Development Of Tools To Handle Livestock Products
CANADA - A new research facility planned for the University of Manitoba will provide scientists and farmers alike with tools to develop new approaches for dealing with by-products of the agriculture industry, writes Bruce Cochrane.
21 September 2010
2 minute read
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Last week the University of Manitoba received almost one million dollars to develop a new Agricultural By-Products Processing Research and Demonstration Facility at the Glenlea Research Station, home to the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment.
NCLE chair Dr Don Flaten says the facility will allow scientists to develop new tools to help farmers deal constructively with the byproducts of livestock and crop production.
Dr Don Flaten-University of Manitoba
We're going to be able to purchase nearly a million dollars worth of facilities and equipment dedicated to processing by-products like manure, mortalities and other sorts of agricultural by-products from the livestock industry.
What we're going to be getting is the capacity to process raw manure, let's say, solid manure into compost for example and do a lot of research into how to do that properly and also look at the end use of that material and its impact on crops and that sort of thing.
We're also going to have the capacity to add some liquid manure treatment equipment like solid-liquid separation to take the phosphorus rich solids out of liquid manure as well, either from raw manure or from the output of our pilot scale anaerobic digester.
It really complements the existing facilities that we've got to enable us to look at further processing of manure and other by-products.
Livestock producers need a variety of tools to handle the environmental challenges that they're confronting.
We've got the manure phosphorus regulations coming down universally in the province by 2013 and we don't want farmers to be stuck with only a couple of tools in their tool box.
Composting and solid liquid separation for solid manures and liquid manures respectively are a couple more tools that we want to get a handle on so that farmers have a complete tool kit.
Dr Flaten expects construction to begin this coming spring with research at the new facility to be underway in about a year.
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