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Manure technology for the 21^st Century

Research innovations will make it more practical and economical for Canada's beef industry to turn potential waste into a valuable resource.

"Sustainability" is a concept that can be hard to pin down. For Dr. Xiaomei Li, it's all about balance. And right now, that balance is out of whack when it comes to producing beef and managing manure.

"Our technology to produce animals is modern technology – 21st century technology," observes Li, a senior scientist in the environmental technologies unit at the Alberta Research Council. "But equally important is technology to manage the manure that results from that production. That technology is not 21st century technology, so that's where we're pushing to catch up."

Technology for both tasks needs to be on par to maintain a sustainable balance, she says.

"The beef industry is doing an excellent job of managing manure to the best of its ability considering the limited tools it has. What we need is a push for better technology to take manure management as a whole to another level."

New tools for industry

Li is on the front line of innovations to do just that. Among several projects in recent years, Li and colleagues developed a new phosphorous model, to assist operators in determining manure application rates that are environmentally safe. This project was funded by the Canada Alberta Beef Industry Development Fund (CABIDF).

"We believe the phosphorous model can be used a tool for industry to assess individual situations, and right now we're working on the tech transfer," says Li. "The information generated by the model allows producers to maximize application rates, while looking after environmental and economic concerns. It's site specific and focused on giving operators information that is higher quality and more practical than what they have available now." (For more information on the CABIDF project and the model, click here.

Li is also a lead member of the team that developed IMUS Technology, a revolutionary process that turns manure and other agricultural by products into energy, bio-based fertilizers and reusable water. IMUS, which stands for Integrated Manure Utilization System, has earned the Alberta Research Council and its partner, Highmark Renewables, an environmental stewardship award and numerous other industry recognitions.

"This technology addresses specific challenges faced by outdoor feedlot operations and is unique in its innovative design to receive both solid and liquid manure, or any bio-waste, and separate out foreign objects," says Li. "We are now looking at adapting the IMUS technology to include other biomass sources, such as liquid manure, rendering materials, food processing waste and municipal waste."

Capturing energy and nutrients

Both efforts are just two examples of Li's work that illustrate her strong focus on developing technologies that enable sustainable agriculture. In particular, her concentration on innovations that utilize energy and nutrients from so-called agricultural wastes is a critical area of beef science of rapidly growing importance to the industry.

"The phosphorous model is a good example of how we're trying to strengthen current methods of manure management, such as land application," says Li. "But for the future, we're moving more in the direction of the IMUS project. Rather than struggle with issues related to land application, we'd rather turn manure into a valuable product so we don't have those issue in the first place."

Technology, Li believes, is where the best manure management solutions will be found.

"Animals produce manure and manure produces odour and contamination concerns. We can't change what the animal produces, but we can develop technologies that turn the manure into products that are not only less of a concern but potentially quite valuable."

Economic viability key

Managing manure is important, she says, but there's only so much managing the industry can do when dealing with the reality of high manure volumes, particularly with intensive operations such as feedlots.

"For the beef industry, particularly over the past 10 to 15 years, there has been a lot more scrutiny and higher expectations related to how livestock waste is dealt with," says Li. "The industry has realized that and has responded very well. Right now, I think the industry is doing the best it can with the technology available. The challenge is the industry has not had the level of economically viable technology it needs to go a few steps further and achieve a much more sustainable level of production."

With further research, Li is very optimistic that will happen. "We've come a long way, even in just the past few years. As industry and the research community, there's a lot we can accomplish in the next decade with a continued focus on developing technology."

Canada has the land base to handle broad-based manure applications, notes Li. But it shouldn't use that as a crutch.

"Every country has its own unique situation, and for Canada, our advantage is large areas of land. In places like Europe that don't have that, there's even greater pressure to treat manure and find technology based solutions.

"One thing I like about what Europe is doing is many areas have banned applying raw manure to the land. The industry has to treat the manure one way or another. I'm not saying we need regulations, but we should voluntarily always be opting for more sophisticated and sustainable options."

Support for the development of this Perspectives on Beef Science article was provided by the Canada Alberta Beef Industry Development Fund.

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