Funding to return land to natural state

Aug 11, 2023

OTTAWA — Dairy Farmers of Canada has introduced a new program for a farmer to get funding if he takes land out of production.

Dairy farmers will get a helping hand with the construction of habitat that will return land to wetlands, grasslands and treed areas.

Called the New Acre Project, it is a one-year pilot plan that would take 84 acres out of production, or out of future production, on an undisclosed number of dairy farms. DFC has not disclosed how much it will spend on the initiative during the pilot year or how many farms will tap into the program.

DFC says the New Acre Project is part of its commitment to achieve net zero emissions from milk production by 2050. The resulting natural areas are supposed to capture and store carbon as well as improve wildlife habitat.

The New Acre Project will be delivered by the Alternative Land Use Services organization. ALUS, a charitable organization, has been promoting ecological improvement projects on farms for decades.

Source : Farmersforum

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.