The executive director of the Manitoba Livestock Manure Management Initiative says research planned for this summer will help manure applicators reduce the cost of relocating phosphorus from areas where it is in excess to areas where it is in short supply.
The Manitoba Livestock Manure Management Initiative, in partnership with Agra-Gold Consulting, is exploring beneficial management practices intended to optimize the removal, transportation and land application of nutrients from two-cell earthen manure storage lagoons on grow-finish operations.
MLMMI executive director John Carney says the focus of this project is to use 3 different techniques in terms of varying the sequence and timing of activities around the emptying of the storage, based on the phosphorus needs of the farm and the phosphorus profile of the soils.
Our target audience includes quite a broad group, certainly producers, nutrient management planners, manure applicators, various government groups and the public itself and we are hoping that this can provide some insight into better ways that nutrient planners can work with manure applicators and producers to vary their activities around emptying a two cell manure storage and reduce the amount of phosphorus that needs to be transported, optimizing the nitrogen rich liquid closer to the farm.
We know that phosphorus is precious and MLMMI is continuing to work with the industry in evaluating all options for relocating and redistributing phosphorus to where it’s needed in Manitoba and so this is just one more on a series of projects that we’ve been engaged in.
The project is scheduled to begin this summer and is expected to be completed in August 2016.
