Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

In the ever-changing landscape of Canadian agriculture, efficiency is the new buzzword. If cattle feeding efficiency can be increased by about five per cent, Alberta livestock producers can save approx. $100 million a year, even if only one-third of them adopt those efficiency improvements. With about three billion people moving into the middle class in emerging economies like China and India, the demand for meat is likely to increase substantially over the next decades. Canada is one of five or six countries that have the ability to provide this food in a safe, affordable, nutritious, and environmentally sustainable manner. Canadian producers have always done quite well increasing efficiency in their production practices. From 1977 to 2007 for example, producing the same amount of beef required 70% of the animals, 81% of the feed, 88% of the water and 67% of the land. For those who want to count carbon, that resulted in a 16 per cent decrease in the carbon footprint of beef animals. Through genomics and “