Farm Environmental plan?

[cowman]

Now the government thinks we should all have a farm environmental plan and this will somehow make us all rich. This will solve the farm crisis and convince all the little Chinese lads they are eating environmentally safe food! I mean we would want them to be assured our pasta wheat was good enough to mix with the dog and rat meat, right? I think this is about the biggest gong show the experts have come up with yet! As far as I can see just another excuse to waste some more money. And keep some more bums on the payroll!
I mean what am I going to tell them? Yes my cows drink out of unfenced springs? Just like they've been doing for a hundred years? Just like the buffalo did before we had "experts" to let them know how wrong it was?
And yes if the thistles get bad I will spray them and if the weather looks promising I might put down some fertilzer on the hay? And horror of horrors I might even spread some manure on the pasture???
So I need some big plan for all this? Isn't it great that our federal government is now going to get all us dumb yokels up on modern practices? I just don't how we ever pioneered this country without all these little government experts!!! Must have just been dumb luck?

[dalek]

We did our EFP here in Ontario about 10 years ago. It's not a big deal, BS your way through it and the $1500 helps but it's amazing how now the feds are taking credit for the idea when last year the Ontario program was having trouble getting funding to keep going and the feds didn't seem to want to have anything to do with it.

[carebear300]

I actually had to do a partial one for the bank a few years ago. It was a crock and trust me it will be a crock but it will make all the highly paid and educated people happy in this world. Of course like cowman says it will also employ a bunch of them at least $100,000 per year to administer the program. Yes you can't ever trust a farmer he will just destroy the enviormnent if you leave him use his own judgement.

[cowman]

And Carebear you have hit the nail right on the head! Who lives out here on the land? Would we intentionally poison ouselves? Do they think some urbanite in Toronto has more concern for the well being of our land than ourselves?
I don't know of many farmers who don't have a concern for their land and the environment. Sure we have to make a buck but we don't look down the road 6 months like corporations and governments.
I suspect this whole idea is more about making headlines than any concern for the environment. I have a hard time believing that some beurocrat in Ottawa could care or less about some farm in the sticks? Who do they think has been preserving this farm land the last hundred years? Just another money sucking Ottawa program!

[dalek]

Anybody changed insurance companies lately for their home and farm insurance? The environmental questionnaire you have to fill out is very similar to what's involved in the EFP in Ontario.
By the way cowman, on cattle access to streams, I hope none of your non-farm neighbours can see it. Here some of the non-farmers decided they didn't like it along one particular stream, Fisheries and Oceans came out and told the farmers they had up to a certain point (about 3 months I think) to remove ALL cattle access from stream and banks and beyond that day they'd be fined amounts ranging from about $2000 per day and up.
There's also a regulation under the fisheries act where they can charge and convict you for creating a POTENTIAL to pollute a body of water. Not to be too crude about it, but any one of us has the potential to pollute just by dropping our pants on the edge of a stream.
A hog farm in Southwestern Ontario paid a $15,000 fine for a manure spill the Environment cop estimated was under 5 gallons.

[cowman]

These springs I have are something else! Luckily they are back in the woods away from the road. They run down into a large dam that runs at both ends year round.The cows only drink out of the springs in the winter when the ground is froze.
Unfortunately the regional water authority is doing an environmental assessment of the watershed of Waskasoo and Pipers creeks and guess where they start? Right at my springs! These creeks eventually empty into the Red Deer river.
Here is the real kicker. Pipers creek runs right through the Red Deer city dump! Also right through a pretty large feedlot! Every year the beavers build a dam on the creek by the dump and every winter they die! There is a well right on the edge of the dump(180 ft.) and it is so polluted that it isn't even fit to wash a truck with let alone drink! And yet kids play in the creeks below the dump in a park! My grandfather said when he came to Red Deer as a young boy Waskasoo creek was full of Dolly Varden...now it has absolutely no fish. The city has bought another section farther up on the creek for a new dump! It seems to me this whole environmental thing is sort of phony.