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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
Happy new year and welcome to 2025! For our first newsletter back, let’s take a moment to reminisce on our most recent trip around the sun together.
Last year brought an eruption of discoveries in space, biology, technology and more. How much to do you remember? Our science quiz for 2024 is a total blast.
Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- The unsettled series: Inuit scientists adapt as climate change threatens sea life and food security
- Rebuilding: A volcano burned and buried their homes. Now, these Spaniards are building new ones
- Banks: Major U.S. banks quitting Carney-led climate alliance ahead of Trump’s return to office
- Policy: Canadian sustainability board issues its first climate-reporting rules with some breaks on timing
- Survivor: A hiker spent 50 days in the northern B.C. wilderness. How he survived until his unlikely rescue sparked global intrigue
- Path to net zero: Ottawa softens Clean Electricity Regulations as new rules set to take effect
- Coal: Alberta government releases foundation for new coal-mining policy
- Nuclear: As construction of first small modular reactor looms, prospective buyers wait for the final tally
- On the ground with The Narwhal: We’re losing sight of the night sky. This First Nation is trying to protect it
A deeper dive
That’s a hot potato
Today’s deep dive is a clipping from Report on Business Magazine, naming McCain’s Max Koeune as corporate citizen of the year. Read the full story
Go into a McDonald’s almost anywhere in the world today, and there’s a good chance the fries you’ll be served were made in a plant owned by McCain Foods.
McCain, founded in the small rural town of Florenceville, N.B., has quietly built itself into a global frozen-potato juggernaut. By the company’s own measure, one out of every four french fries sold on the planet comes from McCain.
That kind of clout has rested in the hands of chief executive officer Max Koeune since 2017. Now, he’s marshalling the company’s vast reach for an ambitious mission that could be vital to McCain’s future – not to mention the planet’s.
Over the decades, McCain has built an empire, with 54 factories on six continents. At the same time, the world’s largest frozen-fry maker has formed tight relationships with its network of 3,500 independent farmers, spread across 16 countries, who supply nearly seven million tons of potatoes annually.
McCain is using those links to spread the gospel of regenerative farming, which loosely refers to more natural practices that help the soil hold on to more water and nutrients to boost plant growth.
“If conventional farming continues, and we want to feed a planet of 10 billion people, that means all the things that are problematic today are going to be exponentially problematic in 10 or 15 years,” says Koeune, while showing off one of McCain’s commercial-scale experimental Farms of the Future outside Florenceville. “That means more deforestation, more greenhouse gases, more water use in places where there are already deficiencies, more nitrogen or other fertilizers pumped into the ground.”
Modern industrial agricultural practices might boost yields, but they’re hard on the land – contributing to water scarcity, loss of biodiversity and the spread of harmful chemicals. And agriculture accounts for roughly a 10th of global greenhouse gas emissions.
After he became CEO, Koeune knew he wanted to make sustainability a priority. His team drafted a plan, which they took to a group of growers, customers, NGOs, academics and government officials. Their response: Aim higher. The team went back at it and returned with loftier targets.
Among them: a pledge that all the potatoes McCain buys will be grown using some regenerative practices by 2030. Those include planting potatoes on three- or four-year rotations with other crops such as wheat and barley to interrupt pest and disease cycles, and using cover crops such as alfalfa and clover to “armour” the soil. The plan also calls for a reduction in synthetic fertilizers and other chemicals.
And the company set a target of reducing CO2 emissions from potato farming, storage and freight by 25 per cent by 2030.
To help these goals become reality, Koeune created a Farm of the Future in New Brunswick. The aim is to experiment with different combinations of regenerative techniques and potato varieties to see which best boost soil health and, ultimately, yield the most healthy, usable spuds. McCain has opened a second such farm in South Africa to test regenerative practices in drier southern regions, and it’s in the process of scouting locations for a third.
Max Koeune at McCain's sustainable Farm of the Future, just outside of Florenceville, N.B.Daniel Ehrenworth/The Globe and Mail
What else you missed
- Vancouver had its wettest year so far this century in 2024, Environment Canada data shows
- Toronto airport saw record-setting precipitation levels in 2024, Environment Canada says
- Nigerian regulator says oil-licence applicants must prove low carbon emissions
- Mi’kmaq elver fishers hope quotas create safety on N.S. rivers, but critics doubtful
- ‘Tinder of the construction sector’ aims to keep B.C. building waste out of landfills
- Ontario asks youth-led climate change case be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada
- Remains of young mammoth found nearly intact in Siberian permafrost
- Chile files four environmental charges against Anglo American mine
- Drought, fires and deforestation battered Amazon rainforest in 2024
- A butterfly collector in Africa with more than 4.2 million seeks to share them for the future
- How changing demographics and tastes are shaping Canada’s grocery stores
Opinion and analysis
Anna Kanduth and Arthur Zhang: Is Canada’s 2035 climate target ambitious enough?
Jeffrey Jones: Ally Niilo Edwards helped Indigenous peoples gain control over their finances and environment
Jessica Scott-Reid: Trump’s win was fuelled by climate misinformation. Will Canada be next?
Werner Antweiler: A new generation of biofuels will play a key role in the energy transition
The Editorial Board: Warm winters are chilling the Canadian spirit
Green Investing
Shocked at your car insurance bill? Blame inflation, thefts and – yep – climate change
Persistent inflation, higher repair costs, a growing number of auto thefts and more severe weather events are leading to higher car insurance premiums across Canada.
Auto insurance premiums increased 12 per cent across the country in the third quarter compared with the same period last year, according to an insurance software company. The biggest jumps were in Alberta and Ontario, with increases of nearly 13 and 12 per cent, respectively.
- Carbon-removal startup Deep Sky gets US$40-million grant from Gates-led fund
- CPPIB bets on U.K.-based Octopus Energy, Kraken software to drive customers’ embrace of renewable energy
- Funds that aim to make an impact – as well as nice returns
The Climate Exchange
We’ve launched the next chapter of The Climate Exchange, an interactive, digital hub where The Globe answers your most pressing questions about climate change. More than 300 questions were submitted as of September. The first batch of answers tackles 30 of them. They can be found with the help of a search tool developed by The Globe that makes use of artificial intelligence to match readers’ questions with the closest answer drafted. We plan to answer a total of 75 questions.
Photo of the week
A worker places racks of peeled persimmons to dry at the Weiweijia farm in Xinpu township, Taiwan. The island's annual persimmon harvest declined for the second year in a row in 2023 to around 59,000 tonnes, and it is expected to be more than 13 percent lower in 2024, figures from the Agriculture and Food Agency show.I-HWA CHENG/AFP/Getty Images
Guides and Explainers
- Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that: Green Investing 101 newsletter course for the climate-conscious investor. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
- We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP29 and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
- We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills - Little Steps to Big Change.
Catch up on Globe Climate
- On thinning ice
- Armed Forces in a changing Arctic
- A site for Canada’s nuclear waste
- Science meets tradition
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