British Columbia commercial-greenhouse operators have until March 30, 2018, to apply for greenhouse carbon-tax relief grants for related crop-growing expenses they had in 2017.

Commercial producers of B.C. vegetables, flowers, ornamental plants, forest seedlings and nursery plants are eligible to apply for the grant. To qualify, they must have had sales exceeding $20,000 in 2017, used natural gas or propane to heat their greenhouses or produce CO2, and had a production area greater than 455 square metres.

The grant covers 80% of the carbon tax that commercial-greenhouse growers paid on the natural gas and propane they used for greenhouse heating and CO2 production in 2017.

The greenhouse sector supplies British Columbians with fresh vegetables for about 10 months of the year, on just 304 hectares of land. In total, nearly 95,000 tonnes of greenhouse vegetables were grown in 2016, including over 51,000 tonnes of tomatoes, nearly 43,000 tonnes of peppers, and smaller amounts of cucumber, lettuce and other greenhouse vegetables. B.C.’s floriculture and nursery industries grew more than 82 million cut flowers and over 54 million potted plants in 2016.

Application information, criteria, packages, survey and e-forms are available at: http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/topic.page?id=F3B79B6864D049DE9C784B5D0843EB48

The Ministry of Agriculture expects the processing of applications to be completed by June 2018.