The Norfolk Alternative Land Use Services Pilot Project is a voluntary, incentive based project testing the concept of providing payments to farmers for returning marginal, environmentally sensitive, or inefficient farmland into native vegetative cover and wetlands.  The pilot project is founded on the Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS) concept developed by Manitoba's Keystone Agricultural Producers. 

Alternative Land Use Services Concept

The ALUS concept recognizes that farmers and ranchers have played an important role in producing nature's benefits to Canadians through land stewardship practises that conserve, protect, and restore natural features across the rural landscape.  The ALUS concept builds on this stewardship ethic by recognizing that, as the largest group of landowners in Canada, farmers are in a unique position to continue to provide nature's benefits to society and provide solutions to conservation issues and the loss of natural capital facing Canadian society today.  

ALUS supports the conservation, restoration, and management of native habitat on working farms and ranches by providing project start up assistance, technical expertise and support, and incentive payments.  The ALUS concept is a "fee for service" proposal that recognizes and rewards farmers and ranchers for the role they play in creating healthy, sustainable countrysides vital to healthy human populations. ALUS sees the production of agricultural crops and livestock as compatible with the production of natures benefits; and seeks to assist farmers and ranchers in continuing to employ land management practises that create productive agricultural systems and healthy countrysides.

The Norfolk Alternative Land Use Services
 
The Norfolk ALUS Pilot Project is governed by a  Parternship Advisory Committee made up of local farmers and area experts.  Decisions are guided through the ALUS  Key Principles and  Operating Principles. 

Through the ALUS concept, an annual incentive payment is provided to participating farmers and ranchers for producing nature's benefits. The ALUS concept focuses on marginal farm land for the production of these benefits ensuring that agriculturally productive lands remain producers of food and fibre.

Please visit Frequently Asked Questions  and  Pilot Project History for more information.


Farmer Conservation Plan