‘You’re sitting on your own fuel source’: Ottawa pushes clean-tech subsidies to convince farmers to use corn stalks as fuel

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The fall of 2019 was so wet that the combines kept getting stuck in the mud at Bill Prybylski’s 14,000-acre farm, two hours northeast of Regina in Yorkton, Sask. The rain went on for days at a time, never letting up long enough for the sun to dry his wheat, peas, barley and oats.

“Talking with some older farmers from the area, they don’t remember a fall being that bad,” Prybylski said.

He and his family eventually stopped waiting for sun to dry the fields. The days were getting shorter and colder, so they brought the crops in wet. He could feel the difference as he drove the combine. The big machine strained as it threshed the grain, burning more fuel, driving slower over the fields.

The problem with wet crops is they will spoil in storage, so farmers use industrial dryers that blow hot air through the crops and suck out moisture. In the fall of 2019 — known across the Prairies as the “harvest from hell” — running those fuel-powered dryers became a significant expense for farmers, pitting the agricultural sector against the federal government over the added costs on that fuel from carbon pollution pricing.

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Prybylski, who serves as a vice-president with the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, ran his dryer as often as 24 hours a day in 2019, and spent roughly $45,000 on propane to power the dryer — more than double his normal cost. Farmers argued that they couldn’t pass on the extra fuel expense on to the global commodities market, where they compete with producers in other countries who aren’t under the same carbon pricing pressure.

Ottawa is now taking strides to mend that relationship. This month, the government rolled out a $165-million program that will help farmers adopt cleaner technology that use alternative fuel options. The program will also offer up to $2 million in repayable and non-repayable grants for research and development on a new generation of low-emission farm equipment and technology.

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On top of the funding for new technology, the federal government has also said it will ease the carbon pricing burden on the agricultural sector with an estimated $100 million in the 2021 budget as a way to “return a portion of the proceeds of carbon pollution pricing back into the pockets” of farmers.

“We listened to their objections and we believe we’ve met it head-on,” Jim Carr, federal minister and special representative for the Prairies, said earlier this month, according to the Western Producer, an industry publication.

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But some agriculture groups are questioning whether the funding for new agricultural technology would provide relief for farmers any time soon.

Keith Currie, vice-president at the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, said the new technology would have to be affordable, and the alternative fuel would have to be readily available, for the program to have any meaningful impact.

The government’s plan will cover half the cost of implementing or upgrading agricultural technology at for-profit operations, and 75 per cent for non-profits, so long as the total cost of the project exceeds $50,000. The funding program specifically earmarks $50 million for farmers to purchase more efficient grain dryers.

“If we do not take (climate change) seriously, farmers are the first ones to be directly impacted in the fields with severe weather events,” Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said in an interview, adding that consumer demand is rising for sustainably produced food and Canada needs to keep pace if it is to “remain a leader” in the global sector.

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The agriculture department has received 51 initial applications for equipment upgrades, and seven for research and development, Bibeau’s office said late last week.

In the weeks since the new technology funding was announced, farmers have also been calling Triple Green Products Inc. in Morris, Man. — about an hour south of Winnipeg.

The industrial equipment manufacturer has made biomass-fuelled dryers for the mining sector for more than a decade, to dry products such as lime and gypsum. But since the harvest from hell in 2019, Triple Green has been focusing more on grain dryers that burn biomass that is easy to come by on farms, including corn stalks, straw, dust from oat hulls and wood chips.

“We saw a business opportunity because of all the chatter in agriculture with the expense of drying grain,” said chief executive Lyall Wiebe. His pitch to farmers was simple: You’re sitting on your own fuel source.

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Triple Green’s systems cost roughly $100,000 for a smaller unit, and can range as high $500,000. Wiebe said farmers can see a return on that investment, through savings on fuel, in two to five years.

But up until recently, some farmers were hesitant to make the switch. The government’s offer to cover half the price of the upgrade has apparently changed that.

“The phone has been ringing off the hook,” he said. “It doesn’t stop.”

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