The Keystone Agricultural Producers (KAP) says agriculture will have a role to play in the province's announcement to reduce greenhouse gases.

Last week the province of Manitoba announced its plans to cut greenhouse gases by a third over the next 15 years. On Monday, the province signed a memorandum of understanding with Ontario and Quebec to facilitate a link in cap and trade programs under the Western Climate Initiative.

KAP president Dan Mazier says while agriculture contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, there are positive things the sector can do.

"Everybody's talking about emitting right now, but no one's talking about what we can actually capture or mitigate," he says. "That's what I hope is the big advantage for agriculture to step up and say, here's what we're growing for crops, here's how we can mitigate these heavy emitters and start working with them and seeing how this will be all offset."

Mazier also notes agriculture has already put work into reduction.

"If you go back to Growing Forward One... in that, there's an environmental farm plan program, which all farmers are familiar with. There was actually BMPs — best management practices — that were for greenhouse gas mitigation. Those are the things that put our GPS equipment into our tractors and implements. It helped us optimize fertilizer usage and over-spray, all those kinds of things."

As the cap and trade system will focus on heavy emitters, Mazier says it remains to be seen how much this will affect Manitoban producers, however he feels the province will keep the best interests of agriculture in mind.