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 1377

The University of Manitoba has started analyzing the volumes of data collected this summer as part of a study of Odor and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Hog Operations.

The study is being conducted by the University of Manitoba's Department of Bioseystems Engineering on behalf of the Manitoba Livestock Manure Management Initiative.

Its goals are to determine how much odor is generated by the barn and by the manure storage and to measure downwind odor concentrations to develop dispersion models.

Dr. Qiang Zhang says odor emission samples were collected from the barn and from the manure storage and specially trained sniffers were dispatched downwind of the barn to rank the odor.

"For each measurement session we probably have 18 people going to the field. 15 of them are odor sniffers.

They are actually distributed in the field downwind from the facility and then there's three people who measure the odor emission data and coordinate the sniffers because we have to get those 15 people to the exact location in the field by using a GPS system.

Once they are in the field, we actually have a person coordinate the sniffing activity. Every ten minutes they do sniffing on ten second intervals so they collect 60 data points in a ten minute session.

They wait for ten minutes then do another ten minute session then wait for another ten minutes and do another session.

They do three consecutive sessions in the field and they collect 180 data points, at least, per sniffer".

Dr. Zhang expects the first set of data to be analyzed by early next year at which point dispersion modeling can begin.

He says additional measurements will be collected next spring and summer and a final report is expected in December of 2004.