Alberta
Canada can play a big role in addressing growing food insecurity, Nutrien CEO says
TORONTO — Canada is poised to play a big role in global food production as climate change makes farming more difficult and the world’s food supply chain is rendered fragile by political and economic uncertainty, said Nutrien CEO Ken Seitz.
Seitz made the remarks in Toronto at an event hosted by the Economic Club of Canada.
He said climate change is redrawing the map of global food production and Canada has an opportunity to be a key player in addressing food insecurity.
The world faces a double-barrelled problem, said Seitz: “To feed a rapidly growing world, we’ll need to produce more food and we’ll need to do it sustainably.”
Nutrien is the world’s third-largest producer of nitrogen and the largest producer of potash, two key ingredients in commercial fertilizer.
The Saskatoon-based potash and fertilizer company has six potash mines in Saskatchewan with more than 20 million tonnes of capacity, as well as two large phosphate mines in the U.S.
In Canada and across the world, climate change is making farming, already an unpredictable business, even more volatile, Seitz said.
“Here at home in Canada, growers are experiencing wetter springs, hotter and drier summers, all of which constrains our irrigation and water and all those resources that we need to manage,” he said.
Seitz said farmers need support in the form of incentives so they can adopt technology and new practices in order to farm more sustainably. Risk is a major barrier for farmers, he said, who are dealing with increasing uncertainty and managing slim margins.
Seitz said he believes carbon capture is a key part of the climate solution.
In 2021, Nutrien began piloting a new project aimed at helping farmers reduce greenhouse gas emissions, trap and store carbon, and measure improvements as well as facilitating the purchase and sale of carbon credits.
The pilot program is currently working on 750,000 acres across North America, Seitz said Wednesday.
The past year has been a tumultuous one for the agriculture business, and Nutrien has not been immune to the ups and downs.
Demand increased for Nutrien’s potash earlier in 2022 as a result of the war in Ukraine. Because of that boost, in March the company said it would ramp up production to meet the demand, with most of that additional volume expected to be produced in the second half of the year.
That ramp-up would mean more capital spending and more hiring at Nutrien’s Saskatchewan potash mines, the company said in May. However, as Nutrien saw sales slump in the latter half of its financial year, in February it announced it would delay increasing production.
Despite this, Nutrien’s earnings in 2022 doubled, which the company attributed mainly to higher selling prices resulting from global supply uncertainties as well as record retail performance.
And its production ramp-up, while pushed back, was far from scrapped. The company said while it had previously planned to increase annual potash production to 18 million tonnes by 2025, it would reach that milestone by 2026 instead.
Nutrien was created in 2018 as a result of a merger between PotashCorp of Saskatchewan and Calgary-based Agrium Inc.
— With files from Amanda Stephenson
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 5, 2023.
Companies in this story: (TSX:NTR)
Rosa Saba, The Canadian Press
Alberta
Alberta government should eliminate corporate welfare to generate benefits for Albertans
From the Fraser Institute
By Spencer Gudewill and Tegan Hill
Last November, Premier Danielle Smith announced that her government will give up to $1.8 billion in subsidies to Dow Chemicals, which plans to expand a petrochemical project northeast of Edmonton. In other words, $1.8 billion in corporate welfare.
And this is just one example of corporate welfare paid for by Albertans.
According to a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, from 2007 to 2021, the latest year of available data, the Alberta government spent $31.0 billion (inflation-adjusted) on subsidies (a.k.a. corporate welfare) to select firms and businesses, purportedly to help Albertans. And this number excludes other forms of government handouts such as loan guarantees, direct investment and regulatory or tax privileges for particular firms and industries. So the total cost of corporate welfare in Alberta is likely much higher.
Why should Albertans care?
First off, there’s little evidence that corporate welfare generates widespread economic growth or jobs. In fact, evidence suggests the contrary—that subsidies result in a net loss to the economy by shifting resources to less productive sectors or locations (what economists call the “substitution effect”) and/or by keeping businesses alive that are otherwise economically unviable (i.e. “zombie companies”). This misallocation of resources leads to a less efficient, less productive and less prosperous Alberta.
And there are other costs to corporate welfare.
For example, between 2007 and 2019 (the latest year of pre-COVID data), every year on average the Alberta government spent 35 cents (out of every dollar of business income tax revenue it collected) on corporate welfare. Given that workers bear the burden of more than half of any business income tax indirectly through lower wages, if the government reduced business income taxes rather than spend money on corporate welfare, workers could benefit.
Moreover, Premier Smith failed in last month’s provincial budget to provide promised personal income tax relief and create a lower tax bracket for incomes below $60,000 to provide $760 in annual savings for Albertans (on average). But in 2019, after adjusting for inflation, the Alberta government spent $2.4 billion on corporate welfare—equivalent to $1,034 per tax filer. Clearly, instead of subsidizing select businesses, the Smith government could have kept its promise to lower personal income taxes.
Finally, there’s the Heritage Fund, which the Alberta government created almost 50 years ago to save a share of the province’s resource wealth for the future.
In her 2024 budget, Premier Smith earmarked $2.0 billion for the Heritage Fund this fiscal year—almost the exact amount spent on corporate welfare each year (on average) between 2007 and 2019. Put another way, the Alberta government could save twice as much in the Heritage Fund in 2024/25 if it ended corporate welfare, which would help Premier Smith keep her promise to build up the Heritage Fund to between $250 billion and $400 billion by 2050.
By eliminating corporate welfare, the Smith government can create fiscal room to reduce personal and business income taxes, or save more in the Heritage Fund. Any of these options will benefit Albertans far more than wasteful billion-dollar subsidies to favoured firms.
Authors:
Alberta
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