmer worries about the impact of climate change on future crops: Andrew Coppolino

As I pick up a clod of earth still moist from the morning dew, vegetable farmer Jenn Pfenning says the soil is just one element of our ecosystem that is under environmental pressure that it has never experienced before.

"We're losing soil through various types of farming practices that degrades it. And as temperatures increase and we have fewer cloudy days, the sun can harm the organic matter. We work really hard to build the soil's organic matter in our fields because that is what enables crops to grow," says Pfenning of the microorganisms that cycle nutrients in order to create the web that roots need to grow a plant.

"Science tells us that there's a whole microbiome that is a living, breathing world under our feet. It's just like we understand the microbiome in the human gut. If we lose our soil's organic matter, we lose the ability to grow crops that we eat. That's being lost around the world and being washed away, blown away and burned away."

There are fears, she says, the science community tells us that in the next several decades, farmers around the planet will lose enough arable soil to grow food. What, she asks, are we going to eat then?

Family-operated since 1981, Pfenning's Organic Farm feeds a lot of people from their 700 acres of organically-grown crops tended by 150 employees who play roles planting, growing, harvesting, washing and packing a wide variety of vegetables.

Look in virtually any direction at the New Hamburg farm, and you'll see kale, rutabagas, collards, lettuces, onions, green onions, carrots, parsnips and more.

The various buildings teem with activity mid-week. There's a carrot-washing station ready to package the harvest that's coming soon, and – after a snack and coffee break that includes munching on southeast Asian paratha made by a crew leader's mother – a number of teams are working in the fields.

At one station where freshly harvested green onions are being sorted, washed, packaged and boxed for shipment by a half-dozen workers. The grassy, oniony, peppery aroma is pungent and marvellous.

In an adjacent field, as machinery moves down the rows of spinach with eight workers harvesting the crop in mid-September, Pfenning says much has changed on the land and that it is an indication, a bellwether, of something awry.

"We now plant spinach that we intend to harvest well into November, and it even over-winters when we plant it at a specific time in order to have a spring harvest. Spinach that's grown in the field over the winter. In Ontario."

Climate change is changing the way they farm

Pfenning says it "blows my mind," before citing the reason: climate change, words well-known to everyone.

While people think of fall crops – the brassicas – like cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale and kohlrabi as hearty plants that survive a frost well, and taste even better because of it, they may not realize that farmers haven't experienced the deep September frosts that were once the norm, according to Pfenning.

Calling it "like clockwork," Pfenning says they didn't use to plant various leafy greens expecting to harvest it past September, adding that wasn't the way 30 years ago or even 20 years ago.

Climate change, she stresses, is here and now, but it's not the only factor exerting pressure on farming. More direct mechanical human intervention like wetlands destruction – to cite the threat to the Greenbelt, as an example, in southern Ontario – has a significant impact too.

Bill 23, now known as the "More Homes Built Faster Act," evaluated wetlands individually rather than as a collective group thus preventing the chance they could be given protected status: it is more difficult to evaluate small, individual wetlands for biodiversity, at-risk species, water quality-protection and flood prevention, notes Pfenning.

As we stand next to a pond of water in a swale in the Nith River floodplain, Pfenning uses it as an example that while bulldozing trees is one thing, destroying wetlands and draining swamps is likely a worse contributor to releasing carbon into the atmosphere.

"There's an argument to be made that wetlands are in fact more important as carbon sinks than forests. When trees are cut down or burn, the carbon they have been sequestering is released. With a swamp, bog or wetland, the carbon is layered and stays there a lot longer and until something happens to disturb it," Pfenning says.

The strategy Pfenning would like to see is protecting and returning these types of features – forests, hedgerows, wetlands, swamps and bogs – to the environment, rather than removing wetlands protection policies.

"We're exponentially speeding up what's already happening," she says.

Despite the soil degradation and climate change, I get a sense that the phrase "keep calm and carry on" seems to be the byword at the farm amid the changes happening around it.

Every day, Pfenning looks out to the hectares of rolling hills in a multi-coloured quilt of lush crops and hedgerows; further out, there's a corner where a beekeeper from Nith Valley Apiaries is tending hives that have been there for decades.

And there's an Indigenous garden project underway with its towering sunflowers bowing their heavy heads alongside runner beans and sage bushes.

Looking out at the display of colourful fields ready for harvest, she says these elements inspire her and capture what it is for her to be a farmer.

They are the results of the camaraderie and hard work that keep Pfenning and her teams motivated – and adapting to the changing environment along with the knowledge that farmers feed people healthy, nutritious food.

"If we can plant a seed and grow a crop and feed people, there is hope that comes with that every year," she said.

"If we can grow food in a way that doesn't harm the environment or that contributes positively to the environment, then maybe we're doing something that can make a difference in the future."