The Rural Voice, 2001-04, Page 30Poof!
The smell and the
pathogens are gone
Composting manure Ls
almost like magic. It
can make the concerns
about smell during
manure application and
bacterial contamination
of water disappear. But
will producers accept it,
and can they afford it?
By Keith Roulston
t
With the proper
mix of carbon
and nitrogen,
manure can be
composted into
a stable,
versatile
nutrient.
Ridgetown
Coi(ejas been
c
___ompos g liquid
hog manure
mixed with
materials like
straw and corn
stalks. Odours
t rivaiiy
ltrlinated.
26 THE RURAL VOICE
Suppose someone told you in these days of protests
over larger livestock operations, that you could apply
manure without causing odour problems to your
neighbours? Suppose, 'in these post -Walkerton days of near
paranoia over contaminated water, that you could virtually
insure there would be no pathogens from your livestock
applied to your fields?
A miracle? Well in a way it is — a miracle of nature.
It's called composting and it has been overlooked by most
farmers in North America even as the hysteria about
environmental and human health issues has grown in the
past decade. Composting has been the preserve of organic
farmers and for that very reason has been disregarded by
many mainstream farmers.
But now, in the light of complaints about odours and
concern about bacteria from cattle affecting groundwater,
there's a serious effort to look at the effectiveness and the
economic practicality of composting for modern farming
operations.
Ron Fleming of Ridgetown College has been in the
forefront of an attempt to explore ways of turning liquid
manure into dry compost. At first, he says, the goal of
research was to see if the system would even work and
then the idea was to see if it would reduce odour.
The results show the experiment, started with the first
batch of compost in March 1998, was a success on both
counts. What's more, Fleming says, tests show pathogens
such as E.coli and salmonella are killed off by the heat
created in the composting process.
Composting can be as simple as piling materials
combining nitrogen and carbon in a pile and turning the
material periodically to allow oxygen to enter and combine
with the other chemicals, but for the Ridgetown
experiment, a more elaborate system was set up to explore
different combinations of composting materials. The key
component in all the experiments was liquid hog manure,
which provides the nitrogen. Straw, wood fibre, corn
stover, corn cobs, tree leaves and combinations of these
were tested as providers of carbon. To make sure air was