Ep. 5: Water Sustainability, Rooted in Good Agronomy with Mike Nemeth

John Mesko (00:06):

Resource positive agriculture describes what we all want, a food and farming system which makes full and responsible use of the natural world. In this podcast, I’ll explore how agriculture can be a force for good on everything from the environment to people and our society.

John Mesko (00:33):

This is John Mesko. I’m the Executive Director of the Potato Sustainability Alliance, and welcome to the Resource Positive Agriculture podcast. My guest today is Mike Nemeth, who is with Nutrien and is a member of PSA as Nutrien is, and has also offered to share his expertise with us as the leader of our water sustainability team that we’ve just assembled in the last week or so. Welcome, Mike.

Mike Nemeth (01:00):

Hi, John. Thanks for having me.

John Mesko (01:02):

Well, and thank you for your willingness to step up and help lead this effort. This is a collaborative work, as you know. PSA certainly relies heavily on its membership and the expertise that’s out there to tackle the various issues of our program that we’re developing. We’re very grateful for your time and energy behind this and for the listeners of this podcast, maybe you can share a little bit about your education, your experience in terms of water sustainability and some of your expertise.

Mike Nemeth (01:38):

Sure. Yeah. I’m really glad to be part of the PSA and to be able to help lead the water team. I love learning from experts. I’m not a potato expert by any means, but that’s why I love working in collaborative groups because you end up learning a lot and everybody brings a piece to the table and that’s how you make progress. But I guess a little bit about me. I’m part of Nutrien’s corporate sustainability and stakeholder relations team. I’m based out of Calgary in Alberta, so Western Canada. I support various internal and external efforts to help deliver on our sustainability strategy. I work as our global lead for Nutrien’s water stewardship work, as well as our nature and biodiversity efforts. Then I support our climate strategy through things like our carbon program that works with farmers on the ground to help create value from carbon, whether that’s emission reductions or sequestration in the ground.

Mike Nemeth (02:43):

Then I also look at opportunities around system solutions between those three portfolios, so nature, water, and climate. Before I came to Nutrien, I worked for a consultancy here in Calgary, WaterSMART Solutions, where I managed and developed and supported projects related to sustainable industrial developments, natural resource management, water use, and environmental concerns in both the private and public sectors, including agriculture, oil and gas, power production, mining, and forestry. I did my bachelor’s of science, environmental science, and a master’s in hydrology at the University of Lethbridge in Southern Alberta. I’m a professional agrologist, registered in Alberta under the practice areas of environmental impact assessments and mitigation planning, as well as water resource planning and management. Registered as an environmental professional with Eco Canada and as an AWS water stewardship standard specialist, certified by the Alliance for Water Stewardship. I currently serve on the board of directors for Inside Education, which I’m really passionate about.

Mike Nemeth (03:54):

It’s a group based in Alberta that’s committed to supporting teachers and inspiring students to better understand the science, the technology and the issues related to environment and natural resource topics, including water, agriculture, and energy. I’ve previously served as an advisory board member for the Alliance for Water Stewardship, North America, as well as the board of directors for Field to Market Canada, the Bow River Basin, and then various committees through the Alberta Chamber of Commerce, the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region and the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. That’s a bit about my background and how I got here. 

John Mesko (04:36):

Well, that’s fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. It’s obvious to me that this is a passion of yours. Obviously, you’ve been involved in so many different aspects of sustainability and environmental stewardship. We are really grateful to have you on board with us and working with us, but I’m curious, how did you get started in this? Was this something you’ve been interested in even as a young person or when did you really catch a passion for this kind of work?

Mike Nemeth (05:04):

Yeah. I guess growing up, I mean, I loved being in Western Canada. I loved being in the mountains. I’ve always enjoyed nature growing up. I really got into the topics of energy conservation and recycling and just things that as a kid I attached to. I guess sustainability has always been, even before it was sustainability is something that my mind just focused on. But oddly enough, I went to school to be a dentist, but it was in my second year of pre-dental classes that I took an elective in physical geography. Then I realized that “Hey, this earth sciences stuff is really a lot more interesting and more applicable to what I think I want to do than dental work.” I switched my majors and I went into environmental science and the rest is history. So…

John Mesko (06:01):

Wow. Well, that’s good. I mean, I’m sure you would’ve been a great dentist, but maybe unfulfilled at best.

Mike Nemeth (06:09):

Yeah. I can agree with that.

John Mesko (06:12):

Okay. Well, that’s great. How does your work at Nutrien on a day-to-day basis fit into this role now that you’ve taken on as a volunteer role leading our water sustainability development team for PSA?

Mike Nemeth (06:29):

Well, it fits in a lot with what I do on a daily basis here at Nutrien. I mean, as part of leading our global water stewardship efforts, that includes everything from our operational site, based risk assessment and mitigation, ESG reporting, downstream partnerships that work with farmers and value chain partners on looking at how do we get positive water outcomes at the farm scale? How do we measure, track, and monitor those? What does that mean for agri-food value chains?

Mike Nemeth (07:01):

For this, I need to take a global perspective in my daily job, take that global perspective and narrative on water stewardship and really help translate what that looks like for our company and the agricultural sector so that we can think globally, take that global mindset, but then we need to plan regionally and then act locally to really make meaningful impacts around water challenges in agriculture. I feel that my work at Nutrien really helps prepare me to lead the water team for PSA and help us develop something as a team that will really create value on the farm, such as farm resilience, possible incentives, and be able to drive sustainability and ESG claims and needs to other value chain members in PSA. So…

John Mesko (07:52):

Yeah. I think that’s spot on with what we’re trying to do on a much broader scale. We have a lot of different components that make up sustainability that we have and are, and will be discussing at PSA, not just most recently, greenhouse gas and now water, but also ultimately we’ll be talking about farmer livelihood, and the food waste, and worker safety, and all the soil health, all the various things that go into the definition of sustainability. We just spent about five or six months as an organization working on the greenhouse gas issue.

John Mesko (08:32):

That was pretty focused, really trying to, a lot of that work really was focused on understanding what tools are available to measure greenhouse gases and how do we implement them, how do we select the tools we want to use going forward. That was a lot of our focus over the last few months. When we think about water sustainability, it doesn’t seem to me that it is that focused. It seems to me like there’s a lot of potential here to be working in different areas regarding water. What are the key components really or metrics that define water sustainability in your mind?

Mike Nemeth (09:15):

Yeah. That’s a great question, John. Yeah. Greenhouse gases can be quite focused and I mean, I’d say about greenhouse gases or GHGs, it’s about mitigation of emissions, right? That can be reductions from things like our Nutrien stewardship and removals of carbon from the atmosphere, such as soil carbon sequestration. But greenhouse gases are global, so they’re accounted for globally. It’s how the actions that are taken can be global. There’s a longer timeframe before you see an impact on the action, but there are a lot of smart people and a lot of places dealing with the accounting and I’m grateful that I don’t have to deal with that. But water is a bit more, I wouldn’t say complex, but it’s more about adaptation. When I think about water, it’s always in the terms of, it’s local.

Mike Nemeth (10:09):

It has to be done in locally. The action needs to be local. It’s often about planning ahead and being proactive. You start to see the outcomes from your actions a lot sooner than you do in the case of greenhouse gases. Really when you look at climate and climate change, climate is just a long-term average of weather. That’s the literal definition of climate, and it’s measured by changes in temperature and precipitation, so that translates into impacts on water. I like to say that climate is water. When I think about what are the key components of metrics that define water and sustainability, whenever I talk about water and maybe I should have started with this earlier, but I always like to highlight the differences between water management and water stewardship, because sometimes those words get used interchangeably and I tend to use water stewardship, but I’ll explain why.

Mike Nemeth (11:09):

But water management really considers, and this gets to your question, John, but water management really considers the site water management and needs, which everybody needs to do, whether it’s a farm or a processing plant or even a city is you have to consider your onsite or your site water management needs. But water stewardship is requiring us to look outside of our fence line. Whether again, that’s a farm or a processing plant or a municipality is, you have to look outside your fence line or operational needs to really understand the larger watershed that you’re in, your role and impact in it, and then start to engage with other watershed actors, so other watershed users and groups and organizations to be able to address shared water challenges. You identify those shared water challenges, and then you can start to address them. The key with water sustainability or water stewardship… I mean, I guess the key to water sustainability really is water stewardship and it has to be local and there’s no blanket approach that can or should be taken.

Mike Nemeth (12:14):

Every region and watershed is different and unique in terms of its water inputs, such as the precipitation that it gets or the groundwater contributions that are made every year and then the uses for that water. There’s different industries and different sectors and different amounts of people living in those, so the challenges in that are that watersheds are going to be different for every water user. That could be drought, it could be flooding, or it could even be water quality issues. As an example of context-based challenges in a watershed, I mean, we’ll take Lake Erie as an example. The Lake Erie basin has a water quality challenge. There are several watersheds that do, but from those challenges, there was large adoption of no-till, which is a great land management practice and has a number of benefits, including reduced soil erosion and loss of nutrients, but because of widespread adoption of no-till. The total phosphorous levels have gone down, which is great.

Mike Nemeth (13:20):

But the dissolved reactive phosphorus has gone up and the dissolved reactive phosphorus, they realized after time that no-till keeps the roots in place. As those roots decay, they become preferential micropore pathways that can be broken up from tillage and combined with tile drainage in the region, actually resulted in more dissolved reactive phosphorus in the lake. That’s just an example of how you can’t take a blanket approach and I’m not saying that no-till isn’t needed in that area and isn’t good, but everything that you do in a system, because it’s a natural system, you’re going to have impacts. When you push down in a system, something’s going to poke up and so it’s a balancing. There’s no one approach that can work for every area. When we talk about water, I think there’s some common metrics, such as fresh water use intensity or ensuring water withdrawals don’t exceed annual contributions to the watershed so that you’re not pulling more water out than is there every year.

Mike Nemeth (14:34):

Or for water quality, that starts to often incorporate biodiversity components. Looking at the number and types of aquatic invertebrates in the water or water temperature trends, or even tracking specific concentrations of something in the water that’s of concern, but there are many different ways to track or measure outcomes. But first, in my mind, you really need to understand what is important for a particular area and make sense in the context of that area. That’s why a water stewardship approach is really important because we’re working in a biological system with loads of natural variability, so sometimes things don’t always pan out as you might expect. Measuring that can be a bit of a challenge.

John Mesko (15:19):

Absolutely. This is a much more complex, I think, program development effort that we’re undertaking here. But do you have examples for somebody who is listening that has been focused in certain aspects of their business or their farm or potato production or any agriculture production for that matter? What examples are out there of other programs may be similar to what we’re trying to do? It could be other industries in terms of water sustainability. What do they look like? What outcomes are they measuring and so forth?

Mike Nemeth (16:02):

Yeah. I guess there are a couple of examples that come to mind, but really what PSA is looking to do is quite unique, I would say. One example that I can think about, it’s back about seven or eight years ago now, it was with a group called COSIA, which was the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance. I was working as a consultant for the COSIA watershed team. At the time, they were looking at how to understand the watershed impacts from development in the watershed and identify opportunities for improvements in the watershed with various stakeholder groups. That included other industry groups. Forestry, oil and gas, mining, and then the municipalities, indigenous communities that were around there, different environmental groups and NGOs, and provincial and federal governments. Back seven or eight years ago, the global understanding and awareness has really shifted since then on water management versus water stewardship.

Mike Nemeth (17:07):

But the approach that, that group took is similar, I think, to what PSA is coming together to do. It’s just PSA, I think, is doing it at a broader scale. Like I said, I do think that what the water team is doing is quite unique and innovative. I think it’s an opportunity to be seen as a global leading effort from a commodity group to meaningfully address water-related challenges and to capitalize on some opportunities. Then, even more specific to, I would say agriculture is, Nutrien’s been involved in a couple of projects, one in Southern Manitoba, and one in Southern Alberta. Both involve other PSA members, including Simplot and Cavendish, but really we’re looking at how to understand value creation from water stewardship planning and implementation across an agri-food value chain. That’s a project that we’re working on in Southern Alberta.

Mike Nemeth (18:05):

That’s looking at an entire, just the potato supply chain in Southern Alberta and how does more formal water stewardship planning and implementation create value and where does it create value and where are the pinch points? Then the one in Manitoba that we’re working on with partners like BASF and General Mills and Simplot, it’s just looking at full farms, but farms that have potatoes in their rotation. It’s really understanding how to best measure and report out on the co-benefits. All those environmental co-benefits of water stewardship planning and implementation at the farm. It’s just strictly at the farm. We’re working with four different farms and then how does that translate up into watershed-scale impacts? Both of those projects are again involve multiple partners, not-for-profit groups, environmental groups, industry peers, watershed groups. Those are some examples of previous work and current work that I’m involved in that is similar, I think, to what PSA is looking at doing.

John Mesko (19:14):

That’s very helpful. What I’m wondering, so do you envision, and this may be early… We have a team of people from across the potato supply chain that are going to be working on this. But in general, do you envision that we would be more qualitative in our approach, as some of the things you’ve outlined, looking at what’s going on in the region, what’s going on in the watershed, the use of cover crops or no-till as you described? Or are we thinking more monitoring, where we’re actually measuring the impact of water coming off the farm or going into a part of a watershed or both? How do those two qualitative and quantitative factors mesh in a broad-scale program that’s designed to put its arms around an entire industry over two countries?

Mike Nemeth (20:09):

Yeah. Well, and that’s a good question. I think that it’s going to be a mix of both, to tell you the truth. I mean, I have my own personal biases and thoughts, and that’s why I like working in collaborative groups because I don’t have it all figured out and one person never does. But I think from what I’ve seen and whether you’re talking about water or biodiversity, anything that’s in a natural system, once again, needs to be context-based. Sometimes those are a little more challenging to quantify, right? The data’s not necessarily there, the ability to track and quantify the outcomes aren’t there. Certainly, there are digital capabilities and tools and models and different approaches that are able to help us do that, but all of those come with a cost and sometimes the data and information to feed those, isn’t there.

Mike Nemeth (21:06):

Monitoring programs can be quite expensive. It really depends on what I guess, you want to get out of it and that’s where I always go back to when you take that water stewardship approach and you understand what the needs of the basin are, then in some cases, you might be needing to set up monitoring where you’re understanding how much is coming off of a field, or are there nutrients in the water, or are there things in the water system that we can track, monitor and see a decrease over time from practices on the landscape, or maybe it’s just understanding and messaging. I find a lot of the times of what’s already happening in the watershed.

Mike Nemeth (21:46):

I don’t think that doing water stewardship is new in agriculture. I think they’ve been doing it for years without even thinking about it in that context. Sometimes it’s just that narrative and maybe as an industry or as a supply chain, telling the story of how water stewardship is already being done on the farm. I’ve never met a grower that says, “Oh, I’d like to put on as much fertilizer as I possibly could afford, and then dump as much water as I can find on my field.” That’s not how it’s done. I think it’s going to be a mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches.

John Mesko (22:23):

You really hit on something and I’ve said this before in many contexts with regard to sustainability. I don’t know of a farmer, like you say, that is actively trying to pollute the environment or cause damage because I think most people are better than that, but also it’s expensive if you’re going to be wasting nutrients and overapplying pesticides or whatever the case may be. You’re going to be not a very good financial manager of a business at that point. I agree with you. I think sustainability and financial accountability go hand in hand. It makes sense to be operating in a sustainable manner for a number of reasons. PSA’s focused on farms and what’s happening on the farm and how that contributes to supply chain sustainability all the way through the process.

John Mesko (23:17):

But when you think about potato farms, what kinds of things… I shouldn’t even limit it to potato farms, but in agriculture, including potatoes, what kinds of things are happening on those farms that are reflective or things that are not happening that are reflective of water sustainability? What are some of the things that… you’ve mentioned biodiversity, you mentioned reduced tillage, some of those things, but are there other things that just in general help paint a picture for that operation using water sustainably?

Mike Nemeth (23:52):

Yeah, absolutely. I actually had a call on this the other day and some of the other work we’re doing is just understanding when we say, “What do people do for water stewardship?” It’s not even something that I would think that most people think of other than people that focus on it, like myself. But I think there are a lot of things that, what do we call it, potato farms or just agriculture in general that are being done that provide a lot of positive water outcomes. I think in most cases that they’re not, like I said, thought of or looked at through that water lens or practices just aren’t being documented or reported as having value from a water perspective.

Mike Nemeth (24:36):

I mean, these things like using inputs effectively for our Nutrien stewardship and integrated pest management and associated technologies like slower controlled release fertilizers or variable rate prescriptions, precision agriculture, those types of things, those put the nutrients where they’re needed, or the crop protection products where they’re needed, when they’re needed to keep things in the field. Using the nutrients in the field, so that plants have them when they need them. No-till cropping on fields for crops that don’t require tillage. Planting legumes in rotation as part of a diverse crop rotation, so you’re reducing your nitrogen needs and improving your soil health. Planting of cover crops, or intercropping as part of your crop rotation. There are more obvious things like efficient on-farm water use.

Mike Nemeth (25:38):

If you’re irrigating, there’s lots of technologies, whether it’s pivots. I mean, there’s variable rate pivots. There’s so many technology improvements around pivots. There’s satellite-driven information sensors on pivots that can measure everything from the nitrogen coming out if you’re fertigating. There are a lot of technologies and equipment that are involved in that. It goes beyond just installing a pivot. But at the end of the day, I would say on-farm water stewardship is just grounded in good agronomy. It’s understanding what is being done and that there might be room for improvement based on local needs and challenges, but overall, if you’re doing good agronomy in your fields, you’re practicing a lot of what water stewardship is on a farm.

John Mesko (26:26):

Yeah. That’s great. I think I’ve picked up a couple of little catchphrases from you today, it’s really helpful. The first, well, this one that you just said, water stewardship is good agronomy. I like that. I think that’s probably a good thing to remember because I think most farmers want to think of themselves as good agronomists. I think most advisors and folks that are selling inputs into the farm system, the farming community want to think of themselves as good agronomists and that’s a really important feature as we think about going forward. The other one that you mentioned early on is that climate is water. I think that’s a fun way to think about this.

John Mesko (27:07):

I’ve been thinking about that statement that you made all the way through our discussion here today. So much of what we’ve touched on is tied to water. So much of what we will touch on as we develop further our sustainability program is really rooted in what happens to water. Where does it go? What does it carry with it? Where does it end up and how much of it is available is really a big part of everything we’re talking about in sustainability. I think it’s good to remember. I think we might have to put a tagline on this water team’s stationery. Climate is water.

Mike Nemeth (27:46):

There you go.

John Mesko (27:47):

Well, this is great, Mike. Again, I really appreciate you stepping up to help us with this. We certainly value your expertise and I hope that along the way, the collaborative nature of PSA is something that benefits you and your endeavors as well. What kinds of things are you looking forward to most over the next few months as we work on this?

Mike Nemeth (28:14):

Honestly, I really am looking forward to just getting into a diverse group of people and learning. Everybody, like I said, brings something to a collaborative group, whether they feel like it or not. Everybody has their own expertise and that’s part of what makes collaborative groups more effective. I think that early proactive action by a collaborative group in water stewardship can often be less costly, considering the needs of the sector. In agriculture, in this instance, and then certainly can be more effective and flexible than other actions taken by individual players at the farm or value chain level. I really believe that a more formalized approach to water stewardship is possible and can have multiple environmental co-benefits.

Mike Nemeth (29:10):

Looking at the other benefits from water stewardship, whether that’s, like I said, from good agronomic practices, you can capture positive environmental co-benefits around water, soil, climates, nature, and biodiversity. Really looking at things from that watershed perspective, understanding the trade-offs and understanding how we best support farmers, because, at the end of the day, we need to make sure that we’re doing water stewardship with farmers and not to them to help sustainably feed the world. I’m really excited to be able to have farmers part of the group. I think PSA is a great organization that brings the whole value chain together. That sums up what I’m looking forward to doing with this.

John Mesko (29:54):

That’s fantastic. I think I might coin the last bit of that phrase as well, where PSA is really bringing the value chain together to discuss these things. We call this podcast the Resource Positive Agriculture podcast. At the end of the day, that is our goal is to move agriculture forward in a positive way, with regard to sustainability, with regard to all the components of that. For that, I’m excited to have you on board and have you working on this. I appreciate your time today, Mike. Thank you for joining me on the podcast.

Mike Nemeth (30:30):

Thank you, John. Look forward to working with the team and the broader association.

John Mesko (30:35):

I’m John Mesko. My guest today has been Mike Nemeth of Nutrien, and he is going to be leading PSA’s water sustainability development team. Thank you for listening. You can find out more about the work of PSA and this water team that’s coming up on our website, potatosustainability.org. I’m John Mesko, have a great day.

John Mesko (31:03):

Thanks for tuning in to today’s episode. To hear more podcasts like this, please rate, review and subscribe to Resource Positive Agriculture. We want to hear from you. Remember to visit potatosustainability.org for show notes from this episode, leave your feedback, and to learn more about how PSA is collaborating for potato sustainability. Thank you, and remember, stay positive.