A Saskatchewan farmer attended the COP26 climate conference in an effort to show off some of the strides that agriculture in the prairies had taken to combat climate change.

Glenn Wright, besides farming near Vanscoy, is also a board member of the Saskbarley Development Commission and is an avid supporter of climate initiatives.

Despite his excitement for the conference, he describes being disappointed not on what was being said at the conference, but about what wasn't being said.

"I came home from the conference, I guess, disappointed that there wasn't more ambition taken by the countries in the official negotiations," said Wright, "I learned that in the last 25 years of these COP conferences not once have the direct causes that are coal, oil, and fossil gas - those three things are causing 90% of the climate change problem - but they've never been explicitly mentioned in the agreements until this one."

Wright says he is glad they at least acknowledged the problem, even if it did take too long in his opinion.

He also diagnosed the conference with a distinct problem with what he calls "distractions" from the real issues.

"At COP there are many things that I would call distractions," said Wright, "90% of climate change is caused by coal, oil, and fossil gas. From my perspective, we really need to focus on that and we really need to focus on mitigating the climate crisis because if we're still expanding all of those dirty energy sources we're actually accelerating the problem."

Despite the shortcomings that he saw at the conference, Wright says that he still got a lot out of the conference that validated his perception of climate change.

"More than anything, it affirmed for me that I'm not crazy," said Wright, "I've been an early adopter of renewable energy on the farm, and minimum input farming practices to try and reduce my emissions intensity, and we've had electric cars for four years, and we did a deep insulation retrofit on our house."

Wright also says he's glad to have made connections with other international agriculture producers.