PREPARING AN
ENVIRONMENTAL
FARM PLAN
The EFP is delivered through an individual or workshop approach, delivered by trained facilitators in your local area. Those who are members of clubs can start an EFP with their coordinator.
STEP 1: INDIVIDUAL PREPARATORY SESSION
A facilitator provides a workbook, in digital or binder form, whichever you prefer. There is no charge for the workbook. The facilitator introduces you to the workbook and helps you begin a soil and site assessment of your operation, while completing maps and tables.
The workbook was revised significantly in 2004 and is designed to help you see your operation in a new way. It will help you assess how your buildings, products, and practices may impact the soil, water, air and biodiversity in the environment around your farm. It will help you consider steps that you can take to reduce any potential risks.
The workbook is divided into seven sections: Introduction, Farmstead and Homestead, Livestock Operations, Soil and Crop, Ecological Resources, Acts and Regulations, Conversion Table and Glossary, and Action Plan. These sections are divided into 22 subsections and contain the risk assessment questions that help you evaluate your farm. You complete only those subsections that relate to your operation.
Each sub-section provides information on five topics that you need to be aware of as you complete your assessment. They are soil health, water quality, air quality, biodiversity and profitability.
STEP 2: FARM SELF-ASSESSMENT
Individually or with the assistance of a coordinator you complete the questions in the workbook that apply to your operation and begin to consider different solutions for potential risks that you have identified. While undertaking this self-assessment process, you begin to prepare your action plan. Preparing your action plan will help you consider beneficial management practices (BMPs) that will help you farm in a more sustainable manner. As you work on your action plan, you will have to decide whether potential problems result from natural risks on your farm (e.g. soil type or depth of the water table) or from the way you manage your farm operation. You will need to determine what you can do to solve these problems or reduce their impacts, either immediately or over the following years.
You set the schedule that you will follow to make changes in your operations. The schedule can be changed as circumstances change.
STEP 3: SUBMITTING YOUR EFP FOR REVIEW BY A THIRD PARTY REVIEWER
You are encouraged to submit your plan for review to the Collège Communautaire du Nouveau-Brunswick INNOV division (CCNB-INNOV) This allows you to receive a certificate for your farm and become eligible for programs which can assist you financially in implementing your action plan
STEP 4: IMPLEMENTATION AND UPDATING THE PLAN
You begin implementing your action plan on a schedule determined by you. EFPs are “living documents” and should be updated every five years or maybe sooner to integrate new developments (e.g. construction of a new barn) or technologies, or to make adjustments as conditions change in your enterprise