ALUS received another pat on the back from Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change.

Alternative Land Use Services, or ALUS for short, was awarded the Minister’s Award for Environment Excellence in January. The incentive-based program helps farmers improve their operations while providing benefits for all of society such as conserving water, improving wildlife habitat and slowing erosion.

ALUS is a grassroots program, started by Delta Waterfowl Foundation and the Keystone Agriculture Producers of Manitoba. In Ontario, the Norfolk Stewardship Program – a now-defunct program ran by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry to encourage land stewardship – launched the pilot that got the program going in 2007. The program is funded by a combination of fundraising and government money.

The unique thing about the program is it allows each community to focus on what is important to it.

ALUS now has four communities in Ontario: Norfolk, Bayham, Grey-Bruce and Ontario East (Raisin Region Conservation Authority and South Nation Conservation Authority). The unique thing about the program is it allows each community to focus on what is important to it. For instance, sedimentation in the Big Otter Creek is the focus in Bayham and livestock fencing to keep cattle out of cold-water streams is a focus in Grey-Bruce.

“It’s not just the funding that helps the farmer,” said Dave Reid, Ontario ALUS transfer facilitator. “It’s doing the right thing, it’s the extension that comes with a warm body coming out to the kitchen table and identifying things that can be done.”