An incentive is being offered to Canadian dairy farmers looking to make their operation greener.

Farm Credit Canada is offering up to $2-thousand through its Sustainability Incentive Program, with support from the Dairy Farmers of Canada and Lactanet, a farm organization that provides a variety of services for dairy farmers.

FCC’s Director of Lending Products and Sustainability Programs Curtis Grainger says FCC customers are eligible when it starts this September.

“The criteria to qualify for the Sustainability Incentive Program payment will be a combination of herd sustainability metrics and proAction environment module results. Producers on milk recording with Lactanet will be able to utilize the recently launched Herd Sustainability Index results, while those not on milk recording will also be able to qualify through providing similar metrics” FCC stated in a news release.

The full details on criteria and how to apply will be released in the fall.

The incentive payment appears to be small, but Grainger says this is a relatively new program, so there’s room for improvement in the future.

“It’s really important to us to make all of our programming relatively consistent from an incentive payment standpoint,” Grainger said. “This is for sure a starting point with us to figure out what that right size amount is,”

David Wiens, the new president of the Dairy Farmers of Canada, and says this partnership helps advance their goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from on-farm dairy production by 2050.

While Canada’s dairy industry has one of the lowest carbon footprints for dairy in the world at less than half the global average, Wiens believes they can continue to build off of that progress.

“The carbon footprint from 1990 until 2020 has been reduced by 25 percent and so that’s pretty significant,” Wiens said. “There are other areas in which as more information becomes available there’s other things we can pursue in terms of helping to reduce that carbon footprint,”

“Yes we have made a major reduction…and yet we firmly believe that we can continue to build on that success and continue to reduce it.” he added.

He says this incentive could be used to find greater efficiencies on the farm.

The collaboration announcement was made at the Dairy Farmers of Canada annual general meeting in Winnipeg.

The Sustainability Incentive Program continues to look for other sectors for partnerships.