YORKTON - Farmers with a few fringe acres that aren’t exactly suited to crop production might want to look to planting cover crops, said Jesse Nielsen, Manager with Assiniboine Watershed Stewardship Assoc. Inc. (AWSA) at the organizations awards recently.
And AWSA in cooperation with ALUS might be able to help with costs.
“We talking edge of the field kind of stuff . . . We don’t want your prime crop land. We want your marginal land,” he said, adding it’s the acres hard to farm, too saline, or prone to erosion, that cover cropping can help with. “It’s an alternative way to traditional cropping.”
Nielsen said ALUS is a very elastic program, with local boards fashioning the programming to suit local area needs.
“No two ALUS programs across Canada are exactly the same,” he said.
At present there are 39 ALUS programs across the country – three in Saskatchewan including the one in partnership with AWSA. Nationally some 50,000 acres are covered with 1,700 producers involved.
Nielsen added another 10,000 acres are in ALUS’ cover crop program.
The ALUS program funding – cost-shared by producers - can also help with over ecosystem/nature friendly on-farm decisions, said Nielsen. That can include things such as planting trees, fencing natural water ways off to prevent cattle from “mucking around in riparian areas,” and helping with alternate water for livestock.
In each case Nielsen said at the heart of funded projects is the basic premise of agriculture 小蓝视频 more in-tune with nature.
