American processors seek milk pool, too
By DON STONEMAN
The latest challenge to Canada's protected dairy industry is a "win-win" situation for American dairy processors, says a Canadian dairy analyst.U.S. dairy processors will prevail if they can prove that Canada's special class pricing of milk gives Canada an unfair advantage in export markets and goes against the spirit and letter of the latest World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement.
But if Canada's special-class pricing system is declared legal, U.S. processors also benefit because they want to use the system as well, says Rick Phillips, policy analyst, Dairy Farmers of Canada.
During the last GATT talks, says Phillips, the National Milk Producers Federation failed to get the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to allow them to pool exports among all processors.
"The USTR told [processors] they thought it was illegal," he says. So if Canada wins the current dispute over export pricing, U.S. processors are likely to adopt the practice as well.
"It's a win-win. If they win, they deny us. If they lose, they will go after their own government for it."
It's a backhanded compliment for the system that Canada is now using, Phillips says: "They believe in what we are doing."
Canadian dairy industry leaders are convinced they won't lose this fight. Canada has followed the letter of the law on export subsidy reductions by developing its special-class pricing system for milk, says Barron Blois, the president of Dairy Farmers of Canada.
The USTR office has criticized Canada's dairy industry on two fronts. The first attack is on Canada's classified milk pricing system, which lets processors have milk at a lower price if its finished products are destined for export markets.
The major point of contention with the U.S. is whether or not Canada is complying with export subsidy reduction commitments or is unfairly wooing American markets abroad. The U.S. argues that Canada agreed to cut its export subsidies, including producer levies that were used to sell surpluses onto world markets. Ironically, with the demise of GATT Article XI, Canada was able sell more dairy products overseas and still retain its supply managed marketing system.
Instead of using producer levies to reduce the price of butterfat and skim milk powder surpluses so they could be exported on cheap world markets by the Canadian Dairy Commission, producers simply sold milk destined for export markets to processors at a lower price to make it competitive. Canada argues that its milk has always been priced to suit the market.
American processors are protesting Canada's presence in Asian markets. The DFC's Phillips says the U.S. has never had a major presence in the Pacific Rim. Canada's presence in Japan has impressive growth figures, but the actual amount of product sold there is small. There has been no big change. Canada is back where it was before the decline. "We are really talking very small markets here," Phillips says.
The Americans' second bone of contention is that Canada isn't meeting its WTO commitments to allow 64,500 tonnes of dairy products to enter the country.
Canada says it is honouring its promise. The 64,500 tonnes is a little less than the amount of dairy products the federal government estimates travellers bring back with them from the U.S. every year.
While the U.S. wants to be able to roll truckloads of products north across the border, Canada figures it already gets enough butter, cheese, milk and yogurt carried in luggage and the trunks of cars. Observers are calling this "a technicality" that the WTO must rule on. If Canada losses on this point, it will surrender more of its domestic market share to the U.S., and quotas will have to be cut. Canada is living up to its commitments to give trading partners access to markets here, the DFC's Blois says.
The WTO panel should take 14 to 16 months to reach a conclusion, Phillips says. The decision is likely to be more timely than the NAFTA trade challenge brought against Canada's supply managed dairy and poultry industries two years ago. Resolution of that dispute faced one delay after another because there was no process in place to name an adjudication panel to rule on the dispute.
Dairy cattle shun self-serve fly zapper
By DON STONEMAN
It's back to the eartags and dustbags for farmers who want to keep profit-robbing flies off their cattle.A walk-through fly zapper developed in the U.S. got a failing grade when it was tested by University of Guelph researchers on a farm near Rockwood. They deemed it ineffective at keeping flies off the cattle that used it.
Furthermore, farmers agreed that it wasn't worth the time and expense to gain only marginal control of flies that bother their livestock.
Guelph researchers, led by Gord Surgeoner, tested the walk-through fly trap made by Orkin. The Fly Blocker System is a metal-framed chute covered with white plastic sheeting, three metres long, two meters high and one metre wide at both ends. At each side of the chute is an electrical panel with two ultraviolet lights. As cattle walk through the chute, plastic strips wipe off the flies, which are attracted to the lights, which electrocute them.
The Orkin system became commercially available in Canada this year, selling for about C$2,500.
The Fly Blocker System was patented jointly by the University of Maryland and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In three years of testing at the University of Maryland Dairy Research Centre, it was said to control 87 per cent of horn flies and 71 per cent control of face flies found on untreated cattle. Face flies are mostly just a nuisance, but horn flies drain high volumes of blood from cattle, resulting in lost weight and reduced feed intake. They also carry diseases and high fly populations are associated with high microbial counts in milk.
Surgeoner tested the trap on the Guelph-area dairy herd run by Tim and Paul May. The chute was located where cattle had to walk through it to get to their water. After two days, the device was relocated because cattle simply refused to walk through it.
The chute was relocated to a lane where cattle passed through it on their way to and from milking. But Surgeoner notes that for three weeks, reluctant animals had to be herded through the trap. Training of the animals took an 30 to 60 minutes a day. It was a week before the plastic strips that brush off the flies were installed, and another two weeks before the electrocuters were activated.
When the device was up and running, a collection of dead insects revealed that horn fly populations were reduced by 84 per cent on cattle that used the walk-through trap compared to untreated cattle. But the number of face flies and stable and house flies found after cattle went through the chute wasn't statistically different from the number of flies on untreated animals. Surgeoner feels that flies' "dispersive nature" allows them to repopulate animals after they have gone through the trap. As well, 20 per cent of the insects killed were non-target, potentially beneficial species.
At last year's Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, 50 dairy producers from across the province were surveyed and none was willing to spend $2,500 on a fly trap and a large amount of time training animals to go through it when there were other means of controlling flies available.
A spokesman for Orkin says the company has had no complaints about farmers having trouble training cattle to use it, and cites testimonials from American farmers who have been impressed with the device's success in keeping down flies on the farm.
Gun keeps manure smell on the ground
By DON STONEMAN
A custom manure irrigation company's best-kept secret will soon be out.Manufacturer Kevin Cress-man, Cress Ridge Machines, New Hamburg, plans to commence selling a stainless steel oscillating gun to farmers who spread their own nutrients on fields. Cressman's gun has been field-tested on millions of gallons of liquid manure for nearly a decade by the custom manure-spreading company he co-owns. The gun may be a boon for farmers with a need to spread slurry and keep odour at bay.
The oscillator operates on hydraulics run by a small Honda engine. Its spreading pattern is fully adjustable. It can cover a 180-foot-wide swath in windless conditions, or be aimed lower in cross winds to reduce the chance of drift. Cressman's partner in manure spreading, Larry Bearinger, Reliable Equip-ment, Petersburg, says, "It can cover an area as narrow as 80 feet in wedge-shaped fields and spray close to fence lines."
By keeping the distribution low to the ground, odour and nitrogen loss from the slurry are minimized.
Don Hilborn, Woodstock-based nutrient management specialist for the Ontario agriculture ministry, says the Cressman/Bearinger gun is unique because it's designed specifically for manure, not water. Its major feature is a nozzle opening that's more than an inch wide, so manure is spread at relatively low pressure. Water irrigation systems are designed for use on growing crops. The high pressure used in this type of system breaks up manure and produces an aerosol mist that carries with the wind.
So far, Cressman has made only two guns. One is used by his manure- spreading company, which does about 80 per cent of its business pumping pig manure in the western Waterloo, eastern Perth counties area. The other is in operation at Corwic Farms, Norwich, spreading liquid from nearly 200 milking cows and followers onto crop land. An enthusiastic Murray Cornwell, a partner in the family-owned dairy farm corporation, says it's the best system he's seen in 20 years of irrigating.
Cornwell has connected the stainless steel nozzle to an old, hard-hose reel system. Low pressure - about 30 pounds per square inch - is required to spread manure through the 1.9-inch nozzle. At that size, the wood chunks and sawdust bedding that often find their way into the slurry don't plug the nozzle. Cornwell says the system emits less odour than any system he's used previously, a concern because the village of Norwich is less than a mile west of the home farm.
Corwic Farms has impressive production and a long record of innovation. Currently, the farm milks 192 cows three times daily in a 205-stall barn. Average daily per-cow production is 34 litres. Barns are cleaned with floor scrapers into an outdoor concrete tank. There are 850 workable acres producing high-moisture corn, corn silage and haylage for cattle feed, and cash crops.
Cornwell feels that irrigation is the best way to handle large quantities of liquid manure. He's tried dragging a soft hose behind a tractor-mounted applicator and cultivator to incorporate manure, but "ran out of horsepower quick." He's also hired tanker operators to haul from the pit, but spreading wasn't fast enough. Cornwell says tankers have spillage at every fill-up and pack a track back to the field.
Cornwell uses a 4.5-inch, soft-hose system to get the manure to the reel in the field. He says hard-pipe systems come to grief on hilly fields: Liquid tends to pool in the pipes during shutoffs, and if there's air in the pipes they blow apart at the joints when pressure is reapplied.
Bearinger spreads with a highly-specialized system. His hard-hose reel is mounted on a converted Gleaner combine axle and drive train with a modified cab. He constantly checks the pipes using a Honda 4X4 ATV. When he moves the gun down the field to another spreading location, the ATV rides on a ramp attached to the reel hydraulics on the old combine frame.
Bearinger measures fields using a $1,500 radar device mounted on the ATV, a backup to ensure that he is spreading manure at the proper rate per acre. The hard-hose reel can be slowed down or sped up using a gear system on the retriever. And hydraulics also offer control over volumes being spread.
Another truck, which is backed up to the lagoon, runs a mechanical agitator and manure pump.
Bearinger says control is the key in manure management these days. He pumps as much as 150,000 gallons of slurry a day onto fields. He uses an FM radio to start up and shut down the pump at either end, and is constantly on the move in a field while spreading to ensure the system is operating properly. At 21,000 gallons an hour, 350 gallons flows through the pipe every minute. If it takes 10 minutes to shut down the pump "that's 3,500 gallons of manure in a spot that you don't want it," Bearinger says, "a recipe for an environmental disaster."
Adds Cressman: "Manure pumping is like driving a car: You can't take your eyes off what is going on."
Bearinger agrees. Tech-nology can only go so far, he says. "It's the nut behind the steering wheel that has to be tight. If it's not tight, there's a mess."
Cressman and Bearinger can be contacted at Cress Ridge Machine Inc., Bleams Road East, New Hamburg, Ont. N0B 2G0, (519) 662-1952.
Woodstock-area dairy farmers Willem and Hilda Spelt are making the most of their limited land base to spread manure from more than 70 milking cows and their followers.
The Spelts have installed a Delco manure separator to reduce the output of solids in the liquid manure from their four-row, 120-stall flush barn.
The liquid from each flushing is directed to a fibreglass storage tank underneath the separator building. A pump carries it up to a reservoir over the separator rollers and stainless steel screen with 1.5-mm holes.
Spelt says the device works like an old-fashioned wringer-washing machine. Counter-rotating rubber rollers push the liquid through at a rate of 320 gallons per minute. The mostly dry residue stays on top and is scraped off with a slider. It falls into a storage area where it can be removed with a front-end loader. The liquid effluent drains through a four-inch pipe to the first stage of a three-phase lagoon system.
The separator runs about 90 minutes a day. Spelt flushes his barn five times a day, and the liquid from each flush takes 20 minutes to separate. Pumping manure to the separator requires a one-hp motor.
Spelt says he has invested $35,000 in the machinery, and another $10,000 in the building, and sacrificed some space in his yard.
The technology is state-of-the-art. Spelt didn't realize when he bought the machine that it was the only one of its kind in Ontario. There are other liquid extraction systems in use in Ontario but Jack Rodenburg, dairy systems specialist with the Ontario agriculture ministry, says the Delco machine removes more water than any other commercial separator on the market. Drag line separators and static screen separators are less effective at removing moisture.
The solid manure comes out of the Delco machine at 30-per-cent dry matter, much like haylage, says Spelt's installer, Alfa Laval dealer Wayne Blenkhorn, Leader Dairy Systems Inc. of Shakespeare. The resulting liquid is easier to agitate and requires less power to spread than conventional slurry.
The cost of processing can be covered by reduced solids handling in the slurry. If a market for solids can be found, the separator can even be a profit centre on the farm, he says.
The Ontario agriculture ministry's Rodenburg has reservations. Two systems are now required to move the manure, he says. Unless a high- value market for the solids can be found, the separator is "an expensive toy."
Spelt has yet to sell any solids from the separator system. He now spreads it on his fields with a dry spreader. Spelt says the treated solid manure "is so fine you can't see it" when it is spread on fields.
Blenkhorn sees potential for farmers to compost the nearly dry product from the separator in a Quonset hut, turning it over as necessary with a front-end loader, and selling it to tobacco farmers, ginseng growers, horticulture operations and even to home gardeners.-DS