Edwin Hofer supports the rules set by Manitoba to regulate how and when manure from larger livestock operations gets applied.
He knows those rules are helping protect the environment. They are also encouraging producers to look upon their livestock manure more as a nutrient than a waste.
“I actually like what they’re trying to make us do,” says Hofer, secretary-treasurer of Miami Colony Farms Ltd.
But what aggravates Hofer, along with Manitoba farm and rural leaders, is the lack of clarity in the approval process for large livestock developments.
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The main complaint is that the Manitoba government has not drawn a clear line between the responsibilities of the province and rural municipalities when applications are made to expand existing operations or to build new ones.
Groups like Keystone Agricultural Producers, the Association of Manitoba Municipalities and the Manitoba Pork Council want municipalities to handle decisions about land use planning, and leave environmental considerations to the province.
The idea is that municipalities would establish zones in their jurisdictions where livestock developments could and could not occur. Decisions about whether a barn should be approved or rejected on environmental grounds would fall entirely to the province.
Farm and rural leaders deem the topic to be important as the province’s political parties attempt to win votes in the current provincial election. Manitobans go to the polls June 3.
The province promised last summer there would be clarity, consistency and predictability in the approval process, but it has failed to deliver, said Marcel Hacault, Manitoba Pork Council chair. The result is that some of the larger players in hog barn development are starting to bypass Manitoba in favour of other prairie provinces and the United States.
“If you don’t know what the rules are, how are you going to play the game?”
In the case of Miami Colony Farms, the problem is getting approval to build new storage for manure from the colony’s dairy, poultry and hog barns. It needs the storage to comply with the province’s manure management regulations.
Manure from one of its hog barns now goes into an in-ground concrete tank that fills up each month. That means hauling out the manure regularly, even in the winter when spreading is discouraged by the province due to the risk of nutrient runoff in the spring.
Hofer said that problem could be remedied if the colony could get approval for a new earthen lagoon, but his local municipal council has already twice turned down proposals for such a structure.
The municipality is insisting on above-ground storage, even though the cost would be considerably higher and the site chosen for the earthen storage is acceptable to the province. Hofer said the decision by the municipality seemed arbitrary.
While he thinks the municipality should have a say in decisions about where to locate livestock manure lagoons and new intensive livestock developments, Hofer suggested their decisions need to be based on consistent and fair guidelines.
In the case of the colony’s current predicament, he would like the province to override the municipal council’s decision or help with the added cost in building above-ground manure storage.
More than two years ago, the province hired Ed Tyrchniewicz, a leading agricultural economist from the University of Manitoba, to head a panel to study the livestock industry and to make recommendations on how the growth of that industry could be comfortably managed.
The panel’s report was released in December 2000. One of its recommendations was to make a clear distinction between the roles of municipalities and the province when it came to approving livestock developments.
In an interview last week, Tyrchniewicz said there continues to be much uncertainty over that issue. Many municipalities are reluctant to consider intensive livestock operatives, partly because their responsibilities in the approval process remain unclear.
“We need a greater clarification on the direction of land use policy in Manitoba,” he said, noting that should include not only livestock ventures, but also industrial enterprises such as the new ethanol plants that the Manitoba government wants established in the province.
