Helping with Renewable Projects

Helping with Renewable Projects. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. When you are starting to look at renewable energy projects for your farming operation there is now considerable resources to help. The northwest has taken clean energy projects very seriously and is committing resources to aid in completing successful projects. Stephanie Page is a Renewable Energy Specialist for the Oregon Department of Agriculture. PAGE: We really work in a variety of areas relating to energy at ODA helping growers with efficiency projects, helping them access especially the incentives that are available for energy efficiency projects. We've got a great tax credit in Oregon for efficiency projects such as no-till seeders, efficient pumps, variable speed drives, efficient irrigation systems, nursery/greenhouse heating efficiency upgrades. Page says they really work on a little bit of everything. PAGE: The again on the renewable side a variety of issues that we work on biofuels, local crops that are suitable for biofuels, the actual use of biofuels on the consumer side. We work with consumers; we've helped folks with grants for solar livestock watering systems, so just a big variety of issues...small wind systems. A little bit of everything. Whatever is appropriate for the individual grower's situation. A lot of push is being made towards smaller project with big impacts. PAGE: A farm project is small when you're looking at some of the costs of the larger projects when you compare but both large and small farms can do a variety of energy projects and certainly a greenhouse operation can spend a couple hundred thousand dollars easily in greenhouse upgrades. A small acreage farm could do a drip irrigation system; a large dairy could do a variable speed drive. I would still consider those small projects in terms of their total costs but they can be on large or small operations and have a big energy impact regardless of the size of operation. Interestingly, Page says even with all the resources available a lot people don't know where to turn for help and that's where she comes in. PAGE: I think there are still a lot of people out there who just aren't aware of the incentives that are available. I and a lot of the people here at the conference go out into the ag community to promote these incentives and we still get people who come up to us and say I want to do a project and I just don't know where to start. Folks are busy farming and they don't have time to track down all the information about incentives that are available. For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network. www.harvestcleanenergy.org