Alberta Launches 'Manure Odor Control Technology' Evaluation

Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Play Audio Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape, Episode 1152

Alberta's Odor Control Team is launching a three year project aimed at determining what strategies livestock producers are using to control odor and to evaluate those options. The Odor Control Team includes representatives of Alberta Agriculture Food and Rural Development, the University of Alberta and Alberta Research Council engineers and scientists.

The range of odor control options includes things like straw or geotech manure storage covers, manure additives, feed additives, diet manipulation, biofilters and others.

Odor Control Specialist Ike Edeogu says the team will survey producers to determine what technologies they are adopting, then assess the effectiveness of those technologies.

"We want to have some understanding of where the industry is going and, to an extent, how the industry views this problem at this time.

On an individual producer basis we don't really know how many of them are actually starting to say, 'yes, odor control technologies, we're taking it on.'

From our perspective, what we're saying is 'yes, there's technology all over the place, Europe, North America, Australia.'

What we find is that we can't just bring technology into the province and say, 'here's a biofilter, these are the design specs from Europe, go ahead build yourself one and you'll get 95 percent odor reduction right away.'

We feel that we've got to set up these same biofilters ourselves, run them and do our own evaluation on these biofilters, define the specifications or operational parameters, maintenance and cost."

Edeogu says this information will be passed onto livestock operators in the form of an odor control manual.

He says the information will allow producers to make well informed economic decisions as they develop their own plans for odor control.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.