Ontario Farmers “Significantly” Impacted by Hydro Increases

Oct 15, 2012

Ontario PC Survey Indicates 60.7% of Farmers Reported Hydro Cost Hurting Business

The Ontario PC Party Critic for Agriculture, Ernie Hardeman MPP for Oxford announced today the results of a survey conducted to gain feedback from farmers to indicate some of the biggest challenges facing their farm businesses and 67.7% of Ontario farmers indicated that the increasing costs of hydro posed a “significant” impact on their farming operation.

“97% of farmers said they have been impacted by increased hydro costs and 60.7% of those said the impact has been significant,” said Hardeman “Farmers are working hard to make ends meet and grow their businesses but they are struggling with the impact of government policies like spiraling hydro rates.”

It has been forecasted that the cost of hydro is going to increase by 47% over the next five years, which has been attributed to green energy subsides for wind and solar projects in addition to the recently discovered costs of relocating two power plants that left taxpayers on the hook for $900 million.

The survey was part of an initiative by the Ontario PC caucus in order to identify some of the key challenges that farmers are facing so that the PC’s could assist with advocating for farmer’s needs. While 60.7% of farmers listed the rising cost of hydro as a significant impact, a total of 97% of farmers said that they have been impacted by hydro costs.

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.