REGINA – The rural municipality of Huron hopes farmers will take advantage of a local tax rebate program and turn their fields from alkali white into green – green in grass and cash.
The program offers a partial tax refund to growers for planting grass seed in crop areas. It also pays for setting up shelterbelts and other soil conservation measures. The program is like others in Saskat-chewan and Alberta, with one notable exception.
Huron’s is entirely supported by the R.M., even though it wasn’t planned that way.
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Initially, Huron’s application for funding under the federal Green Plan was rejected, “but because we thought it was a good plan, we thought we’d just stick with it,” said Don Sloan, the municipality’s administrator.
A brief tour of the area, which sits at the eastern end of Saskat-chewan’s Lake Diefenbaker, reveals flashes of alkali patches in fields. Low areas and gullies appear like shining white carpets – paths on which the eroding soil leaches away. Sloan said about 25 percent of the municipality is marginal land.
Under the plan, planting a half kilometre of trees or 60 acres of grass per quarter section, or seeding a dirt run with grass nets the farmer a 20 percent land tax rebate the first year.
The rebate is cut by five percent in each of the following three years until the refund is down to zero.
Sloan estimated the program will cost the R.M. $24,000 over four years, but said the real cost is nil.
“We want to keep our taxes up, and that’s why we went ahead with the program. It won’t really cost us anything. This way we’re going to recover land that’s been lost. Then we can tax it.”
Coun. Brian Fowler is a big supporter of the program. He’s also the first local farmer to apply for his tax rebate. He seeded 70 acres with grass this year, and is battling the local alkali problem.
“If you can even get $50 a year for an acre of grass and sell the hay, you’re still better off than trying to get a wheat crop,” Fowler says.
In the southeast corner of the province, in the R.M. of Weyburn, a soil conservation program going into its third year is enjoying success. This program has Green Plan funding of $10,000 per year – money it exhausted last year and expects to use this year as well. There are two years of funding remaining in the four-year program, and the R.M. expects to carry on after federal funding ceases.
More residue left
In Alberta the municipal district of Rocky View, near Calgary, is also giving tax rebates to local producers who leave a certain level of crop residue on their fields. The amount of residue they must leave increases as the program proceeds.
Tim Dietzler, the municipality’s agricultural fieldman, said he hopes this will spur greater interest in soil conservation.
He said he can already see the tax incentives working. Much of the land in Rocky View is owned by absentee landowners and rented out to local producers. Some landowners have told Dietzler they like the program, and they want to see more crop residue left on the fields.
