By Barb McKay

The Bruce County Federation of Agriculture (BCFA) has updated its policy statement on wind energy development, stating that it cannot support the current Feed-in-Tariff program.

The policy statement, released last Monday following the BCFA board of directors meeting, indicates that the way wind energy is currently developed is costly and inefficient and there continues to be too many unanswered questions around the potential effects from wind turbines.

“We’ve been dealing with issues for awhile and we decided it was time we updated our policy statement,” said John Gillespie, president of the BCFA.

Gillespie said BCFA members’ feelings about wind energy developments run both sides of the gamut; there are farmers who have wind turbines on their properties for additional income and there are farmers who have indicated they are suffering health effects from nearby wind turbines.

“There are also clauses in leases that people didn’t quite understand or are different than what they thought,” he said.

The new official policy statement reads as follows:

“The Bruce County Federation of Agriculture (BCFA) recognizes wind energy as a contributor to green energy, and we are in favour of exploiting all kinds of green energy sources. However, the Feed-in-Tariff program seems to help promote the sale of wind energy technology, rather than develop wind energy technology, which was the intended spirit of the Green Energy Act. The cost to produce wind energy is not decreasing and due to the inefficiency of wind generated power, the cost of energy continues to increase. For farmers in Ontario, the cost of energy has a direct impact on the cost to produce farm products. The BCFA cannot support a program that adversely affects agriculture. Furthermore, many of the concerns outlined by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture regarding the Feed-in-Tariff program, as well as the harmful effects of wind energy development, have yet to be addressed.”

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) released its position statement on wind energy development in January and called on the province to put a moratorium on further wind energy projects until the concerns of farmers and rural residents have been sufficiently addressed.