Provincial Funding Supports Manitoba Waste Reduction And Recycling

Sep 28, 2021

The Manitoba government is providing $8.7 million to municipalities, companies and organizations for waste reduction and recycling support (WRARS).

“This financial support from our government helps keep organic waste out of Manitoba landfills through composting initiatives that play a key role in our recycling and waste diversion programming,” said Conservation and Climate Minister Sarah Guillemard. “By reducing organic waste in landfills, we prolong their lifespans, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and produce a valuable soil amendment that contributes to the circular economy.”

The funding, announced by the minister at the Overton Environmental Enterprises Inc. compost facility in Portage la Prairie includes:
- $50,000 to increase education and communication with stakeholders around recycling priorities;
- $6,977,600 to support recycling rebates in municipalities and Indigenous and northern communities that operate WRARS-registered landfills and/or have a contract with a WRARS registered landfill for disposal of municipal solid waste;
- $800,000 to support residential hazardous waste management; and
- $894,000 in Manitoba compost support payments to participating compost facilities.

The Department of Conservation and Climate’s Manitoba compost support payments fund private and public compost facilities that produce large volumes of high-quality compost.

“The program is unique in Canada for its focus on producing really good compost,” said Susan Antler, executive director, Compost Council of Canada. “High-quality compost feeds the soil, which in turn boosts soil health, supports plant vitality and nutritional value, and stores carbon and increased moisture. Manitoba’s program goes well beyond waste management by encouraging and supporting the production of a high-value product that can help fight climate change.”

Ten facilities registered in the compost program processed more than 80,000 tonnes of organic waste in 2020. This is the equivalent of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 93,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

“Organic waste comprises up to 40 per cent of the material disposed of in landfills and represents the largest opportunity to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from waste going to landfills,” said Guillemard. “This year, we are pleased to see the program reach a new high in waste diversion with the establishment of Overton Environmental’s compost facility in Portage la Prairie.”

Overton Environmental opened its compost facility in April 2020 and has a unique partnership with a J.R. Simplot potato processing plant directly across the road.

“Support payments from the province help us with some of our biggest challenges,” said Dale Overton, chief executive officer, Overton Environmental. “As a small company, we took a huge risk in establishing a large compost facility. We are thrilled to be having early success with our operation and knowing we have support from the province makes a huge difference.”

Overton Environmental has processed an estimated 120,000 tonnes of organic waste from the Simplot plant and other sources over the past 17 months.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”