In order to prepare third-party manure management plans in Manitoba, you must be registered as a Manure Management Planner. Manitoba Conservation has arranged two meetings so far to help keep Manure Management Planners up to date with changes in regulations and current research. I attended the meeting yesterday so here are some of the highlights of what I learned.
Regulatory Update, Conservation: Bryce Wood
- Spreading on November 10 and April 10 is considered winter spreading. MB Conservation just received a legal opinion on this and it turns out they had been misinforming us even as recently as this fall. Oops.
- Phosphorous-based manure application and the end of winter spreading will come into effect across all of Manitoba in 2013.
- Manure treatment sites, compost sites and under-barn storages will need permits. Basically if you store or process manure in any kind of permanent structure, you need a permit for that structure.
- Even if manure is treated so that it is below the municipal discharge standards for purity of water, it cannot be released into watercourses (unlike municipal or city lagoons)
- Plans must be submitted for decommissioning or mothballing of manure storages. Any manure being spread from those storages (even for a no longer existing barn) requires a manure management plan.
MMP Program: Diane Smith
- Composted Manure is still manure and must be treated as such
- The setbacks for compost sites are different than those for field storages
- Manitoba Conservation’s goal is to audit about 10% of Manure Management Plans every year (roughly 50 operations)
- This year they only did 30, but the results were good as most fields were well below compliance thresholds
Regulatory Update, Water Stewardship: David Hay
- Gave a quick look at the Nutrient Management Regulations
- These regulations are in parallel with the Livestock Regulations
- Water Stewardship will be doing audits for compliance at some point.
Manure Applicator Licensing: Marla Riekman
- Applicators are required to be licensed
- Applicators must keep records for each field applied. These records are to be kept for 3 years.
- A licensed applicator must be present (roughly defined as within 5 miles or 15 minutes of application site)
- One possible future direction may be to follow the pesticide model and require all involved (and not just the supervisor) to be licensed.
- MAFRI and Manitoba Conservation enforce the licensing
Due Diligence Defence: John D. Stefaniuk
- Burying your head in the sand isn’t much of a defence
- Due diligence means roughly that you did everything possible to avoid commission of an offense
- Anyone involved (CEOs – employees) can be held liable
- Due diligence is “proving that the accused did everything reasonably within his/her/its power to prevent the offence or proving reasonable belief in a set of facts that , if true, would render the act or omission innocent.”
- A lot of what he said about due diligence seemed to boil down to: keep records, be aware of regulations, be prepared, and act promptly.
NCLE Research, Christine Rawluk
- She gave a quick overview of National Centre for Livestock and the Environment (NCLE) and emphasized that it’s focused on a whole system approach
- She described some of their research projects and preliminary results. I’m hoping to get more details from her than what she was able to present in the time given.
- The project for removal of manure phosphorous as struvite (MgNH4P04) looks like something that might be worth checking into in a few years
- I’d like to know more about the in-field equivalence of different manures for better nutrient planning.
- She showed some results from the soil test P levels project that were very informative. Again, I’d like to have a closer look at the data and all the footnotes.
Agronomic and Environmental Availability of Manure N + P, Don Flaten
- Whenever P is discussed in Manitoba, Don Flaten shows up. He’s tremendously knowledgeable and fun to listen to.
- Commercial fertilizer has the highest potential for runoff and the highest crop availability for a given amount of P.
- Solid cattle manure has the lowest potential for runoff and the lowest crop availability for a given amount of P.
- Liquid swine manure is between the two
- Don suspects, but cannot prove that this is more due to the form of the manure than its source.
- In Manitoba, Olsen P is the best predictor for runoff
- In Manitoba, Water extractable P is the best predictor for percolation
- Any P test will give good results for overall P loss
Ramp Calibration Strips, Mitchell Timmerman
- Mitchell Timmerman gave a talk on Nitrogen Ramp Calibration Strips. Mostly he was just presenting the talk for John Heard who couldn’t be there. You can read the text at Nitrogen Ramp Calibration Strips in Manitoba
It was an informative session, though I was a little tired of taking notes by the end of it.
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