Reading Time: 4 minutes Big Marble Farms near Medicine Hat is receiving a $2.2 million grant from Emissions Reduction Alberta to install cutting-edge horticultural grow lights.
Big Marble Farms to boost production, lower costs with government grant
Emissions Reduction Alberta showcases new energy program at Big Marble Farms, a greenhouse vegetable producer near Medicine Hat
Subsidy for grain dryer upgrades in Alberta draws critics
Concerns are being raised over a new program for grain drying being offered to Alberta residents. The federal and Alberta governments recently announced Alberta farmers seeking to make grain dryer improvements will have access to funding through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership. The Efficient Grain Dryer Program aims to cover costs for energy efficiency improvements to […] Read more
Canadian farmers pull off an energy magic trick
Nearly 30 years of better practices are helping producers consume less energy even as demand is at a peak
Reading Time: 2 minutes Can you use more energy and less energy at the same time? Canadian farmers have managed to pull it off. Mind you, that’s a bit of a misnomer. What Canadian farmers have actually done is chop the amount of energy they consume per dollar of output by 17 per cent over 26 years. Non-intuitively, this […] Read more
Energy grant programs still accepting applications
Reading Time: < 1 minute Two programs designed to help Alberta farms, ranches, and agri-processors with energy efficiency and solar projects continue to accept applications. The Farm Energy and Agri-Processing (FEAP) program shares costs with the agriculture and agri-processing sector on energy efficiency investments. The program is designed to encourage energy management which will result in cost savings, energy conservation, and […] Read more
Quick steps to better energy efficiency
Energy expert offers some ‘low-hanging fruit’ that can help producers save money on their power or fuel bill
Reading Time: 3 minutes Maximizing energy efficiency on farms and ranches saves money, and who likes to spend money when they don’t have to? But there are only so many hours in the day and only so many dollars for these sorts of projects. So the real question for many farmers is: Where to start? What are the ‘low-hanging […] Read more
Farmers racing to tap into $35-million energy efficiency program
Interest is high, so producers and processors should get applications in as soon as possible, says official
Reading Time: 4 minutes Producers have been flooding the Alberta government with applications for its new suite of energy efficiency incentive programs. The province is offering a total of $35 million to producers and agri-processors pursuing solar, irrigation, heating, lighting, and other energy reduction projects. Included in the suite is the new Farm Energy and Agri-Processing (FEAP) program, a […] Read more
Greenhouse advances saving operators big dollars
New state-of-the-art designs are halving energy costs, but even ‘simple things’ make a difference
Reading Time: 2 minutes Improved construction materials and design are making greenhouses more efficient and cheaper to operate, says a provincial horticulture specialist. “Greenhouses have traditionally been energy-intensive operations, but with increasing scrutiny and slowly shrinking margins, producers need to find ways of trimming costs wherever possible,” said Dustin Morton. For example, research by Silke Hemming of Wageningen University […] Read more
What does the Sustainable Beef Framework involve?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Even the overview of protocols set out in the Certified Sustainable Beef Framework runs nearly 60 pages. But here are a few of the ‘indicators’ for cattle producers from the five areas that the framework covers: Natural Resources One of the goals is to maintain or enhance water quality. To score 1 (a.k.a. Achievement level), […] Read more
Geo-exchange: down but not out
Although lower natural gas prices have taken some of the shine off geo-exchange systems, they can still have a place in a renewable energy setup
Reading Time: 2 minutes Geo-exchange heating and cooling systems were big a decade ago, but that was before natural gas prices plunged and the payback of using the ground as a heat source in the winter and a heat sink in the summer became less attractive. But don’t count this technology out quite yet, said energy specialist Thomas Barr, […] Read more
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