Hog farmers will soon be able to see, smell and touch different manure handling techniques in action on several farms across Western Canada.
The federal government’s Western Economic Diversification is giving $495,000 to Canadian Environmental Technology Advancement Corporation-West to help match hog farmers who want to try new methods with companies developing the technology.
Don Somers, the company’s vice-president in Saskatchewan, said new options could range from composting hog manure to storing it in different ways.
Somers said he has a small list of companies with ideas or waste management technology that could be adapted to hog manure.
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“All we’re doing is providing a platform. We’re opening the door for discussion,” he said.
CETAC-West has been working for more than a year on a computer model to compare the costs and benefits of current manure handling methods to new technologies.
“Any of the new technologies that may be coming forward, they won’t really know what it costs per pig to use them,” explained projects manager Laurel Reich.
CETAC-West is a non-profit private sector group created under Environment Canada’s Green Plan. It is funded mainly by federal and provincial governments but operates at arms’ length from them.
Setting up demonstrations
Somers said CETAC-West will help set up provincial committees to match farmers with demonstration projects.
He hopes to see one demonstration in each of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C. each year for the next three years.
Funding for each site could come from a combination of farmers, technology companies, government agencies and banks.
“If we do this right, the producer and the technology company could probably take it to lenders for financing,” he said.
“It would just be part of their capital costs.”
Farmers will be able to tour the sites and later follow up on the visit through an internet home page and seminars, Reich said.
Somers said he hopes the first demonstration sites will be named by fall.
Western Economic Diversification also gave $485,000 to Thermo Tech Technologies Inc. to help set up a manure recycling plant on a hog farm in Manitoba.
Lionel Gosselin, who handles corporate relations for the Langley, B.C.-based company, said the location for the plant has not been chosen.
The site will be a showcase for the company’s patented thermophillic microbial fermentation process, which pasteurizes wet wastes before drying them into fertilizer.
The company owns large plants in Brampton and Hamilton, Ont. and Corinth, N.Y. that recycle other types of organic wastes.
Already, hog industry officials in several U.S. states are planning to visit the Manitoba plant, Gosselin said.
“This is going to be a very large drawing card to Manitoba.”
Gosselin believes the hog industry holds huge potential for Thermo Tech and its shareholders, adding every commercial barn should have one.
The Manitoba site will open later this year, he said. In the meantime, farmers can tour a plant on the internet at www.bb-net.com/ttrif/.
