Nova Scotia farmers get $4 million for emergency preparedness, response plan in wake of recent wildfires, floods

Between post-tropical storm Fiona, a polar vortex, drought, extreme wildfire conditions and floods, farmers in the province have dealt with a lot in the past year.

With that in mind, the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture has secured relief in a new $4 million Nova Scotia Agriculture Recovery Fund.

The fund will be used to assist farmers with emergency preparedness on their farms and also to come up with an enhanced emergency response plan to assist the industry across the province during emergency situations, including communications and mental health support.

The federation said it will work with industry partners, members, and the Department of Agriculture to deliver the programming. President Allan Melvin said the fund is particularly important in the face of more and more weather-related events, and the industry needs to be able to plan for a sustainable and resilient future for farmers.

The federation is establishing a steering committee to start working on the emergency preparedness plan and programming through the fund.

“It’s certainly broad strokes at this point, but I think it will be a bit of a hybrid approach in things like fuel storage and generators and those kinds of things that have become key in emergency events to maintain operations and keep things cool, fresh, or alive in some cases – keeping the water pumps running and things like that.”

He said outside those issues, there is also an industry-wide emergency response planning component that will look at how the industry can better prepare the unpredicted emergencies that may befall farmers.

“Things like who to call and how to prepare before something happens rather than trying to figure them all out on the fly in the heat of an event.”

It will include building on-farm resiliency so dairy farms don’t have to dump milk if they lose power for a week, or vegetables don’t rot in coolers without refrigeration, or keeping livestock from getting stranded.

“Every commodity is a little different in terms of what their needs are, and it depends, too, on the type of event we’re facing,” Melvin said. “Often, it’s about maintaining some degree of independence for a number of days, because it doesn’t matter the type of event, it usually comes with a power outage. That’s often the big challenge.”

He said the spring wildfires showed the need to find space for animals if an area has to be evacuated, and to have a network of people with livestock trailers who could be available to help move animals to a safer place.

“Having that process in place ahead of time for that kind of situation would be beneficial,” he said. “There’s also things like keeping your fence lines clear so that in a hurricane you’re not having fence lines getting damaged and livestock being able to escape, and setbacks around properties and fence lines in case of fires.”

He said with any farm “there’s a laundry list of things you could do to prepare for a laundry list of potential events, so that’s where the preparedness piece comes from, to get our industry and farmers focused on planning for the what-ifs and taking those proactive steps.”

He said some information, like the Fire Smart program, is available already.

Some of the information farmers need is scattered, but if it could be consolidated it will make everyone’s lives easier, Melvin said.