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Under new environmental regulations being proposed by the Manitoba government limits will be introduced for the application of phosphorus to agricultural land in addition to limits on nitrogen which are already in place.

The economic assessment was conducted by the University of Manitoba to determine what additional annual costs would be incurred by the pig industry for compliance with the new regulations and was presented yesterday at the Manitoba Swine Seminar.

Janelle Mann, a graduate student with the department of Agribusiness, says researchers looked at two different threshold regulations, at two times the annual crop removal of phosphorus and at one time the annual crop removal.

Janelle Mann-University of Manitoba

First, we found that under a two times phosphorus removal regulation there would be an additional cost to the Manitoba pig industry of about 18 million dollars which is about 18 percent of the net income and under a one times phosphorus removal it's about 28 million dollars which is about 28 percent of the net income to pig producers, which is quite a large number.

Between rural municipalities, just because of concentration differences mainly, we found that the RMs with the largest additional costs would be Hanover, La Broquerie, De Salaberry, Morris and Ste. Anne with Hanover having approximately 6.6 million dollars more under a one times phosphorus removal threshold.

Mann believes this is a very important study for people to consider.

She notes there is a large cost to complying with these new regulations and this needs to be taken into account when decisions are being made both at a producer level and at a policy maker level.

ThePigSite News Desk