Feds urged to continue incentive program for 'green' farming

Teviah Moro

An incentive is nice every now and then, says Kristin Ego MacPhail, looking at rows of potted plants irrigated with an environmentally friendly drip system that is saving her gallons of water.

"We're very dependent on water usage in our business," Ego MacPhail said Tuesday under a blazing sun at the Horseshoe Valley Road farm and nursery she owns with her husband, Gary.

The owners of Ego's Nurseries Ltd. and Ego's Farm Market have spent roughly $10,000 to set up the drip irrigation system. The federal government has chipped in about $1,800.

Hailed as a resounding success, farmers hope Ottawa doesn't let the program's funding dry up by letting it expire next year.

"We certainly want to make sure that the federal government has this on its agenda," Paul Mistele, vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, told The Packet & Times.

The Ego operation was honoured yesterday by a host of officials for completing its environmental farm plan - a voluntary federal-provincial program that encourages farmers to improve practices to reduce their impact on the environment.

Since the program began in 1992, about 70 per cent of the province's farmers have participated in the program, which sees the government pick up 30 per cent of project costs. In the past two years, $50 million in funding has been allocated to projects.

"It's absolutely huge," Simcoe North MP Bruce Stanton said of the program's uptake, after congratulating Ego MacPhail on becoming the 7,500th participant in Ontario to have completed an environmental farm plan.

The Ego drip system, which flows water directly into pots through little hoses, uses 80 to 90 per cent less water than the sprinkler irrigation used previously at the farm.

"Which is huge water savings," said Ego MacPhail, whose 120 acres produce strawberries, tomatoes, pump- kins and nursery stock.

About 75 per cent of the production has been switched over to drip irrigation over the past two years. The farmers have also made improvements to fuel storage and created a buffer zone to reduce sediments flowing into a creek.

"Simcoe County has been just a tremendous performer in this particular project," Stanton said, pointing out 400 out of 450 farmers in the program have completed it.

Mistele said Canadians have shown a keener interest in best agricultural practices in the past 15 years.

"We have to make sure that the dollars reflect what society wants us to do."

Farmers, an already hard-pressed bunch subject to international competition, rising energy costs and unpredictable weather conditions, could use that incentive program cash up front, he said. But perhaps a bigger concern is the renewal of the environmental farm plan program under the federal government's agricultural policy framework, which is set to expire by March 2008.

"We certainly want to make sure that the federal government has this on its agenda," Mistele said.

Federal Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Chuck Strahl will discuss that when he meets with federal, provincial and territorial ministers in Whistler, B.C., on Friday, Stanton said.

"I wouldn't want to speculate on where they'll go, but, certainly, it's being actively discussed."

tmoro@orilliapacket.com