Quebeckers raise a stink
By ROBERT IRWIN
Environmental challenges threaten the hog industry worldwide. But nowhere is the situation more acute than in Quebec.Battered by bureaucrats and urbanites, and shackled by some of the most stringent environmental regulations in Canada, Quebec producers are now paralyzed by a widespread moratorium on expansion.
Last month, hoping to learn from Quebec's dilemma, 240 swine experts and provincial and municipal officials from across Canada joined an international symposium at St. Hyacinthe, in the heart of Quebec's pig country, about 60 km east of Montreal. Quebec producers have pioneered creative and effective manure management practices and their $2-billion-a-year industry generates 30,000 jobs.
University and government researchers maintain solutions for the current crisis are possible. Still, manure surpluses from production of five million pigs in Quebec's 130 municipalities, have grown to an estimated seven million cubic metres, fanning public paranoia this past summer.
"We need scientists who will counter their attack," said Quebec Pork Producers Federation President Charles Proulx. Proulx cited the case of a producer who farmed uneventfully in the same location, with the same number of pigs, for 20 years. This year, he bought an injection system to improve his manure handling and be more environmentally responsible. Ironically, that's when he received his first odour complaint.
"One group started complaining, then the second group of rural people did and it's just snowballed. Nobody in any municipality wants any large swine project," conference chair Suzelle Barrington, Agriculture and Biosystems Researcher, McGill University, told Farm & Country. "For us, large means small in American terms or even in European terms, so our industry is really blocked right now."
Union des Citoyens du Monde Royal, a citizens' group hatched this summer, claims 10,000 signatures on a petition calling for public hearings on the industry and a permanent freeze on further development. Government officials have set aside hundreds of expansion applications while the Parti Quebecois government tries to draft a new environmental law.
Barrington and other industry players fear environment officials will be swayed by public pressure because Quebec farmers now make up less than three per cent of the population and pork producers are less than one per cent.
"It's something like a fashion to say 'no' to pork producers," said Barrington, who terms proposed legislation "a punishment". Plans which call for strict buffer zones around villages and expanded distance requirements to reduce odours will remove more badly-needed land from production. "They're not going to solve the problem at all, they might even make the situation worse," she said.
Organizations which oppose the swine industry are also emerging in a number of American states, according to cultural anthropologist Kendall M. Thu, Associate Director of Iowa's Center for Agricultural Safety and Health. He told the Quebec symposium that no systematic data exists to show whether most odour complaints have a physical basis.
Two-thirds of American producers market fewer than 100 hogs per year. But the 57 largest each market more than 50,000 hogs per year. The latter group has increased production 95 per cent since 1992, leading to serious community backlash in states like North Carolina.
Thu sees "a changing swine industry" generating resentment by violating rural core social values. "A core value of being a good neighbour entails behaviours and attitudes of honesty, reciprocity, respect and sharing," he cautioned.
Thu's research subjects repeatedly complained that pork producers deceive neighbours by promising there will be no odour from a new facility or by beginning construction without telling neighbours beforehand. He said producers frequently dismiss neighbours' concerns by terming them emotional, perceptual or subjective.
Thu labels this as a "lack of respect," which would be resented by anyone. "Your neighbour's concerns are significant and valid."
Even the time-honoured tradition of neighbours helping each other is being savaged by the hog industry, said Thu. Hog farmers, rather than helping their neighbours, usually place the burden of problems and the burden of proving the validity of complaints on them.
He warned that the social fallout from this approach remains long after a technical, or court-ordered solution is implemented. "The intensity of conflict leaves behind raw resentments and emotional scars that continue to disrupt community life."
Long-standing water pollution problems in Denmark, where hog production has doubled since the mid-1970s, prompted tough environmental legislation in 1985, followed by the Aquatic Environment Plan in 1987, a comprehensive monitoring protocol intended to reduce nitrate leaching below 50 kg per hectare. A study completed this year pegs current nitrogen surplus from manure at approximately 114 kg per hectare. Most leaches through sandy soil in Denmark's intensive production areas. Villy Sogaard, Regional Science Unit of the South Jutland University Centre, is studying the potential impact of a 10-per-cent production cut-back. It would eliminate 20,000 pork related jobs nationwide.
Such a draconian plan would have seemed unthinkable a few years ago. However, as in other countries, where the number of farmers has fallen, Danish pork producers' political power continues to wane in Denmark.
Sogaard concludes that even though pork accounts for 7.5 per cent of his country's exports, contributing $3 billion to the balance of payments, the 10-per-cent cut "would not have serious long-term implications for regional employment." A few years ago, the Danes began producing pork in Australia. Sogaard discounts persistent rumours that expansion to Canada is next. "I won't rule out the possibility but I don't think it's very likely."
Sogaard concedes that land and feed costs here are cheaper and environmental regulations, particularly on the prairies, are lax compared to Denmark. However, he maintained the co-operative structure of the Danish industry precludes production here.
"The Danish slaughterhouse federation tells me they meet the Canadians more and more often in Japan and other places because you're such a major competitor. I think they would have problems explaining to their farmers, who are also their members, their owners, why they go out and support pig production in competing regions."
In a similar vein to the Quebec symposium, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs, along with the United States Department of Agriculture and number of American organizations and agencies, is sponsoring a New York State conference entitled Animal Agriculture and the Environment: Nutrients, Pathogens and Community Relations. The conference, in Rochester, New York, runs Dec. 11-13 and costs US$150 for registration before Nov. 22, 1996. Details are available from Mike Toombs (905) 985-2003 or Don Hilborn (519) 537-6621.
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Dial-a-pump lets fingers do the walking
By DON STONEMAN
Gordon MacKay, Embro, uses his cellular phone when he is spreading manure - and it's not to tell the neighbours he's about to work their side of the farm.MacKay has wired a mobile phone into the engine on the manure pump beside his dairy barn. When he calls from another cell phone in the field, the phone at the manure pump answers the call, and he keys in a code to open or close a circuit in the manure pump. A custom-built decoder, about twice the size of a credit card, takes the pulse from the phone and turns it into an electrical impulse. That turns the manure pump off or on, allowing MacKay to move the machine to a new location. "It saves a man" at manure spreading time, he says.
MacKay uses an irrigation boom to spread manure from his family's 80-cow herd. The pod-type nozzles on the boom spreads manure in a more even manner than does a manure gun, with each nozzle covering an area about 19 feet wide. But the path it sprays is only 140 feet wide, so it has to be moved more often than a gun.
While MacKay justifies the expense of the technology as a labour-saving device, Woodstock-based agriculture ministry engineer Don Hilborn says the phone is also an environmental necessity. Any farmer using a direct-flow system to move manure needs a way to shut the pump down in a hurry if a pipe comes apart, he says.
A key to the system is a good-quality phone. MacKay says the handheld 'flip' phones being marketed now transmit with only six-tenths of a watt of power. He uses a three-watt cellular phone, which ensures a clear signal. As well, he spent about $50 on the antenna on the motor.
This could all be done with a radio instead, he says, but the cell phone gives him more flexibility. It can be used in a vehicle when it isn't being used for irrigating manure onto fields.
The automatic turnoff system is especially handy at nights and at choring time, when other family members and hired help are busy. "It just makes it a lot easier."
Since cellular to cellular calls are billed to only one phone, charges are minimal.
MacKay's manure boom was made by Vanden Bussche Irrigation of Delhi. It is hooked to 1,000 feet of hard hose. The boom runs on a small Honda gasoline engine which winds up the hose and pulls the boom down the field at a rate of about 20 feet per minute. The boom applies 5,000 gallons per acre, covering three acres in about 50 minutes. Then it has to be reset.
MacKay's system doesn't have to be turned off to be moved. When it is idled down, it still has some pressure in it. When idling, the non-positive displacement pump recirculates manure in the pipe while the move is being made. MacKay has a second valve in the field so that the boom can be shut down and moved to a new spreading location.
Part of MacKay's $14,000 irrigation boom was paid for with a $5,000 grant from the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association. MacKay paid for the phone system himself. Hilborn says MacKay's cell phone system appears to be unique. Two manure spreading contractors in the province use heavy-duty walkie talkies with a component on the side which sends a tone.
Hilborn stresses that a good quality radio is a necessity. He favours the cellular phone. Most farmers have a phone anyway, to call to order for parts if there is a breakdown in the field, he says.
Hilborn says a shutdown system would likely fit in the $1,500 Environmental Farm Plan grant which is now available from the land stewardship program. A shutdown system on a manure spreading system might be what it takes to upgrade a farm from a poor or fair rating to a good or excellent rating.
Farmers need someone to hook up this kind of a system, Hilborn says. MacKay had to have someone make him a relay to signal the engine to shut off. Motors on manure pumps should come with these kind of systems built into them, he thinks. "It's just a case of taking the technology that is out there and applying it to agriculture," Hilborn says.
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Clay feed additive keeps ammonia at bay
By ROBERT IRWIN
There are no miracles in the quest for swine odour control but zeolite, a porous clay-like feed additive, has come out on top in current research. Suzelle Barrington, a McGill University researcher, says "It's something which has a significant effect on odours and ammonia volatilization and at the same time it's profitable."She found a type of zeolite named Clinoptilodite which, when added to grower rations at a rate of five per cent, reduced barn ammonia levels in some groups from 11 parts per million (ppm) to three ppm. The product, from Whitehorse Minerals, Calgary, Alberta, also reduced manure nitrogen losses and improved feed conversion by 0.25 kg per kg of gain.
Barrington says the slaughterhouse value of 95 kg to 105 kg pigs fed Clinoptilodite increased by $0.05 per kg live weight over untreated pigs. Total benefits exceed the cost of the additive.
"If you have a barn which is poorly ventilated and the pigs are uncomfortable and they make their manure all over the pen, don't expect zeolite to clean it up for you," Barrington cautions.
In another study, she found the most economical odour control for open storage tanks or lagoons is a biological filter or floating cover made of locally-available organic materials like straw or peat moss. The cover is installed in early summer, with manure being added throughout the season. To keep the biofilter floating, oil must be sprayed on the straw when it is blown on the manure surface. When peat moss is used it must be very dry and added to a depth of 200 mm. Peat moss particle size is critical. Fifty per cent must be greater than 0.85 mm and 50 per cent smaller. Large particles keep the filter floating while small ones absorb N. Some researchers have tried floating material such as corn stalks or straw on a low-density polyethylene mesh.
Purdue University extension workers found air scrubbers and filters can reduce building odour 60 to 70 per cent. However, they dismiss currently available equipment as too expensive. Biological manure additives, often sold with elaborate claims, have proven disappointing in field conditions, according to Barrington. "In general, producers use these biological agents for some time and then quit as no economical benefit is observed."
The Iowa State University World Wide Web site contains product results derived from an ongoing manure additive study. The site http://www.ae.iastate.edu/agwastes.htm also provides a wealth of manure management information.
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