Changing Attitudes Towards Manure Management
CANADA - A nutrient management specialist with Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives says the approach to manure management has changed dramatically over the last few decades, reports Bruce Cochrane.
8 July 2010
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A Field Workshop on Soil and Manure Management scheduled for July 23 at the Glenlea Research Station and the Kelburn Research Farm hosted by the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment and Richardson International, will cover a range of topics related to manure management.
Mitchell Timmerman, a nutrient management specialist with MAFRI, says management of manure has intensified greatly.
"The philosophy now is certainly one that recognises manure as a resource and not really as a by-product anymore to be disposed of.
With the rising price of crop inputs, principally for commercial fertilisers, there's a lot of incentive for the industry to manage more intensively.
"As practitioners would well recognise there's been quite an intensification in evolution in terms of the equipment used, the technology available.
"We've seen for instance in liquid manure management a move from broadcast to injection and from wider spaced injectors to more narrow bands of manure resulting in more even distribution of manure.
On the solid manure side I should say that, yes there's been a rising interest in composting.
"That change in the industry and the fact that we've got a lot of smaller operations managing solid manure has meant that the adoption of that kind of practice is a bit more gradual.
"But overall yes, we've seen dramatic changes over the last few decades in manure management."
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