Nutrient plan could cost you $1,000 to $4,000

Farmers from Alexandria to Windsor will tell you that Bill 81 is an instrument of confusion.

Farm leaders agree. They favor the idea of safe manure handling practices but scratch their heads when they see how some portions of the bill are translated to paper.

Questions about Bill 81 keep growing but there are three repeated again and again. How much will this cost? How much paper work will I have to do? And when do I have to do it?

HOW MUCH?

Spencerville’s Bryan Cook helps farmers set up their nutrient management plans so he takes much of the work out of your hands. He figures that if you have to spend a lot of money for a nutrient management plan then the farm needed the upgrading anyway. As a ballpark figure, "75 per cent of all farms should be within $1,500 and $4,500," he said. "Free enterprise will work it out."

The costs do not include soil sampling, storage structure updates and the perimeter maps (which can be hand drawn), he said.

Prices are estimated since few to date have been reported. "We haven’t done a lot of them," Cook said.

The largest producers are the easiest because they have up to date equipment and larger fields, he said. "What it (Bill 81) is asking of you is what farmers should be doing," he said. "There is nothing in there that’s unattainable."

Quebec’s heavily funded farmers made changes to comply with a nutrient management law but there is no government money available for Ontario farmers. Meantime, the simplest nutrient management plan can take 10 to 40 hours, he said. A farmer can cut down on the work by writing his own farm description.

PAPER WORK?

The more fields you own the more work it takes. Why? "Each field generates five to six pages," he said. One nutrient management plan he worked on was 180 pages and filled a two-inch binder.

Adding to the work is the nutrient management plan requirement of detailed crop rotation over three years. But "many farmers have trouble deciding in the fall what they will plant next spring," Cook said. "You’ll end up making changes to the plan. There’s far too much paper work."

WHEN?

The good news is that 90 per cent of Ontario farms will have no trouble getting approval for their required nutrient management plans, he said, adding that it’s the schedule that is too aggressive. Large farms (for example: a farm with more than 150 dairy cows or 1,800 finishing pigs) would have the earliest deadline for a nutrient management plan. The plan would need to be in place by 2004. Most farms in eastern Ontario (up to 75 dairy cows or 900 finishing pigs) have until 2008 to submit a nutrient management plan.