The Peace River Forage Association of BC has received $85,380 from the BC Hydro Peace Agricultural Compensation Fund to support research and training projects.
The association received the largest sum of money in the fund’s seventh round of grants, announced last month.
Under the Research and Demonstration Initiatives funding stream, $80,380 will go towards conducting research on the use of prescribed burns to rejuvenate forage lands in the region.
The three-year project will assess soil carbon storage by measuring forage production, forage nutrition and soil health.
PRFA coordinator Nadia Mori is excited by the project, which has the potential to be a tool not just for carbon sequestration but rejuvenating forage resources in the region.
The new funding should help advance work in this area, which could contribute to reconciliation initiatives and the Peace Region Living Labs project.
“A lot of the First Nation communities here [are] very interested in bringing back more of their cultural learning practices,” Mori says.
The research results will be shared regionally, provincially and nationally, giving the project a broader impact.
“There’s so many projects that happen that they’re just about the research and they’re not about the sharing of the information,” PRFA communications contractor Heather Fossum says. “[PRFA is] really focused on sharing the information. … That’s the real part that brings in producers.”
Fossum says localized research is what convinces people practices can work in their area, and fuels long-term change.
PRFA also received $5,000 in funding for holistic management training.
The latest round of awards from the compensation fund, set up to offset the agricultural impacts of the Site C dam, saw seven projects approved for $180,298.
The next deadline for funding applications is January 31, followed by an intake from July 31 to September 29.
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