October 24th, 2024
Economic and Agronomic Value of Poultry Manure
Berwick, Nova Scotia
October 24 will see the delivery of a special education session in the community of Berwick, Nova Scotia. The session will deal specifically with the economic and agronomic value potential of poultry manure. The session is open to both seasoned professionals or those just curious about entering into the poultry sector. The session will be recorded and will be available online at a later date.
The session will be delivered by the On-Farm Climate Action Fund (OFCAF), a federal initiative with the goal of helping farmers implement climate safe practices, in conjunction with Perennia, the Nova Scotia food development agency. The initiative has three specific management practices that it focuses on – nitrogen management, cover cropping and rotational grazing.
“They have a high impact of reducing emissions on farm,” says OFCAF Technical Lead Georgia Lewis on why those three management practices are the focus. “There’s financial support to help farmers implement these practices, but there’s also money available to help with the knowledge transfer around those best management practices.”
Since OFCAF’s launch in 2022, its Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador iteration has held dozens of these types of sessions in Nova Scotia, including a six-part series on nutrient amendments held earlier this summer with representatives from Dalhousie University.
“We really want to bring forth the value of poultry manure to both people that are producing the manure and also people that are utilizing the manure,” says Lewis. “Our goal within this session is to talk about the agronomic and economic benefits but also the environmental impact surrounding poultry manure, so people can use it as a nutrient amendment but also be cautious of the environmental implications as well.”
The education session will feature three speakers – farmer Brian Newcombe of Nova Scotia’s Cornwallis Farms, Chryseis Modderman a manure nutrient management specialist from the University of Minnesota Extension and Dr. Nancy Bohl Bormann, an Iowa-based grain farmer who worked on developing and implementing a United States manure nutrient test database as the main research project that made up her PhD.
“We really wanted to have at least one person that was local, that was fairly progressive in their processing of manure, so we contacted Brian Newcombe,” explains Lewis. “He’s in the valley here, and he has an advanced composting system for poultry manure, so we really wanted to chat with him – its technologically advanced and produces a different product that people can use locally. And when it came to the other two speakers, we just looked for people that were in extension work, that were specifically with poultry manure or manure in general. We feel as though within the States there’s a bit more pressure to utilize manure more efficiently because of higher densities in population and larger farms. So we thought they would have really good insight into the management of manure and how to use it efficiently.”
Overall, Lewis hopes that farmers who attend the session come away with more awareness of how valuable this by-product can be. In particular, she also advises that there is an environmental impact with poultry manure when not used efficiently, but that it can be used in a manner that is not only environmentally and agronomically sound, but also provides an economic benefit.
“When we talk about the value of manure, we’re talking about its nutrient value, but also its dollar value and that these producers may have a product that can be really beneficial to them,” says Lewis.
The Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador iteration of OFCAF will be offering four additional workshops looking at nutrient amendment in different locations in Nova Scotia in December.
“These are great opportunities to get continuing education credits for both agronomists and for people that are recipients of OFCAF. So that’s worth mentioning – farmers can attend and get their learning credits from these sessions.”
For more information click to: https://www.perennia.ca/eventer/poultry-manure-management-the-value-of-manure/
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