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Farm-Scape, Episode 1293

The Canadian Pork Council says, as nitrogen fertilizer prices continue to rise, effective manure management will become even more important to farmers.

As part of the Canadian Pork Council's greenhouse gas initiative, the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute will host a series of eight demonstration days across Saskatchewan over the next six weeks.

The demonstration sites focus 'in crop' application of liquid hog manure with low disturbance injection.

CPC Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Coordinator Cedric MacLeod says there are several reasons to improve manure management.

"As nitrogen fertilizer prices continue to rise, I think, manure management is going to become a more important focus for producers as they try to keep that bottom line within a maintainable level.

Also, we're looking at a timing issue.

Research at the University of Saskatchewan has shown that in crop application of manure at the three to four leaf stage in wheat actually gives you a one to two percent boost in protein yields with no decrease in yields.

The potential there to improve the bottom line is going to be very important for producers and they're really going to stand up and take a look at that and the opportunities that we have to use manure very effectively.

As you move away from the fall application period, which tends to leave a lot of nitrate sitting in the soil during periods of saturation under which we do get nitrous oxide production, if we can move away from that and into applying manure at a time when the crop is actively assimilating nitrogen and taking it up out of the soil there's not as much opportunity for that nitrogen to be given off as nitrous oxide".

MacLeod says the nitrogen that comes out of the hog is as valuable as the nitrogen that goes into the hog so we need to focus on the whole system to maximize the value of that nitrogen.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.