The long-term prosperity of B.C.'s agricultural sector is linked to its environmental sustainability. With increasing agricultural production intensity and expanding knowledge of our biological and physical environment, the need for improving farm practices has been recognized.
The goal of the Environmental Farm Plan (EFP) program is to raise awareness amongst producers and enhance environmental farm stewardship. This can be accomplished through the establishment and implementation of EFPs. An EFP is normally seen as a voluntary, confidential, producer-driven planning exercise that uses specifically designed resource materials and technical assistance.
In B.C., both the senior governments and the agriculture industry recognize the value of EFPs, and programming is available in all agricultural regions of the province.
The EFP concept has been around for over two decades. The first in North America was the Farm-A-Syst program in Michigan. This was adapted by the Ontario Farm Environment Coalition for use by Ontario farmers. The Ontario program has been in place for well over 10 years.
Since 2004, all Canadian provinces have had an EFP program in place. EFPs are voluntary. There are no government laws or regulations that require a farmer or rancher to prepare a plan.
However, institutions such as banks, insurance companies, food processors and buyers are paying increasing attention to the impact of agriculture on the environment and are requesting some form of environmental risk assessment from their clients. Farmers may find their environmental farm plan to be a very useful tool when dealing with these organizations.
Between 2003 and 2010, recognized planning advisors working under the Canada-B.C. Environmental Farm Planning Program provided planning workbook and reference guide materials to participating farmers. These materials were used to develop farm plans that identified on-farm environmental risks and subsequently established a priority sequence of action items for addressing those risks.
An EFP is an agriculture-environment risk identification process. It is conducted through a comprehensive review of activities and facilities that exist on the farm or ranch with respect to their impact on the environment. The review also looks at the impact of the environment on the farm, for example, impacts from wildlife or flooding.
The review considers current environmental regulation requirements and beneficial management practices (BMPs) that should be in place on farm. It looks at the risk of the operation to the environment as well as the risk of the environment to the farm or ranch operation.
