With life and manure, timing is everything
By KEITH REID Special to Farm & Country
Manure is an inexpensive source of crop nutrients as well as an excellent source of organic matter. Apply it wrongly, however, and you lose the nutrient value and create the potential for impacts far beyond the field where it was spread.Liquid Manure
Most liquid manure pits are pumped out in the fall to create winter storage capacity. Applying liquid manure to stubble in the fall has several advantages. Crop growth isn't interfered with, fields are smooth, and there are usually enough dry days when the soil is firm.The downside is that much of the nitrogen will be lost to the air - up to 100 per cent of the ammonium fraction if the manure is applied in warm, dry conditions. There is also increased potential for runoff.
Delaying application until cool weather, incorporating the manure, and avoiding application on sandy soils or soils with shallow groundwater will all help to reduce environmental risk.
Winter spreading of liquid manure is unacceptable at any time. The risk of runoff is just too great.
Pre-plant spreading of manure in the spring should give the maximum use of nutrients, but there are also some hazards to spring application. The biggest mistake farmers make is heading to the field to spread manure "because it is too wet to cultivate." The effects of this compaction can last several years.
Waiting until the ground is fit carries its own penalty, of course. For maximum yields, corn should be planted by May 10, but in central Ontario we get five field workdays before this date, two years out of three. This means you need to be able to spread the manure, get it incorporated and then get crop planted within five days, or else you're sacrificing yield.
On some farms, side-dressing liquid manure is a viable option. It requires specialized equipment and a careful operator, but allows the crop to take full advantage of the applied nutrients without delaying planting. Timing is important, however: Soil can be compacted as easily after planting as before.
Top-dressing forage fields creates the opportunity to get manure out while the ground is dry and compaction risk is minimal. The hay crop won't benefit from the nitrogen in the manure (unless it is a grassy hay), but it will take advantage of the phosphorus and potash.
Some farmers worry that applying manure will cause their alfalfa stand to thin out. This should only be a risk if the manure is applied so thickly it smothers the plants, or if it encourages the growth of an aggressive grass like orchard grass. Applying manure to timothy or brome in mid-summer will not encourage excessive growth; those species don't grow well in hot conditions anyway.
Applying manure to cereal stubble in late summer has the same advantages as applying to forages. There is, however, increased risk of leaching of nitrogen to groundwater if there is no vegetation to absorb the mineral nitrogen. Growing a cover crop after applying manure can help to overcome this and preserve some of the N for next year's crop.
Solid Manure
Solid manure's organic compounds break down slowly, so N availability is slower. That's the reason solid manure applied in the spring generally provides less N to a crop than a comparable amount of liquid manure. Rates of nitrogen fertilizer must be adjusted accordingly.Fall-applied solid manure may release more usable nitrogen to the crop. This hasn't been confirmed, but it would support my father's observation that the best corn crops always followed manure plowed down in the fall. In any case, manure applied in fall should be incorporated.
Keith Reid is soil fertility specialist for the Ontario agriculture ministry at Walkerton. E-mail: kreid@wcl.on.ca
back to Contents Seedbed
Checkoff on corn seed approved
Nobody was more surprised than the directors of the Ontario Corn Producers Association last month when provincial Agriculture Minister Noble Villeneuve announced Queen's Park is preparing legislation that will let the corn group collect a check-off on seed corn."It shows you can get a lot accomplished when farmers talk to their local MPPs," says Dennis Jack, Kent county director and chairman of the corn association's research committee.
The new levy, which may be in place in time for spring, would add 50 cents to the price of every 80,000-kernel unit of seed corn, pushing up the cost of producing a typical acre of corn by about 18.5 cents.
Under the legislation, the corn association would be required to spend the estimated $350,000 on research projects that currently aren't funded through the $270,000 research fund from its 39.9-cent-a-tonne check-off on grain corn sales.
The check-off would be refundable on request, much like the check-off on grain sales. Across the province, 21,000 Ontario farmers who sell grain corn pay $1.1 million in annual grain check-offs. Most years six corn growers request refunds, worth $1,500 to $3,000.
The new check-off must survive opposition from seed corn companies. "We don't want to collect their taxes," says Bill Parks, president of Pioneer Hi- Bred. "We look at this as double-dipping. They're collecting on the grain; now they want to collect on the seed."
Parks denies a rumour he says is coming from the corn association that Pioneer has hired consultants to study the association's track record on research and to fight against the proposal. However, he says Pioneer plans to lobby against the bill through the Canadian Seed Trade Association.
John Cowan, manager of Hyland Seeds and chairman of the CSTA corn committee, says the companies are meeting to discuss whether and how to oppose the legislation.
"As a company, we're very concerned," Cowan says. "This isn't as simple as the corn association would have you believe."
Most corn companies also consider their sales records to be critical business secrets, Cowan says. They fear the new check-off will make it possible for competitors to find out exactly how many units they sold.
The corn association's Jack says the check-off can be set up to resolve the seed companies' concerns. He points out that grain elevators file check-offs from commercial sales, and they also provide financial statements in order to be licensed, and that there are no breaches of secrecy.
Endangered species law targets farms
By DON STONEMAN
Bob Dobson's Renfrew county beef farm is a friendly place for wildlife. But even this ardent tree planter is leery of the federal government's plans to save places where rare animals, birds and plants live.Farmers like Dobson, chairman of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association (CCA) environmental committee, are concerned that Federal Environment Minister Christine Stewart will reintroduce endangered species legislation in this sitting of the House of Commons. They fear that the new law will be a reincarnation of Bill C65, proposed by former Environment Minister Sergio Marchi.
Much to the farming community's relief, that legislation died on the House of Commons order paper when the federal election was called last spring.
As of last year, 130 species are considered to be endangered in Canada and about 35 recovery plans are in place at a cost of about $3.3 million, according to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.
Dobson says farmers won't be comfortable with the endangered species law until the issue of compensation has been settled. Marchi's legislation left no provision to compensate farmers for lost production on privately owned land that is home to a rare bird, animal or plant.
Landowners, farmers and ranchers are concerned that they will foot the bill for saving endangered species, says Peggy Strankman, manager of environmental affairs for the CCA. "We don't mind helping," she says. "We'd like to see everybody sharing in the cost."
Marchi's law left no opportunity for compensation for farmers, says Sally Rutherford, executive director of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. She hopes that issue will be addressed in the coming months and predicts the federal government will hold more consultations with rural landowners before legislation is re-introduced. Federal officials "realize they have some fences to mend and maybe some to take down," Ruther-ford says.
She says landowners and provincial governments alike are concerned with the sweeping powers implied in the federal species protection legislation. The law would let the federal government impinge on areas that have long been accepted as part of the provinces' mandate.
As the federal government doesn't own much land, the CCA's Strankman says, most of the law's impact will be felt by private landowners.
"The penalties are quite horrendous," says Dobson. A fine of as much as $500,000 might be imposed for knowingly destroying the habitat of a rare bird.
"I don't think the penalties need to be so overbearing," Dobson says. "It puts the red flag on it."
Farmers don't feel that they were consulted before the legislation was introduced in House of Commons last Oct. 31. There were a few meetings in large urban centres such as Edmon-ton, Toronto and Vancouver.
Cattlemen have invited Stewart to meet with them on farms. "We'd like her to see in person what is going on in the countryside," Strankman says. "We don't know if we will get it done before the snow flies."
Unlike the CFA's Rutherford, Strankman doubts more consultations take place. She thinks the neophyte minister Stewart will have her hands full dealing with issues of jurisdiction with the provinces before the proposed law is made public.
The provinces are concerned about the powers granted to private citizens by the legislation, Strankman says. If the proposed law is passed, a private citizen could challenge the federal government for failing to protect a species adequately.
The last legislation left a lot of grey areas, Strankman says. For example, there was no discussion about where the money would come from to protect species. She thinks the federal government's estimate of $14 million a year to protect the species that are considered endangered now is "just the beginning."
Once an endangered species list is in place, people will begin to petition to have more species put on the list, she says. Glenn Fox, University of Guelph agricultural economics professor, says the U.S. Endangered Species Act continues to be controversial 25 years after it was implemented. He says the U.S. law just doesn't work. Critics there say it places the burden of protecting habitat on unlucky private landowners. And for every endangered species delisted, 40 more are added. The U.S. system is flawed because the Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers it, can't regulate habitat it doesn't know exists. A private landowner faces loss in the value of his or her property if the existence or knowledge of the habitat is revealed.
In Ontario, farmers already face restrictions under provincial legislation to protect wildlife. Dobson cites a Prince Edward county farmer who was ordered by the province last year to delay hay-cutting because a rare Henslow sparrow had been spotted in his field. Eventually, Dobson says, a deal was made with the local ministry of natural resources so that most of the field could be cut. A bird watchers' group paid for the hay that was lost.
"We think the federal act will go even further," Dobson says. Plants that are deemed to be endangered will be covered as well.
Farm lobbyists don't know when this legislation be introduced. Rutherford thinks it will be revived after Christmas.