Farm-Scape, Episode 2073

Officials with PAMI estimate a newly developed solid manure injection system could be ready for commercial manufacture within two years.

Engineers at the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute at Humboldt are putting the finishing touches on their new and improved prototype solid manure injection system and expect to begin testing as soon as the weather allows, possibly in May or June of this year.

Project leader Dr. Hubert Landry says the testing phase will be quite detailed.

"The testing program is quite important. That involves measurements of odors and greenhouse gas emissions. That is done by the University of Saskatchewan.

Of course we want to look into more engineering data like energy consumption, of course agronomic data like what kind of fertilizer placement do we get with this machine, so it should be carried out over the entire summer. We have been doing most of our testing with feedlot manure right out of the feedlot. That means manure with straw.

We have worked with compost as well. The objective really is to cover as wide a range of manure types as possible so we're hoping that the machine will be able to go from any type of solid or semisolid manure which is like from sludge to a solid feedlot manure but, like I said, most of the testing was done with manure and compost.

Eventually we will try to go to more of a sludge type product but, for now, we've been focusing on feedlot manure mostly.

Dr. Landry says the objective is to get as close to a commercial machine as possible and then transfer that technology to, hopefully, a Canadian manufacturer.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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