What a farmer from Nova Scotia hopes to accomplish at UN's climate summit

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A small-scale vegetable farmer in Lunenburg County will be attending the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, or COP26, in Scotland next week.

The Conference of Parties, as it's known, meets every year and is the global decision-making body set up in the early 1990s to implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and subsequent climate agreements.

This year, the international climate summit will bring together more than 100 world leaders and thousands of delegates, as countries report on their progress toward reducing emissions and addressing climate change.

Jessie MacInnis will be there to represent the National Farmers Union on Sunday. She spoke with Preston Mulligan, guest host of CBC Radio's Information Morning, on Friday about the conference and what she hopes to accomplish there.

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This discussion has been edited for length and clarity.

Why do you want to attend this conference? 

As a farmer working with the land on a daily basis, I know that myself and my peers are really on the front lines of the climate crisis — seeing and feeling the changes in weather patterns like the drought-like conditions, the pest pressure, the increasing prevalence of wildfires. It's really a cause for emergency. 

The reason I am going is really to raise awareness for farmers across Canada that we're among the most directly impacted by climate change and in doing that also acknowledging the struggles that Indigenous peoples are facing. We obviously can't conflate our struggles to theirs but in the National Farmers Union, we're working in solidarity to uplift their rights as well.

What kind of influence do you think you'll have on policy there? 

Our hope is to raise awareness to all of our fellow Canadians regarding the impact that agriculture actually has on the climate crisis in Canada. What we're hoping to get out of this is to raise the alarm on that front and also demand emissions cuts across the board, but specifically emissions reduction in agriculture, because really our farmers are depending on it.

We also need better resources to educate ourselves and our peers about alternative agriculture systems like agro-ecology so that we can continue to carry on our own adaptation and mitigation strategies that a lot of farmers already have in place but we need the support to do so. 

You want to draw attention to what we often hear referred to as factory farms. What do people need to know and what do these operations need to do in order to change? 

Agriculture emissions have actually been on the increase since the 1990s, and what we really need to see change is support from the government to cut farm fuels, chemicals, fertilizers [and] plastics. 

We need to refocus agriculture policy away from the maximum export, maximum production-style system, toward sustainability, resilience, a human-rights framework, higher net incomes for farmers and getting more farmers, not fewer on the land.

Something that we see with these massive-scale farms is that the consolidation of land is really one of the biggest crises that farmers are facing and getting more folks on the land and folks who know how to farm in agro-ecological and sustainable ways — that's really one of the biggest ways that we can mitigate the climate crisis on an agriculture front. 

Do you think there should be fewer beef cattle and more emphasis made on plant-based protein? 

No, I wouldn't say that. In fact, I personally know a lot of cattle farmers who are doing really incredible rotational grazing practices that actually build the soil carbon and really maintain healthy ecosystems where they are so no, I definitely wouldn't say that. 

What are the day-to-day effects of climate change on your own farm? 

Something I noticed this year is the increase of pest prevalence. When the winters start to get warmer and warmer, that means that more pests are able to overwinter in the soil and that means next year we have more new friendly little critters that are just waiting to attack our broccoli or what have you.

Something that's been an issue over the last couple of years — I only started farming about seven years ago — is the increasing prevalence of drought-like conditions in Nova Scotia, but from my peers across the country, it's obviously a huge issue, especially in the prairies. [We're] always thinking about our water source.

These kinds of issues and questions are coming up more often for us. 

Are you concerned about heading to Glasgow for an international conference in the middle of a pandemic? 

Of course, we're concerned. We didn't take this decision lightly but we also know that it was important for us to build solidarity with other farmers who are able to attend and really stress the importance of multilateralism in UN spaces. 

The UN has really been co-opted by multi-stakeholderism, which is essentially giving corporate players the same stake at the table as civil society and representatives from organizations. We really felt it was important to share our stories, what's happening on the lands and to bring this message home when we return.

What's your greatest wish for what could come of this conference?

My hope is that governments can begin to see through some of these false solutions or the greenwashed corporate solutions, and hear from grassroots voices, including myself and other farmers, about real actionable solutions to the climate crisis.

That's something that I'm looking forward to the most about being there [is] seeing the alternative people-based solutions in action and seeing their commitment pushing onward.