Thank you for joining us this afternoon I'm
Laura Barnes, Executive Director of the Great
Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable,
before we get going, I just want to give you
a few housekeeping notes: presentation slides
are available for download on the GLRPPR website,
that's www.GLRPPR.org, and there on the Meetings
page, there should be a link in your chat
window to those, although, don't use the top
link because GoToMeeting appended the pyramid
at the end of the link and it won't work,
so the correct link is one chat message down,
I'd also like to remind everyone about our
upcoming Webinar on June 18th, Natalie Hummel
and Kathy Davey of USEPA will be talking about
how to use EPA's pollution prevention greenhouse
gas and cost calculators to measure environmental
outcomes.
So today, I am pleased to welcome Myla Kelly,
who's going to explain how Montana has applied
the energy economy and environment technical
assistance framework, which is otherwise known
as E3, to the agricultural sector.
Myla is the coordinator of the Peaks to Prairies
Pollution Prevention Center, in cooperation
with EPA Region 8 states, Peaks to Prairies
encourages adoption of pollution prevention
practices by citizens, businesses, and local
governments, and Peaks to Prairies is also
our region 8 partner in the P2RX National
Pollution Prevention Information Network,
Myla also co-chairs the Tribal Pollution Prevention
Work Group, whose mission is to work collaboratively
with tribes throughout the US in reducing
the environmental and health risks associated
with the generation of waste on tribal lands.
Myla has a BS in biology from Tufts University
and an MS in forestry resource conservation
from the University of Montana, she served
as the riparian ecologist for the Northwest
Indian Fisheries Commission and has worked
as a private consultant on fisheries, watershed
planning, and waste reduction efforts throughout
the West for the past fifteen years.
With that, I'll turn the controls over to
Myla, if you have questions during the presentation,
please submit them using the Questions pane
on the GoToWebinar control panel on your screen,
there are several places during the presentation
where we'll pause to ask for questions and
comments and then I'll read those and have
Myla respond, so take it away, Myla.
Myla: OK, great, thank you so much, Laura, I am
so happy to be here, and thank you all for
joining me and listening in about this initiative
that we have begun in Montana, and I always
think I like these Webinars because it's great
to be able to reach out to folks across the
country without always having to travel to
get together, but I really like talking to
people when I can look in their eyes, so I
find this Webinar thing a little bit odd because
I'm just checking into the black box, but
it's got its pros and cons and thank you so
much for being patient and for joining us
today, I am going to figure out how to change
my slides and then start talking.
Ok, so as Laura mentioned, I'm the coordinator
of the Peaks to Prarie Pollution Prevention
Center, which is a partner with GLRPPR, we
work primarily in Region 8, which are the
states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming,
Utah, and Colorado in providing pollution
prevention outreach, and we do that with the
Pollution Prevention Funding Act of 1990,
and so we've been doing various initiatives
that fall under the Pollution Prevention Act
for a number of years, but this particular
initiative that we're going to talk about
today is three economy energy environment.
Ok, let's see, our center is located, this
is a little bit of background, at Montana
State University in Bozeman, Montana, we are
a part of the University within the extension
division, so within extension there is a particular
department called the Housing and Environmental
Health Department, and we work within that
department within extension within the land-grant
of Montana State University, I've managed
our Prevention Center for a little over four
years now, and what I really love most about
it is convening the professionals that have
a vested interest in whatever the particular
issue is that we're talking about, convening
those professionals to learn from one another
and with this particular initiative, those
partners would be our energy efficiency and
pollution prevention experts, along with our
Ag producers and the various Ag interests
that exist through our federal and state partners.
So I'm not sure who you guys all are out there
but I'm just going to give a quick overview
of what E3 is before I talk about what our
role, or what a potential role could be for
you, in the Ag sector, so E3 is a multi-federal
partner initiative that's taking place nationwide
for the purpose of working with communities
to connect small and medium-sized manufacturers
with experts from federal agencies, states,
and regions.
This looks different for each community, and
in each E3 community there are teams that
are formed to conduct very customized technical
assessments and offer practical sustainable
approaches that manufacturers can incorporate
into their operations, the goal of these assessments
are to reduce energy consumption, to minimize
carbon footprint, to prevent pollution, increase
productivity, and drive innovation throughout
each facility.
So when this concept of E3 began, it began
within their realm of manufacturing, the federal
partners that participate in E3 and that have
signed a Memorandum of Understanding to participate
in whatever way they best can, includes the
Department of Commerce, the Department of
Energy, USEPA, the Department of Labor, USDA,
and SBA, there are a number of E3 facilities
or communities that have begun to use this
framework around the country, and you can
see here it's just a Snapchat from the E3
webpage that shows what some of the different
initiatives are that are going on around the
country.
So USDA was one of the recent federal partners
added to this framework and they were a bit
unsure as to what their role could be in this
E3 framework since it had historically been
driven by manufacturing, and meanwhile I'd
been present for years of this discussion
as E3 was kind of being rolled out, and I
wondered how best E3 could benefit our particular
state and our particular region and what our
role could potentially be and not.
Agriculture is one of the largest economic
factors in our region, meaning EPA's Region
8, and over half of the land area in Region
8 is devoted to Ag, we're a big, large land-based
region, and so it makes sense that one of
our largest economic drivers is Ag.
When we talk about Montana, specifically,
it's closer to two thirds of our land acres
are devoted to agriculture, the rest is federal-state
land, and then we've got some communities
thrown in there, too, but really it's very
heavily Ag-based, we have close to 30 thousand
farms in Montana, averaging a couple of thousand
acres each, so we do still have a relatively
small, small to mid-size farms.
For each Ag operation, energy costs are a
significant portion of the operating cost,
so Ag is important, lowering energy costs
is important, and our environment is important,
and that was the backdrop to kind of developing
this pilot in E3 and Ag.
We began some initial discussions in the spring
of 2012, we began formulating this team, this
E3 team, through a grant, a source reduction
grant in 2012, the objective of which was
to conduct hands-on E3 assessments for Ag
producers, following the award of this grant,
we started off with a bang, with just lots
of different coordination pieces, and I'll
talk about that in a little bit, and in the
fall of 2012, we were awarded an additional
source reduction grant to take our pilot efforts
and evolve those into a larger, statewide
effort.
Through this project development and through
our meetings, particularly with USDA partners,
we came up with this overarching goal, and
the goal was pretty simple, there's no rocket
science behind it, but it's really important
because it was critical in designing the rest
of our project, and that goal was to ensure
that by participating in E3, we put our agricultural
producers in the best position possible to
maximize available financial opportunities
in order to implement E3 recommendations,
so the point of E3 is to develop energy efficiency
in pollution prevention recommendations.
But that's not really the point, the point
is to get those implemented and to actually
realize some environmental and energy cost,
so in order to ethically do this within the
agricultural sector, it was really important
to ensure that these recommendations could
actually go somewhere, and that they could
actually take our producers, put our producers
in the position where they could leverage
some low-cost loans, some grant opportunities,
whatever that was, we needed to ensure that
E3 Ag assessments were meeting the highest
bar possible for funding opportunities, so
in order to do that we needed to figure out
what that highest bar was.
So how do we make it happen: there are three
key components here, one is finding willing
producers, we need farmers and landscapes
to work with, we need access to farmer's land
and their operations, and there's a trust
issue here, when I left out our federal E3
partners, that doesn't necessarily elicit
a sigh of relief from many of our agricultural
producers, our Montana farmers are dealing
with old regulations, new regulations, changing
regulations, disappearing farm bills, reappearing
versions of the farm bill, and not advocating
one way or the other on any of those particular
regulations, we do need to recognize that
that exists and that there can be an understandable
trust hurdle.
The second is conducting the assessment, once
we've identified folks to work with, we need
boots on the ground, so these assessments
and audits and write-ups take a ton of time
and in order to get the most environmental
kind of bang for our buck, we need a bunch
of people working on this, and number three
is securing implementation dollars, the audits
have got to be beneficial for those willing
to participate, otherwise you're not going
to get the farmer talking across the fence
or at the stock growers meeting, saying,"
Hey, you should participate in this E3 assessment,"
if there is no benefit to the producer, it's
going to be pretty dead in the water.
One of those benefits is being able to secure
opportunities to cost-share or otherwise assist
in the investment of implementing energy efficiency
audit recommendations, so that's what we figured
out you need to do, and then we started looking
at the landscape of different partners that
participate in E3 or that have anything to
do with energy efficiency, Ag production,
pollution prevention, and we started looking
at all of these different logos and people
and human beings and trying to figure out
how do you solve the problem, the challenge
of gaining trust, getting the boots on the
ground, and getting farmers bought in.
And that's why I really think the E3 in Ag
model that we have developed, and that is
utilizing the existing talents as well as
training and working with our land-grant university
extension agents and professionals, can be
widely unsuccessfully used and replicated.
It really revolves around capitalizing on
a century's worth of extension work, extension
has the mission to bring science, engineering,
and Ag research to the people of this state,"
the common folk," as it was stated in the
late 1800s, Montana State University, and
every state has a cooperative extension service
but it varies a little bit from state to state
as far as whether there is a particular agent
in each county or whether that's lumped by
region, you know, it's a little bit different
state by state but basically, well, in Montana
for example, we have professionals in each
county that are in place to help our Montana
Ag producers and landowners increase profits,
reduce loss, protect our food supply, and
sustain future resources, so you can see there
really a lot of overlap between the overarching
E3 goal, our overarching goal, and the goal
of cooperative extension service.
What's really critical is that extension has
an established trust relationship with producers,
and as a result, they are really essential
and, number one, finding producers that are
willing to participate in an E3 assessment,
number two, communicating the benefits of
an E3 assessment and subsequent implementation
of recommendations, and, number three, being
able to communicate those successful outcomes
to other producers in the state, so they're
really kind of the linchpin, and then through
this cooperative extension partnership I believe
that this E3 and Ag concept is hopefully going
to be, and seems to be, starting to take off
in our state.
There are few other really key partnerships,
particularly with the USDA program, one's
with NRCS, the Natural Resource Conservation
Service, one's with rural development, the
other's with FSA, the Farm Service Agency,
I want to talk quickly about those, NRCS conservationists
are also, you know, located throughout the
state, and I believe that's the same nationwide,
but they have field offices that serve counties
is almost every county in each state, the
wonderful thing about energy, well, there
are a number wonderful things about NRSC,
but NRSC has developed numerous technical
tools which are very important and were extremely
useful in conducting an E3 for Ag.
Some of these technical tools, and I'll show
you a couple of them in a minute, include
their Cropland Energy Estimator, that is important
in calculating many of the E3 metrics, and
NRCS also has funding sources, such as the
Environmental Quality Incentive Program, we
determined that this program, which is called
EQIP, is the highest bar that I mentioned
earlier, there's a lot of funding that goes
to EQIP programs and it's also quite challenging,
they require very specific technical specifications
in order to qualify for cost-match opportunities,
so it's a relatively large funding pot, and
the bar for being eligible for that funding
pot is pretty high, and so we determined that
this is kind of our highest bar, and that
all of our E3 assessments were going to meet
this NRCS EQIP requirement, and this will
come through a little bit later as well.
The rural development program of USDA is an
additional very strong partnership, they have
a couple of grant opportunities that are just
sort of made for the type of recommendations
that result from an E3 assessment, these grant
and loan opportunities include The Renewable
Energy for America, the REF program, the value-added
producer grant that they have, and loan guarantee
program, the Farm Services Agency is another
component of USDA that makes guaranteed loans
to family farmers and ranchers to promote,
build, and sustain family farms in support
of a thriving agricultural economy, their
particular program that is a good fit for
E3 recommendation is their guaranteed conservation
law, which provides the maximum loan amount
of over a million dollars to implement any
conservation practice in an NRCS-approved
conservation plan, we go back to that bar
again because in order to qualify for an FSA
guarantee conservation loan, the producer
will have had to have created an NRCS-approved
conservation plan even though there are different
components of USDA, again, a producer would
have had to go through the process of an NRCS-approved
plan to be approved for an FSA loan.
So again, it was important to do our homework
with this up front, USDA was a new agency
that I hadn't worked with too much in the
past, so kind of sorting this all out, it
took some time and understanding how they
work together and how they organized took
a bit of time.
So we began by soliciting applications, so
we're back to, you know, step one, getting
our Cooperative Extension Service agents trained
up and getting out there, so we solicited
six agents and we've gone past the pilot now
so I think about up to twelve, and now we
needed to train them, they have all kinds
of background in, you know, soil conservation,
weed management, and, you know, each extension
agent kind of has their own specialty but
we needed to train them in all aspects of
on-farm energy efficiency.
We needed to find a producer state, so in
doing so and then signing on to be an agent
with our program, they agreed that they would
be trained, that they would find a producer
in their area who is interested and willing
to have an assessment or audit completed,
they agreed to conduct the assessments and
they agreed to work with a contractor that
we have contracted with to complete an assessment
report that would qualify under NRCS requirements,
so we did that and we had our first training
that was last year and then we knew that these
dots represent where our first initial six
agents were located throughout the state.
So, as I've been mentioned before but it's
a bit confusing so I'll just reiterate it
one more time, we determined that NRCS was
our highest bar for implementation funding,
so we get that, so for the pilot we decided
to pretty strictly follow this NRCS model,
and since the pilot we've kind of expanded
this a little bit, and I'll talk about that
in a minute, but the NRCS model divided Ag
production into two categories: landscape
and headquarters, so simply speaking, headquarters
is the buildings and operation so, you know,
everything that you see here from shops to,
you know, kind of the stuff related to buildings,
lighting, all the types of things, landscape
is production practices, so what your cropping
regime is, your irrigation practices, those
types of things, so obviously things aren't
ever really that clear-cut but it's kind of
a starting point for how to divide up the
opportunity.
So our agents went forth, they conducted their
audits, these audits took up to all the corners
and borders of the states, the picture on
the left are my weird kids which I drag around
over the landscape to try and help me out
with these things, on this particular photo
we were at an organic multi-cropping facility
in the far north central part of Montana,
which is called The Golden Triangle, and so
we have an organic farm over here, this picture
on the far right we have a gentleman who is
talking to us about the really important factor
of properly adjustmenting the nozzles on your
irrigation system, the picture in the center
of is from a facility that we went to in southwest
Montana, and this particular Ag producer had
designed a machine called" The Love Machine,"
which he designed from scratch to do the manual
work involved with flood irrigation and it
kind of creeps down the creek or the irrigation
ditch and it goes slow enough so that the
water can spill on to these particular areas
that they need to irrigate, so it was just
fascinating, and the picture on the bottom
right is a grain drier, which in some parts
of Montana and I'm sure in some of your states
as well, does comprise quite a bit of the
energy used at John's farm.
So one of our major findings of this pilot
was kind of the" duh!" moment that one of
the primary drivers of energy consumption
and a really critical avenue for identifying
energy efficiency and pollution prevention
opportunities is diesel efficiency and maintenance,
and that was one thing that we have found
was not very well-captured through the NRSC
model that we use.
So it wasn't well captured in the training
that we initially put together, and we remedied
that this year with the training that we held
with our MSU northern partners that have a
complete lab that deals with energy efficiency
and one of the things that I learned after
sitting through two days of diesel efficiency
information is that, well, there's a lot to
it.
So two days worth of diesel efficiency include
everything from, and these are all factors
that greatly affect the efficiency of the
machinery and what the overall pollution and
energy will be, so fuel, intake, exhaust,
cooling, lubrication, electrical, wheels,
tires, ballasting, exhaust, after-treatment,
all of these play a huge role in gaining the
maximum efficiency that farmers can't from
their machinery.
We do have, this training took place just
last week, and we did decide to film it with
a film student who is just looking for a few
extra bucks, and he filmed this video and
all of the training and we've put it into
different chapters depending on the topic,
and we put that on some training video that
we're now uploading to our site, so I'll give
you a couple pointers to where that stuff
is or will be.
The other big opportunity for energy efficiency
saving is in irrigation so NRCS has some great
irrigation efficiency models, which we use,
and we're now going beyond that in our next
phase and releasing an actual flow meter so
that we can go from predictions to realities,
and this is another thing that we've learned
through the pilot that was actually very important,
it's one thing to estimate what your irrigation
system is doing, understand what it can do,
and then understand what it is actually doing,
so this gives you very different metrics when
you're analyzing what your game can by changing
irrigation systems, by changing nozzle sizes,
by going to different pump drives, all of
those are affected greatly by not just your
predicted outflow of irrigation but your actual
output of irrigation.
So just a couple of things to show you through
these landscape evaluations, normally when
we do this kind of presentation I have the
Ag extension agent that actually collected
this information do this part of the talk,
but he wasn't available so, you know, I don't
necessarily know all the ins-and-outs of this
but I think it's worthwhile, just kind of
giving you an overview, remembering that the
landscape component of this is dealing with
irrigation and the cropping system, one thing
that it's important to do with an E3 assessment
is to gather any data that has already been
collected, with any project that's really
important, so in this particular instance,
they had done-through our utility- they had
done an irrigation system audit report in
the past in 2004, so this is really helpful
in trying to identify what the velocity discharges
were now, what they were before, and what
efficiencies might be gained.
So for example, he had one pretty high bench
that he was irrigating, not a bench like that
you sit on but, you know, a landscape bench
that he was irrigating, and he was concerned
that much of his power bill was driven by
his peak demand flow, and that peak demand
flow does drive huge, or is a huge factor
in the cost that a producer is paying, now
if he's trying to drive the water up to this
bench and pump has to be set at a certain
level in order to overcome the initial head
pressure than his peak demand drive can be
very high, so where there's opportunity for
changing the system around a little bit, that
might be able to alleviate some of that.
In figuring that out, because it's complicated,
you need background information that you're
able to obtain, it's very helpful, so these
are just some examples of this path audit
report that we use for our E3 report, and
you can see it gives you a nice breakdown
on your monthly energy use, as a percent total
of your total energy cost, we use some of
that data to put into the NRCS irrigation
tool, which, to put out some numbers for you,
if you were going to add a flow meter, what
your system is using today, what it could
be, and, you know, all of these, you know,
whether you're adding a flow meter to your
system, whether you're adding a variable speed
drive, your analysis is going to change, so
it's kind of built in to these calculators.
As I said, the other component of the landscape
evaluation is understanding what the cropping
system is, and whether there might be efficiencies,
whether it be diesel efficiencies or other
types of labor gain that you might be able
to gain from a change in your cropping practices,
so this the NRSC Craft Land Energy Estimation
tool, it is amazing to me the work that has
gone behind putting this together, and just
another example of, you know, the benefits
of utilizing some of the tools that are available.
The point of this particular tool is to understand
what the diesel usage is based on what the
operation is, what a crop is, and what the
operation description is, so any type of pillage,
and this is all automatically calculated for
you, depending on what type of pillage you're
doing, whether it's a disc offset and it's
heavy, whether it's a harrow spike tooth,
it's going to give you a different amount
of diesel usage based on the intervals of
plowing, and so through this particular estimation
tool you can look at if you went to a no-till
system, what your diesel gains would be, what
your labor gains would be, if you move-and
obviously there are other factors involved,
and, you know- move, going from an Alfalfa
brome to a triticale, it's gonna depend on,
you know, a lot of different factors, but
this just gives you one kind of, the straight-up
diesel efficiency, labor efficiency piece
to that.
And this is taking the diesel piece of it,
understanding the efficiency piece, and then
this so nicely takes you to, which is, you
know, for me, in reporting our environmental
outputs and metrics is really critical to
our responder, who is the USEPA, so trying
to go from, you know, what you're doing on
the ground to the diesel efficiency gains
to the greenhouse gas emission coefficients
gained, I'm so happy that there are these
brilliants minds that created these calculators,
because it makes our lives so much easier,
some of the headquarters considerations, and
I said, the headquarters are, you know, the
stuff right around the house or right around
the shop facility, those type of things, so
it would include this picture on the bottom
right is a Geothermal Livestock Water and
Ice Preventer, this part of Montana particularly
cold, and I'm sure many of your states are
as well, and this was kind of a unique way
of keeping the water tank ice-free using geothermal
heat, so no electric no gas, and there are
different ways that you can calculate that
benefit, the environmental and eneregy efficiency
benefit of those type of things.
Aside from that, or those types of stock water
tanks, lighting is a big issue, and so this
is an example of the lighting worksheet that
we use, that one of the facilities, The Skinner
Ranch, where you would go-we went through
and counted or asked the Ag producer, and
they know this information but usually they
don't, it depends on how recent renovations
might have taken place, but to record the
location, the lamp type, the wattage, the
number of lamps and fixtures that they used
per year and hours used per day, these are
a list of lamb types or wattages that are
typically found in agricultural enterprises
and that are included in the tool that can
calculate if you switch from this to this,
what will you get, there's a lot of different
lighting options, it's amazing to me.
Here is an example of the summary of recommendations
that we have in one of our final reports,
this is just for an upgrade in the lighting
in the shop and grain facilities, so this
is the estimated reduction in energy use from
whatever it was that the agent proposed, these
are the energy cost savings, payback in years,
and these are the environmental benefits that
are associated with this one particular recommendation
to upgrade the lighting in this one particular
building at the facility, so you can imagine
you can do that for, you know, depending on
the size of your facility, you know, for any
kind of electrical usage, whether it's, you
know, a milking facility, a corn facility,
whatever it is, these tools really can help
you get to this nice little table that we
all are trying to- that we all liked to see
it condensed, and it's really helpful in getting
there, and this all done through the NRCS
headquarters tools.
Here's an example of, you can't see it very
well, but I just wanted to show you what some
of the different identified projects could
be in a farm operation, so if these are some
of the recommendations and what we're trying
to get at here is, you know, what was recommended,
whether they actually did, or what project
was recommended, what the estimated return
would be, whether that cost or the kilowatt
saving on if they were to do that project
recommendation, and then having to do that
final step of asking," well, did you do it?"
and, you know, quite a few of ours haven't
done anything yet because we're just kind
of getting to that point and these things
take time, some of them weren't implemented,
some were, so this just kind of gives you
a way of looking at what some of those opportunities
would be, so, you know, here's the 50 horsepower
ditch pump rebuild, and your kilowatt savings
or your cost savings potential, other projects
include installing of VSD, or variable speed
drive, or something like that, anyway, those
are quite popular now or are kind of the new
wave of many of the irrigation pumps, and
so there's a lot of efficiency that can be
gained through the installation of these types
of of pumps, so through this pilot process
we also realized that there were some questions
and there are some pollution prevention, well
there's many, pollution prevention opportunites
that don't kind of blend themselves, like
there isn't a calculator for it, there's not
a, you know, it might be a sort of difficult
to quantify in tools that already exist, and
one of the questions that comes up a lot,
especially with facilities that are a little
bit savvy, so for example, you know, the organic
multi-cropping facility that we went to, well
they're already doing all these amazing things
as far as efficiency gains and pollution prevention
for all the right reasons,I mean, they're
all ahead of us I think, in their thinking,
and so it's trying to understand someone from,
even coming from that standpoint, will say,"
Just, you know, we'd really like to go to
more bio-based products in our shop facilities,
so what we can we do, you know, what's a good
way, or do you have any reccomendations for
what we can substitute product X with, we
want to be using something that's a little
more environmentally-friendly," so we've put
together this factsheet, you know, to recommend
any particular product, basically we're referring
folks to the bio-preferred program, which
is the federal initiative that is designed
to increase the development and use of bio-based
product from Ag forestry and marine materials.
So it's a US federal initiative that has some
great recommendations for bio-based products,
so we put together this series of factsheets,
this one is just on bio-based products, but
it's trying to summarize, you know, what this
particular tool could be that folks can go
and use, and how to use it, and these are
all up on our Web page, I couldn't print whole
thing, I just put it here as kind of a reminder
to talk about it a little bit.
Another thing that comes up a lot is the issue
of an SPCC plan, and this a new regulation
that's spill prevention, control, and countermeasure
plan, these are now required for any storage
facilities that have storage capacity over
1320 gallons of any type of petroleum-based
products or have this product, and so now
anyone holding more than that, which is really
very common, especially in our rural areas
where access to fuel trucks and those types
of things doesn't happen on a regular basis,
so they are all required to have a spill prevention
and control plan, and so what we decided to
do in this factsheet, we did two different
factsheets, one on if you qualify- if you
have to develop a spill prevention control
plan, an SPCC plan, you know, what are some
of the steps in doing that, and if you don't
qualify for that, what are still some of the
comments that you should take in order to
make sure that that particular material isn't
leaching into your groundwater or that you're
not going to have a spill of it that, frankly,
nobody wants, so we've put together a couple
of fact sheets on that.
So let's see, we've done our assessments,
we're good there, so now what, and as I mentioned
earlier, you know, really, it's all just a
bunch of ink until things actually get implemented,
you know, we can talk all day about what those
potential benefits of swapping out the lighting
in a farm are but until it's actually done,
nobody's benefiting, and so the next, and
really critical step, to being able to match
our project recommendations with funding mechanism
and some of those include that I talked about
earlier, you know, USDA, FSA, Rural Development,
NRCS, the other E3 partners, the Department
of Commerce, The Department of Ag, and these
are for those producers who want to pursue
funding, there are many producers that hear
NRCS and are like," There's no way, I don't
want anything to do with that," for various
reasons, there are some that say," Absolutely,
I want to be involved with NRCS cost share,"
but that's their decision, but we want to
be able to provide them with a fleet of different
potential funding mechanisms because there
might be one where say," Yes, I am willing
to get involved with that," because there
are obvious synergies with many of these USDA
programs, but what are the synergies with
the other E3 agency partners.
So another example that's outside these partnerships
are sustainable agriculture and food systems
funders, those are another potential funding
source for folks that may be interested in
pursuing something outside of the USDA realm.
So what has to happen in this, you know, sector
is to identify a good fit, sit down and communicate
with local offices to get an indication of
whether you're on the right track, so when
I say" offices" I mean the USDA local offices,
so this is where the relationships really
come into play with your E3 partners because
who's going to write the application for the,
you know, the REF program, for example, you
know, it's pretty complicated and, you know,
there is somebody at NRCS or at role development
that could be a producer with doing that,
is there a local office- I'm spacing on the
name of them- but we have some economic development
offices that will actually work with businesses,
and that includes Ag producers, to write grants,
you know, is there a fit with that particular
person, so that's where sort of some of the
relationship key comes into play, and thirdly,
if you have projects that don't clearly fit
within a program, what are some other creative
funding mechanism, whether it's a private
source like sustainable Ag and food system
funders or whether it something more state-based,
that might, or through your local utility,
so once we have that laundry list of funding
opportunities, those are all the steps you
kind of have to go through with that.
We've developed- to help us with this because
there are so many different opportunities
and it can get a little bit confusing for
those of us even that work in the grant realm-
we've developed this, which is just one avenue
for identifying what a good potential fit
would be, we developed this tool with an Ag
producer extension agent educator in mind,
so somebody that wasn't necessarily an expert
in USDA funding sources, or any particular
funding source for that matter, can they just
look through this online living document,
this little brochure, and kind of start to
narrow down the choices of where they might
fit, because the universe can be daunting
of these potential funding sources, there's
a lot of them, it's hard to find it in one
place and so we've put this together, you
can find it on our website, and this is what
it looks like, this is one example of an FSA
guaranteed conservation loan opportunity that
I mentioned to you a little bit earlier, there's
a brief program description, we have example
projects, we talk about who's eligible, the
funding amount, how and when to apply, and
the link, so just the basic," Do I want to
pursue this, yes, I do, where do I go?"
Not the be-all, end-all, but just a way of
getting you in the right direction.
Here is the particular funding source, also
through FSA, but that's not something that
would kind of jump off the top like," Oh,
this is conservation, this is energy efficiency,"
but it's still very applicable, these are
FSA direct operating loans, and if you read
the description, the very end because it will
also assist with soil and water conservation,
or to refinance, but that's with certain limitations,
but the key part there is that it will also
assist with soil and water conservation, so
if you have a recommendation that has come
through this process that fits within the
soil conservation program and that could be
something like cropping, change in your cropping
regime, this might be a potential cost share
or lower loan opportunity.
So just to kind of wrap it up, as far as program
where sustainability is concerned, no one
really understands the particular nuances
and challenges for these diverse funding sources
like the agency program themselves, so we
can make it easier to read through the basics,
like I was just showing you, but there has
to be a relationship with the funders so that
the Ag producer who, you know, who's gonna,
in the end, have to really put together these
loan applications so that they can call the
local Rural Development office NRSC audits
and say that he wants to use his E3 audit
results to apply for cost share on a variable
speed drive, what program do I recommend,
or do they recommend it for, you know, what
do they mean by question six on page 32, you
know, those kinds of, like, we're getting
down to the end here, you know, we're trying
to, or the producers are trying to get these
recommendations implemented, and this relationship
comes from the sort of the building, you know,
this Webinar that we're doing today, you know,
working, you know, talking with the Ag producers
about, you know, the fact, you know, there
are these variety of funding opportunities
available, working with the- and it also requires
an avenue of training with our extension agents,
not just energy efficiency, but it's what's
the next step, what are the funding mechanisms
that are available.
So we need to, you know, part of our job in
coordinating this is increasing the number
of agents that are trained in all aspects
of this process, we are still recruiting for
our next year, this is just one of the little-
I'd be happy to share these event with anyone
interested and this is all on our E3 website,
which is e3.peakstoprariries.org- but this
is just a little pamphlet we gave to the agents
to hand out at the different, you know, the
Stock Growers Association, you know, Grain
Growers Association, those types of things,
to just recruit additional Ag producers, so
we just kept it simple with what is involved
with it and how they can benefit.
Finally, one last thing that I just wanted
to mention was that there are- this is a diagram,
just kind of a zygote of an idea, really,
at the moment, but if the model that we think
is starting to use the idea that we've put
together and kind of scale it up a bit, and
this is taking place along the Mississippi
River at Lewis&Clark College that's piloting
this, where they're using E3 and some additional
funding sources and doing a dual track of,
you know, how can they do these E3 assessments
in manufacturing and then Ag-related facilities
at the same time, so it's kind of taking some
of stuff that I initially discussed with,
you know, the backbone of E3 and then adding
this Ag piece to it and I'm happy to talk
with anybody about that a little bit later,
that's just something that's starting to develop
in one particular area.
And, with that, I guess in conclusion, you
know, it hasn't been an easy process I would
say, you know, I think the reward for the
environment, our energy footprint, Ag producers,
the bank accounts, those are all indisputable
but there's a lot of moving parts and identifying
and bringing those parts together requires
kind of this paid champion, I think, and for
this particular project we were awarded funds
for me, or for our program, to take on that
role.
But it is, but I think I would just, you know,
recommend or, you know, if any of you are
considering going through this in your states
that there be that dedicated person and that,
you know, some of your initial operating or
grants funds go to the really full-time job
in kind of getting it up and running, it's
a puzzle, that is I think it brings the best
of all the different federal partners together
and I think that what I like most about it
is that we're not creating new programs, we're
just trying to leverage these really great
programs, these really great tools, these
really great funding opportunities that all
of our federal partners have already developed,
and bring them together and kind of, you know,
make them work a little bit better, a little
more efficiently.
With that, I'll just kind of open it up if
anyone has any questions for the last ten
minutes or so, happy to take them.
Laura: OK, thanks, Myla, Christine Anderson actually
does have a question for USAEPA Region 5,
she says, "Could you tell us more about the
irrigation audits i.e who performs them, and
factors prompting farmers to have them done?"
Myla:Sure, OK, that's a good question.
Farmers are always- I would say that is the
kind of a good foot in the door because that-
irrigation is one of the huge energy outputs
and money outputs for a farmer, and so, you
know, because it's just one of their main
points of cash outlay, quite frankly with
their energy bills, and so usually they are
more than willing and excited to do an irrigation
efficiency audit, and the way that that can
be done is through your local utility, like
we looked at some of those worksheets that
Northwest Energy, our local utility had done
in 2004, but then we went back and we had,
well, we were in training so we had a contractor,
who was a NRCS-approved contractor, training
our extension agents to do that very thing
and so it involves looking at the pump, you
know, taking down the model number, looking
at what the output is, ideally using a flow
meter to take what your actual irrigation
rate is versus the predicted versus the ideal
for that particular pump, and so kind of combining
all the factors, and so it can be done through
an NRCS-approved person, there's a listing
on Technical Service Provider, there's a nationwide
listing, but also, you know, what we're trying
to do it trying to get our extension agents
to that level and right now they're doing
the work but with some oversight from these
contractors, but the tool is that the NRCS
provides, and some other sources as well provide,
too, can really help in getting answers to
those questions, so once you know what the
efficiency is then you can play with, well,
if I put in the variable speed drive, you
can put that in as a factor, then what's my
game.
Laura: OK, we have another question, which is kind
of a follow-up to that, actually: Do extension
faculty members become certified as technical
services providers for an NRCS in order to
for the assessments to be utilized for USDA
programs such as EQIP?
Myla:That's a very good question, they can if they
choose, though the EQIP program technical
service providers are not USDA, they are not
NRCS personnel, so they have designed this
program so that OTHER people become technical
service providers, not their own staff, so
we're not taking away from, you know, we're
not stealing their jobs or, you know, anything
like that, that's how this particular program
has been designed so when we went through
the pilot we had a technical service provider
that provided the oversight of our extension
agents, and we gave the extension agency the
option of becoming technical service providers,
if they so chose in the future, going forward
we worked really closely with our NRCS office
with this project and they have said, you
know, they know that we're trying to get to
that level of, you know, of being on-par with
a technical service provider audit, and so
even if we don't have a technical service
provider kind of rubber stamp it then at least
if they know they've gone through kind of
the E3 training and that type of thing, and
if they've submitted to NRCS in Montana and
if it's involving something that NRCS engineers
are very familiar with just irrigation, then
that will be eligible for EQIP funding, so
it's kind of a long, it's a lot of jargon
and I'd be happy to talk with you more about
that particular process offline so I don't
get too hung up on acronyms and all these
really, like, specific issues that I suddenly
know so much about that I didn't know anything
about two years ago so, but, yeah, we do,
they have that option of becoming a TSP if
they so chose, the interesting thing is that
there is ONE technical service provider that's
qualified, or there might be maybe up to three
now in Montana, so it's a really small pool
to choose from and this is NRCS is really
working to kind of outreach and to identify
more TSPS and at least find more projects
that are eligible for EQIP.
Laura:OK, are there any more questions?
Ok, here's another one: do water rights issues
have a big impact on if irrigation efficiency
audits resulted in implemented projects?
Myla:That particular question, I have not heard
that come up in Montana yet, which is interesting,
so, you know, we have a pretty antiquated
water law here, it's a use-it-or-lose-it and
that's the first time, first in line, and
so one would think that the issue of use-it-or-lose-it
would have come up so far with our Ag producers,
but it hasn't, and I haven't even thought
about it till you just brought that up, so
I'm curious as to why, if there's, you know,
if there's another potential source that these
producers can use it for or, you know, yeah,
I'm curious about that myself now that you
mention it, but so far it hasn't come up either
in the training with the extension agents
or with the producers themselves, so that's
interesting, thanks for bringing that up.
Laura:OK, and another question: Does extension staff
feel like this was adding to their already
busy schedules?
Myla:Great question, they, I think you need some
support from the higher levels, you know,
from some of the directorship, the regional
department head, and that type of thing, I
think for those that signed on, which made
it very clear what the requirements were,
I think it's the increased capacity of knowing
that they get these questions when they're
out in the field anyway, you know, the producers
really want to know how to save some money,
and so they get these questions, they want
to be able to address them and, you know,
different, you know, we have had some agents
that frankly didn't produce for us, for the
audit, you know, and we had others that were
complete rockstars and so, you know, that
has been another process of warning is that
some just don't want to take it on, but some
are ready kind of, you know, dipping their
toe in the issue of whether it's climate change
or whether it's energy efficiency or whatever
it is are already dealing with that in their
county and so they want to be trained and
they want to be able to provide that service
to their producers and, so those are ones
that are really important to find.
Laura: OK Are there any more questions, because we
had some good ones.
Myla: Yes, we did, thank you so much.
Laura: Yeah, I think, I think that's all, so seeing
none, Myla, thank you so much for presenting
today, I really learned a lot.
Myla:And please feel free to email me, too, if
anybody has any questions, of course, my information
is on my last slide, but you can get it from
Laura.
Laura: Yes, and I have a link, I've already put links
up on the GLRPRR website on the M Meetings
page, right under the archived slides, to
the project website, and that has contact
information there so you should be good to
go, and I'll actually be adding the links
that I was sending out while Myla was talking
today, I'll be adding those to the site as
well so that people have a handy place to
come.
Again thank you for presenting, as I said,
the presentation slides are available on the
website's Meetings page, look for a follow
up email tomorrow that is going to include
a link to the archived Webinar, we did record
this today, and a feedback form, please, please,
please fill out the feedback form because
that way I know how we're doing and we can
also schedule more Webinars that are of interest
to our members.
The email, again, like I said, will include
links to the archived Webinar and I encourage
you to share that archive link with your colleagues,
you know, the Great Lakes states have a very
large agricultural base and I know we have
some people from Region 7 on the call also,
and the same goes for Region 7, and I think
that using this technical assistance framework,
using this model, those regions particularly,
could be really, really helpful down the road.
We will be posting the archived Webinar to
GLRPPR's YouTube channel, it's going to take
a couple weeks to get the video converted
and everything but I will send out a notice
when that happens.
Thank you again to everyone for joining us
today and have a great afternoon.
Myla: Thanks, Laura.
Laura:Yeah, and, Myla, if you can hang on just a
second until we're gone, great, OK, thanks,
everybody.
