FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) — It really is no accident that the Valley Air District and Fresno County Farm Bureau are going green this St. Patrick’s day.
” Agriculture is the original green. We’ve been out there attempting to do our portion to greater the atmosphere,” mentioned Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO Ryan Jacobsen.
The showcase of Clean Ag gear was a appear into the “Funding Agricultural Replacement Measures for Emission Reductions” or FARMER plan.
Zero and close to-zero emission Ag gear was on show -which includes every thing from harvesters and UTVs to electric tractors.
Jacobsen mentioned, “This farmer plan is taking these old diesel engines off of farms and replacing them with significantly cleaner diesel engines on newer pieces of gear.”
With California supplying two/three of the nation’s fruits and 1/three of the nation’s vegetables– The Valley became identified as the breadbasket of America. Jacobsen says the Valley is *also* the epicenter of Ag technologies and obtaining approaches to replace engines, lower open-air burning and reduce dust.
He mentioned, “Some of it is newer tech on these diesel engines. That does reduce down emissions, but we also had examples of zero emissions that are battery operated no matter if it is UTVs or tractors that are one hundred% electric.”
But it requires green to go green.
“These pieces of gear had been searching at variety from $100k to nicely more than a million dollars,” Jacobsen mentioned.
The FARMER plan produced the clean initiative attainable for smaller sized farming operations with old gear.
San Joaquin Valley Air District Executive Director Samir Sheikh mentioned, “nearby funds, state funds, federal funds, that we then match with funds from the grower aids make these projects occur.
Sheikh added, “It really is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the clean technologies that we’re seeing deployed right here in this area all across the valley.”
Given that 2017, investments via the FARMER plan, matched by Valley Growers have helped in decreasing 185 thousand metric tons of Carbon Dioxide.
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