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March 8

March 8

Recently, we had the opportunity to talk to husband and wife farmers Paul and Lori Kinnee of Ten Bar Cattle in Grand Prairie Alberta. Paul and Lori have a commercial Simmental herd are newly approved OFCAF funding recipients. The Kinnee’s applied and were approved for funding of their projects in all three OFCAF BMP areas — rotational grazing, nitrogen management, and cover cropping.

RDAR opened the On-Farm Climate Action Fund (OFCAF) program to application in early August. On November 7th, 2022 OFCAF closed applications for the 2022 year one intake season. OFCAF will begin accepting applications for year two of the program starting on February, 13 2O23. On October 27th 2022, RDAR had the opportunity to host two federal Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)Program Managers on a full day tour of producer farms in and around the Central Alberta region that have started to implement OFCAF BMPs on their properties.

Contamination of surface water and groundwater from nutrient loading is a critical problem within agriculture and urban areas across Alberta and Canada. Outcomes from this project aim to provide producers with an additional low cost, low maintenance, efficient, sustainable tool to protect the water, soil, and air through the remediation of contaminated feedlot runoff waters that can then be safely used for irrigation and potentially for livestock drinking water”.

In our August blog, we talked about how the On-Farm Climate Action Fund (OFCAF) is helping producers fight climate change. The OFCAF program provides financial support to producers to accelerate the adoption and implementation of on-farm Beneficial Management Practices (BMPs) to lower Greenhouse Gas emissions. A maximum of $75,000 is available to producers looking to implement BMPs, like the one we’re highlighting today, on their farm. This past week, RDAR had the opportunity to visit a cow/calf operation in Parkland County, just West of Edmonton, where pasture pipelines, a BMP covered under OFCAF, were being installed on-farm. Installing pasture pipelines involves burying polyethylene (PE) pipes roughly 12-14 inches below the soil surface to provide cattle with fresh water at strategic locations within your managed grazing system.

Mike Hittinger is a cattle producer and Board Chair for Gateway Research Organization (GRO). He and his wife Melissa have run a cow/calf operation east of Clyde, Alberta for 18 years. Mike applied to the On-Farm Climate Action Fund (OFCAF) to help enhance his farm’s grazing system. He plans to make their pastures more resilient to climate change — better able to handle excess moisture and weather droughts. We had the opportunity to connect with Mike to talk about his experience with OFCAF and how this program may be able to help other producers transition into new farming ideas.