Student projects usually end up on a high shelf in the dark corners of a school library.
- ot so for Jesse Nykoliation and Nelson Ridgeway’s graduation project.
The students, who studied land and water management at Brandon’s Assiniboine Community College, put together a blueprint for how producers could grow willow, switchgrass and poplar in riparian areas.
Their ideas will be implemented in western Manitoba this summer.
“We’re definitely going to try and put some demonstration plots into place,” said Ryan Canart, manager of the Upper Assiniboine River Conservation District, which stretches from Virden to Rossburn and west to the Saskatchewan border.
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“To start, it’s education, to show how we can try and make it work.”
The students, who presented their project at a Manitoba Conservation District information day in Brandon, are optimistic farmers will give it a try.
“I think it’s going to take off,” said Nykoliation, who grew up on a farm near Lenore, Man.
“We’re providing pretty good incentives for farmers to do it.”
- ykoliation and Ridgeway would like producers who grow annual crops next to rivers and streams in the conservation district to grow biomass crops instead.
Producers will be paid for the ecological services of reducing soil erosion and runoff into streams and earn money when the biomass crops are harvested.
“Other than constantly sowing a crop right along the river and not getting much of a yield, they might as well join our program,” added Nykoliation, who worked for the Upper Assiniboine Conservation District last summer.
Based on the budget in the student’s report, producers will be paid $100 an acre for use of their land. The pilot project will feature 50 acres of switchgrass, one acre of poplar and one acre of willow.
Ridgeway said willow was selected because of its potential use as biomass.
“Willows can be harvested on a three to five year cycle,” said Ridgeway, who grew up in Grosse Isle, Man.
The former Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, now part of Agriculture Canada’s agri-environment services branch, has a machine capable of cutting willows and compacting them into a bale that is processed into pellets that can be burned in a wood stove.
Switchgrass is ideal for ethanol production, Nykoliation said, because it is three times more economical to convert switchgrass to biofuel than corn.
Poplar trees would function as a shelterbelt and could be harvested after 25 years for timber.
Possible locations for the pilot projects are 10 kilometres east of Virden, adjacent to the Assiniboine River, and three km south of Shoal Lake.
Although the idea is to target riparian areas, Canart said the project offers other opportunities.
“We’re not ruling out the idea of dedicated energy crops,” he said.
