QUEBEC MANURE MEANS JOBS
Quebec's pork board, Federation des producteurs de porc du Quebec, laid low last summer when large influential dailies like the Montreal Gazette and La Presse began a seemingly endless series of reports on the horrors of the hog industry.
"We were advised to get organized first," says board marketing adviser Gilbert Lavoie. The industry's darkest hour came when environmental groups like Greenpeace got involved and stories circulated linking pig manure to cancer, he says.
The uproar subsided during the winter, giving producers an opportunity to develop a three-point strategy known as le plan agro-environmental. The first step is a nearly-completed survey of the province's more than 3,000 producers.
Laval University fieldmen visit each farm and complete a confidential report on the environmental impact of each operation. At press time, more than 700 farms had been evaluated under the voluntary program.
Lavoie says, "only four or five" didn't want to complete the questionnaire. The next step in the program will be to show how the industry stacks up environmentally through a factual guide prepared by Le Centre Agro- Biologique.
Producers will be offered consulting services to facilitate any needed improvement. The final step will be a certification program.
Because the program is critical to the industry's future, almost everyone is expected to become certified. Lavoie predicts those who don't will feel enormous public and industry pressure.
Government plans to introduce restrictive legislation were halted last fall amidst a storm of protest by Union des producteurs agricoles, the province's general farm organization.
Separation distances under the new law would have blocked production on most of Quebec's long, narrow farms. Revised legislation is expected this summer.
With a sound strategy in place, the Quebec pork board is ready to begin a public relations initiative to reassure the population. The board has also initiated a broad-based committee which includes co-ops, citizens groups, the provincial feed mill association, lenders and municipal officials.
A key element of the group's public relations strategy is to show that pigs mean jobs. Virtually all of Quebec's 5.2 million hogs are processed there, contributing an estimated $2.5 billion and 30,000 jobs to the economy. "When your brother works in a slaughterhouse, perhaps manure doesn't smell so bad," Lavoie says. - RI
SPRAYERS NEED LICENSE, SHOULD SPREADERS
By ROBERT IRWIN
As public unease over pig manure increases, one of Ontario's liquid manure pioneers and innovators says it's time to license applicators. "In the long run, it would be better for everybody," says Chris Lee of LH Resource Management, Walton.
Lee is the only Ontario dealer or manufacturer specializing in manure irrigation. With the trend toward larger, specialized pig units, more farmers prefer to spend time in their barns and leave manure spreading to custom operators, Lee says.
He sees professional operators as a positive influence. "Most of the things that go wrong don't arise much from equipment, whether it's tankers, or irrigation, or injectors; it's the way people use things."
Lee says there is still a lot of uncertainty about liquid manure implications in varying soil types and conditions. He reasons that a certification program which standardizes procedures and sets out best practices would protect everyone.
He argues that more regulation is inevitable because even a relatively small hog operation with only a few thousand animals generates waste nutrients equivalent to a small city like Stratford. Yet it may be located on just a few hundred acres.
Would the livestock industry, which is already reeling from a seemingly endless influx of regulations, welcome yet another set of hoops to jump through? "You could have asked the same thing about field spraying a few years ago," Lee says.
He reasons that most farmers view manure spreading as "a pain in the butt that you get over as quickly and as painlessly as possible." Therefore, Lee speculates, many might not feel too badly about more red tape which might encourage them to delegate the unsavory chore.
Lee estimates there are about 12 full-time professional manure applicators in Ontario applying as much as 35 million gallons. Another 15 operators handle their own manure and also custom apply approximately 15 million gallons.
Current rates vary from around $12 per thousand gallons for farmers who have storage for less than 250,000 gallons to $7.50 for storage larger than 500,000 gallons.
SLURRY HITS THE SLOPES
Canada's harsh climate gets blamed for higher building, energy and feed
costs. But Alberta pork producers are betting our chilly weather is the
key to a new treatment for liquid manure.
This winter, Ottawa-based Delta Engineering is turning liquid manure into a snow pile at a 300-sow farrow-to-finish unit, southwest of Vegreville, Alberta. The process appears to limit odours and it is hoped the meltwater will be an innocuous byproduct, leaving behind a small, concentrated pile of nutrients.
This process is what civil engineers call third-level or tertiary treatment. "That's basically at a stage where the pathogens are gone, the phosphorous levels are down to the point where they would not cause algae blooms in watercourses and lakes," says Neil MacAlpine, water management engineer with Alberta Agriculture, Food and Rural Development. "People's first reaction is to laugh and say this is crazy, until you realize it all comes back to some very basic chemistry and physics," MacAlpine says. People who purchase distillation units to obtain pure water could achieve the same result at lower cost through freezing, he says. In its liquid form, water is a universal solvent which absorbs nutrients such as phosphorous. But, according to MacAlpine, when water is frozen, "it flips character and rejects everything, so whatever is in it gets precipitated out as the ice crystals form."
The 10 to 15-foot-high liquid manure snow piles contain pure water in its frozen form and pockets of precipitates. Delta research shows that the precipitates migrate down through the pile, leaving a concentrate on the bottom.
During spring and summer, water runs off but the pile remains cold, so there isn't enough heat for the precipitated material to redissolve. It is not clear how pork producers would use the system. There is a possibility it could be used to apply and treat manure in a single operation.
Until final samples are collected this summer, it won't be known how clean run-off water is. The system is approved by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Energy (MOEE) for municipal waste but hog manure is denser and contains more nutrients.
Delta supplied snow-making equipment for the Calgary Olympics and other major North American centres. About 15 years ago, the company began experimenting with sewage from ski resorts where large winter populations challenged existing waste systems. Some of the early work was done with the MOEE in London, Ont. One of the first commercial sites is in Westport, southwest of Ottawa.
Alberta government workers learned about the process approximately a year ago. MacAlpine recalls thinking "if this works this well on municipal effluent, we should really put some heavy-duty stuff in front of it and see what it does."
In addition to the swine project funded by the Alberta Pork Producers Research Development Corporation, MacAlpine and his colleagues are evaluating the system at the Alberta Research Council at Vegreville on waste from a malting plant near Lacombe, Alberta.
If it works, Snowfluent, as Delta calls the process, will be cost effective. Depending on hauling distance, the test farm normally spends $6,000 to $12,000 for conventional equipment to spread waste from its 800,000-gallon lagoon. Delta spokesperson Paul Lefebrvre estimates his price to turn the manure into Snowfluent will fall between these figures.
MacAlpine says odour control looks promising. "There is odour coming off in the plumes when we are making snow but we typically are doing this in the nighttime when temperatures are favourable," he says. Minus 15 degrees C is ideal. The first attempt with pig manure failed when a Chinook blew in earlier this year.
"You can stand beside the piles and you'll notice a faint odour but it is not like an open lagoon," MacAlpine says. He notes the process might allow farmers to reduce costly lagoon or storage tank requirements because manure could be processed a couple of times in the winter.
An interim report completed this month leaves unanswered the question of what happens to the nitrogen. Preliminary tests show some is converting to ammonia but it is hoped the cold temperatures offer some preservation advantages over conventional storage.
HOG WILD
Life has been a boar since Tauno "Tony" Toivonen set off to see the world
from his native Finland.
In 1989, he and his wife, Susan, bought their farm in south Grey county in Proton Township. What started as a hobby with one wild boar and 10 sows imported from Germany, has turned into a full-time herd of 266 including 40 breeding sows.
It's only in the past 15 to 20 years that wild boar has been introduced to Canada. There are still only about 100 producers in the country, a lot of them in Quebec, Toivonen says.
At his Wild Boar Reserve, customers can hunt the animal with gun or bow, or join the great majority who prefer to confine their hunting to a search of the home freezer.
For hunters, there is no season or licence since these are private animals on private land. The wild boars are hunted one at a time in a 10-acre wooded area at the back of the farm. The quality of the trophy for hunters is equal to that found in Hungary, Toivonen says.
Toivonen knew nothing about rearing livestock when he got into raising the exotic wild boar. His great-grandfather, a Laplander, herded reindeer. Instead of animal husbandry, Toivonen's training was in computers. Before deciding to realize his dream "of having a farm", he formed his own company in Canada exporting computer automation to Scandinavia and Australia.
"I wanted to work outdoors, not in an office or even a barn," he said. The wild boar is perfect. They live outside on their own year-round, needing a minimum of human intervention. A few old round bales are put out for the animals to nest in during the winter. The females give birth on their own around February.
He sells breeding stock and also thinks introducing genetics of wild boar into a domestic pig might bring with it some of the wild boar's qualities, including natural immunities.
The animals are built tough, can outrun a dog, and come equipped with a six-inch tusk. Tipping the scale at about 200 pounds, the mature male makes a better pit bull that a pet pig.
"There's no belly scratching here," Toivonen says. "I don't recommend a wild boar for a pet."
The boar when cornered will typically sit back and rotate on its rump, bringing its lethal tusk around in a hooking motion. Several of the Toivonen's trained herding dogs have suffered chest wounds from the dangerous tusk.
The idea is to keep the animal in its wild habitat with a minimum of human contact. They receive no drugs or feed supplements. The only visit from a veterinarian came when one of the sows got mixed up with a porcupine. Make no mistake: the animals are still wild. Toivonen approaches a group of them with caution. On its own, the animal is much more aggressive and as likely as not will charge a human.
It wasn't long after the Toivonens embarked on their "hobby" that word- of-mouth started bringing customers to their door from Toronto and Kitchener and beyond. Several Toronto restaurants added the gourmet meat to their menu. It tastes, looks and has a leaness more like beef than pork. They expected that their customers might be exclusively city people or from one ethnic background. But they found many rural people from the local area with a taste for the exotic porkers. Their customers include as many Canadians as Germans and Italians.
The meat sells for about $8 per pound for good steaks and roasts, or
about $4.50 to $5 per pound dressed weight if a whole animal is purchased.
The hunting is for free if customers buy an animal and hunt it.
"It's nice to try a dream," Toivonen says.
The Wild Boar Reserve can be reached on the Internet at:
wildboar@freespace.net or at (519) 323-0062.
WORKS MIRACLES ON MANURE
Products claiming to cut the ammonia smell of slurry can be discovered at
nearly every major pig industry exhibition. But seldom is one introduced
with the backing enjoyed by Dutch-developed NUCUS, which is being
tested on a few Danish farms after initial testing in the U.S. and the
Netherlands.
"I reckon I've tested about 50 products with similar claims over the past 25 years," says retired Danish state farm adviser Poul Erik Nielsen, who is now business development manager with the national agricultural co- operative society. "None of them have lived up to their promises, but this NUCUS is unique. In tests which I've helped with, it has almost completely reduced ammonia smell from slurry in about a week. The slurry crust also disappears and this also means a dramatic reduction in fly breeding." The liquid product comes entirely from plant extracts, according to NU Nederland Productie, the manufacturer of NUCUS, and costs C$0.50 per pig. One-half litre of the smell killer is mixed with 28 litres of hot water and 28 litres of slurry. "Within 15 minutes, bubbles appear on the surface of this mix and the typical ammonia smell vanishes," says Nielsen.
This amount of mix is enough to treat 100 cubic yards of slurry in a store or under slats. The resultant mix should be spread as evenly as possible. In Danish trials, the NUCUS crust-dissolving action meant that a contractor with a slurry agitator no longer had to be paid to break up the winter crust on the storage pits before the slurry could be spread. This cost saving alone equalled the price of the NUCUS treatment. - ND