EDMONTON – After 12 years of encouraging farmers to adopt reduced tillage, a shortage of cash has forced an Alberta conservation group to close its doors.
Peter Gamache, team leader with Alberta Reduced Tillage Linkages said difficulty with long-term funding forced the group’s steering committee to announce Jan. 29 during FarmTech that the organization would wind up at the end of August.
“It’s been increasingly difficult for us to obtain adequate funding for our projects,” said Gamache of Edmonton.
In the past, Reduced Tillage has received money from federal and provincial governments, industry and not for profit groups, but long-term funding for its $600,000 annual budget has been difficult to find in recent years.
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Gamache said money for small projects remains available, but the scattered approach has moved the group away from its core conservation agriculture goals.
“It’s been increasingly difficult to keep that as our focus.”
Since Reduced Tillage started in 1996, the number of farmers practising reduced tillage has increased from five million acres to almost nine million acres, or about 10 percent to 50 percent of the Alberta farmers in 2006 adopting reduced tillage.
“We feel we’ve been a significant part of that,” he said.
Gamache estimates the group’s five agronomists located around the province have about 7,000 to 8,000 contacts a year with farmers promoting conservation tillage agriculture.
Mel Erickson, an Irma, Alta., farmer said the ending of Reduced Tillage will be a huge loss for Alberta farmers.
“I see nothing but downside losing it and all five of the agrologists. They were incredibly committed to the cause. I don’t think we can replace it,” said Erickson, who adopted conservation tillage on his central Alberta farm in 1991.
