The Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture will use over half a million dollars in new federal funding to put dollar values on farmers’ environmental management activities in an Ecological Goods and Services (EG&S) pilot project.
Guy Lauzon, the federal parliamentary secretary for agriculture, announced the funding at the federation’s annual meeting Friday in Truro.
The pilot project will get $511,000 in funding plus in-kind support from the province, the Nova Scotia Agricultural College and other commodity and community groups. It will include a survey of the province’s farming community to assess costs and benefits and determine the possible impacts on farmers.
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The project will determine the potential payments to farmers who take on environmental projects — such as the development of wetlands — to help offset their costs and encourage more environmental action, the federal government said in a release. The funding will also support EG&S projects on the St. Andrews River watershed and go toward an assessment of the benefits of liming farmland next to watershed waterways.
BOPI funding
Ottawa also pledged another $228,093 in funding for five other projects through the Biofuels Opportunities for Producers Initiative (BOPI), administered in Nova Scotia by Agri-Futures Nova Scotia. The projects include:
- $78,000 to ACA Co-operative, for a project to produce biodiesel from poultry litter and poultry processing waste;
- $56,000 for an ethanol marketing study by Fundy Biofuels;
- $45,000 to West Nova Agro-Commodities, for an assessment and business plan on revenue streams for waste generated by biofuel production;
- $43,750 to L and M Farm Holdings, for a feasibility study of a plant that would produce 200,000 litres of ethanol per year from grains as well as carrot and potato waste; and
- $5,343 to SF Rendering, to work out the capital costs to process canola produced in Atlantic Canada into biodiesel.
