GLENLEA, Man. – Manitoba government regulations restricting phosphorus will slash the amount of hog manure producers can apply to land, and that will make some operations unviable, says a leading researcher.
“If you’re giving away your manure to your neighbour and then spending $50 per acre to buy nitrogen for your crops, that really changes the economics for your cropping enterprise,” said University of Manitoba nutrient management expert Don Flaten during a tour of the university’s field plots.
“Profit margins aren’t large enough to accommodate those sorts of impacts.”
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He said a wide range of researchers and industry people are scrambling to develop ways hog producers can survive the imposition of the new system.
In 2013, regulations will restrict the application of manure to land by making phosphorus levels the prime consideration, rather than nitrogen levels.
Crops are able to take up large amounts of nitrogen every year, allowing back-to-back applications of liquid hog manure on most cropland.
That saves farmers money and makes mixed grain and hog farms efficient.
When the new phosphorus regulations come into force, many fields will only be able to take hog manure one year in five.
For farmers in central and western Manitoba, that will probably be OK, because most have large land bases and neighbours are hungry for the excess, Flaten said.
Flaten added that researchers are hoping to form a multi-pronged strategy to limit the economic damage of the new regulations. They hope by limiting the phosphorus going into the diet, increasing the ability of pigs to digest phosphorus, increasing the efficient use of phosphorus by crops in the field, and finding ways to extract phosphorus from manure, there will be viable ways to reduce the impact.
“We look towards feeding management as the first and best strategy to reduce phosphorus excretion in manure, because if you can save money by supplementing with less mineral phosphorus in your diet, that’s the most effective option,” said Flaten.
Low phytate crops and supplemental phytase – an enzyme that promotes phosphorus digestion – can also reduce phosphorus coming out of the pig.
Rotations can be perfected to use the most phosphorus possible, Flaten said.
Phosphorus extraction is possible, but extremely expensive and a last resort, he said.
“It’s going to be very hard for some livestock operations to adapt to this.”
