SHAKESPEARE, Ont. – Trees and shelterbelts around pig barns can be part of the solution to controlling smells, pollution and complaints from neighbours, says an Ontario government specialist.
“Trees alone will not resolve the problem of odour,” Todd Leuty of the Ontario ministry of agriculture said Nov. 19. “But shelterbelts do offer a significant tool.”
It is partly because of the impact trees have on wind patterns, he told a hog conference on nutrient management.
Hog barns emit odours and if they stand alone, prevailing winds blow past and through them, carrying the smell to neighbours.
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A line of trees in front of the hog barn forces half the wind force to rise above the tree line, passing high above the barn and actually sucking some of the smell up to be dispersed in the atmosphere. The other half of the wind is slowed going through the trees and passes over and through the barn as a gentle breeze, not the extreme rushing carrier of smells.
Leuty said a row of trees on the side of the barn away from prevailing winds will catch the odour-carrying breeze and the trees’ needles and leaves will absorb some of the offending pollutants.
He said the esthetics of having trees around a hog barn also cannot be discounted.
“Trees create a visual barrier to livestock barns. Trees can make cropped fields and pastures more pleasing to look at. Trees represent an environmental statement to neighbours that the producer is making every effort to resolve odour problems in as many ways as possible.”
Leuty told the conference, sponsored by Ontario Pork and the Ontario government, that buying some trees would be a small expense within the overall cost of building a new hog barn.
And for the countryside, tourism and the hog industry, it offers benefits.
“It offers an appealing view. It offers a home for diverse species, fall colours and wild birds.”
Meanwhile, fellow Ontario bureaucrat Jake DeBruyn offered producers the prospect of making money from reducing hog industry greenhouse gas emissions.
He said scientists have concluded that a 5,000-head hog barn sends 1,050 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent pollutants into the atmosphere every year. Included are carbon dioxide and the more environmentally lethal methane and nitrous oxide.
An early estimate by climate change researchers is that when carbon credits are worth money under the Kyoto Protocol, reduction of a tonne of carbon emission could be worth $10.
DeBruyn said if that hog farm could reduce its emission by 10 percent, or 100 tonnes, it could be worth $1,000 annually.
Would that be enough to justify the investment needed to cut emissions by changing feeding portions or investing in better manure management and storage facilities?
“That will be a judgment call,” he said.
“And don’t put a lot of stock in carbon credits yet. There is a lot of work to do still” before the credits have a value and can be sold or traded.
