Editor’s note: Bijon Brown, Production Economist, Alberta Pork recently interviewed Trevor Wallace, Nutrient Management Specialist, Alberta Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Economic Development. Brown can be contacted at bijon.brown@albertapork.com. Wallace can be contacted at trevor.wallace@gov.ab.ca.

Brown: Since mid-2020, we’ve seen a significant rise in fertilizer prices. More recently, we’ve seen how transportation bottlenecks and China’s restriction of fertilizer exports have caused prices to soar. Do you think there is value in using hog manure as fertilizer for crops?

Wallace: Yes, definitely. Basically, all the nutrients that a crop needs can be found in manure to varying degrees. It’s not a perfect fertilizer, and there’s going to be shortfalls of nitrogen within the manure, but as a nutrient source, it’s a very good option for producers – especially the operations that have manure there. They’ve got to put it on the land somewhere, so it can be really targeted both on the landscape and towards the crop, to provide a very good value for that cost of application.

Brown: Is it expensive to test or sample manure?

Wallace: No. The sampling is relatively easy, and sometimes manure applicators can do it for you, but this can sometimes be a pain. Manure composition is variable, so that’s always a problem. On a drag line system with a pump, there’s often a spigot that we can open and take some manure out or use the transfer hose that we’re pumping. We take several samples and then try to keep it cool and get it to the lab, so that’s the bigger challenge than the cost.

Brown: What’s the best way to start this, and how can we value this manure? Is there a tool that can estimate the value of the manure?

Wallace: Yes. There are a couple of different ways to do it, and we do have the ‘manure transportation calculator.’ The calculator allows you to put in the crops you want to grow, and it’s going to give you book values automatically, but you can put in your own values if you’ve had the analysis done.

When you put in your numbers, it spits out the economic benefit and the cost of using it. The calculator evaluates the cost over five years, so over that rotation, we’re going to account for nutrients that are released with time. Value comes in two ways: one of them is from the nutrients in the manure, and the other one’s from the nutrient needs in the crop.

Brown: What’s the best approach for getting consistent nutrient application?

Wallace: The traditional way is really good agitation – starting two to four hours before application. It costs money, but we’ve improved agitation with either multiple agitation pads in the lagoon or new technology, like a remote-controlled agitator that moves around and sucks up the content at the bottom. That’s one approach.

Another way is to take multiple samples from the lagoon at different times. The early material is mostly water, and the later material is going to be a higher percentage of solids. Another way yet uses a newer technology to sample the nitrogen content as the manure’s flowing from the tanker.

Brown: What are the benefits of applying the manure via direct injection versus surface application?

Wallace: Surface application is fast. You can do a large area quickly to reduce soil compaction, but the problem with surface application is the loss of that available nitrogen with solid manure, which has a lot more of the organic nitrogen and a smaller amount of the available nitrogen. With liquid manure, it’s fine. There’s a lot of nitrogen that can be lost depending how we handle it.

Brown: Should application be directly to the soil, to make the best use of nitrogen?

Wallace: Yes. It can still be broadcast, but the quicker we work it in, especially the liquid, the more nutrients or nitrogen being captured. The guys that are changing their system so they can spread during the season – into growing crop – are not spreading it when there’s a risk of loss, since most of our runoff’s in the spring. If we can get it in the ground in the fall, the organic stuff will start breaking down a bit, but crops use it better. A low broadcast or a pure injection helps with odour, and maybe the most important thing, it gets some of the equipment off the road, for safety reasons. 

Brown: Are there any other benefits we can get out of manure when it comes to soil quality? 

Wallace: Yes. Part of it comes from that organic portion, like the manure itself. We’re adding a food source for microbes. Solid manure can have a greater impact than the liquid. It’s adding the carbon and organic matter to the soil, which makes the ground more pliable and easier for crop growth. It granulates really nicely and helps with water infiltration, resists soil compaction and helps the plant roots.

Brown: Is there value to using manure for renewable energy?

Wallace: I’m torn on it. For this technology to work, it needs to be scalable and fit the size of the operation. The difficulty with this is that it is complex technology – it’s going to require expertise or extra labour. Many manures are not really high-energy producers. We can use the manure as a base in the mixture for something like an anaerobic digester, but the hog manure we did some research on was producing about 156 megajoules of energy per tonne. In the same quantity, poultry manure produces 3,200 megajoules, and coal is 22 to 32 gigajoules [22,000 to 32,000 megajoules].

Brown: Are there benefits to having knowledge in terms of how manure affects the environment?

Wallace: Yes. When we often talk about manure, we look at it as an economic benefit for the crop. It is a cost to get it out there, but whatever we can do to maximize the use of the nutrients that are in it helps offset that cost. When we start talking about losses due to gases in the air or runoff, the loss of value is either a loss in yield or just a pure loss of cost, because you paid to put it there, but now it’s gone.

Those nutrients do the exact same thing in water as they do on land. A very small amount of them have a huge impact in water, so when we start to lose nutrients because of runoff, we’re not capturing them in the field. That nitrogen or phosphorus can have a significant effect on the growth of algae, for example, which has a negative impact on water quality.

Brown: Do you have any best management tips that can help a farmer manage his use of manure?

Wallace: Knowing what’s in the manure is a great first step. It doesn’t matter if you start with book values, but knowing what you’re applying is important.

I’ve worked with a lot of producers who have figured out their application rate not because they know what’s in it, but they’ve done it so long and they’ve come up with a number that produces the crop they’re targeting, so they’ve figured it out that way, but getting to know the nutrient content through soil sampling is fundamental.

Knowing that nutrient profile really helps with taking advantage of all the nutrients that you’re applying or the nutrients that are in the field, because if they’re accumulating there, you’re not getting value from them. 

Producers in Alberta are encouraged to contact Wallace if they are interested in learning more about how to best use their manure. Producers outside of Alberta are encouraged to contact their local agronomist.

By Andrew Heck

The Canadian Meat Council (CMC) held its annual general meeting (AGM) in Ottawa in mid-June, along with a banquet to mark 100 years since the organization’s founding.

“Our centennial celebration is testament to the longstanding efforts of the Canadian meat industry to grow and prosper,” said Chris White, President & CEO, CMC. “Canadian meat packers have proven time and time again that we are here to defy expectations for a country our size compared to some of our international contemporaries.”

CMC represents about 90 to 95 per cent of all pork and beef processed in Canada, in addition to other red meats. These fresh and processed products originate from more than 200 facilities across the country, shipping product to more than 120 countries worldwide. CMC works with its processor members and associate members – such as food ingredient suppliers, packaging material suppliers, equipment manufacturers and service providers – to advocate for international trade and regulatory policy frameworks that protect food safety and market access, while also helping the industry stay collectively competitive domestically and globally.

When it comes to political decisions and livestock disease challenges at home or abroad, producers and packers alike can be deeply impacted. For the hog industry, the continued, uninhibited flow of pork from the abattoir to end-users is fundamental to the financial success of the sector. While the composition of the industry has changed over time, what has remained unchanged is its devotion to expanding business opportunities and focusing on providing safe and wholesome meat for consumers.

Canadian meat goes global

In the aftermath of the First World War, more than a dozen meatpacking firms gathered in Toronto, in 1919, to discuss the formation of a voluntary trade association, which would eventually become the ‘Industrial and Development Council of Canadian Meat Packers,’ in 1922, officially changing to the ‘Meat Packers’ Council of Canada,’ in 1952.

The organization was renamed the ‘Canadian Meat Council,’ in 1980, at which time major changes were afoot in the industry, with a focus on diversifying from mostly domestic markets to international ones. Domestic red meat consumption per capita had begun to fall, as a result of increasing food consumer choice and a shift to proteins like chicken. As a result, packers began to seek new markets for their goods. It was around this time that the integration of hog production and pork processing became a smart business decision for packers who were eager to secure hog supply for reliable volumes of pork.

In 1991, the Canadian Pork Council (CPC) and CMC came together to form Canada Pork International (now known simply as ‘Canada Pork’) – the definitive link in the value chain that brought together producers and packers.

“The value proposition for Verified Canadian Pork hinges on collaboration between those who raise hogs and those who process them,” said Trevor Sears, President & CEO, Canada Pork. “Whether we market pork to Canadians or our overseas partners, strength across the value chain is what makes quality assurance guarantees possible.”

Today, about half of hogs on-farm in Canada belong to producer-packer integrated systems, while independent producers continue to play an important role for all federal plants. In 2020, Canada exported more than 70 per cent of all pork produced in the country, primarily to China, Japan, the U.S. and Mexico, with large emerging markets in Vietnam and the Philippines. Considering all global pork traders, Canada ranks first among export-dependent jurisdictions in the world, followed by Chile, which ships away just over 60 per cent of its pork. The U.S., meanwhile, moves approximately 30 per cent of its pork out-of-country.

Looking forward at issues affecting trade and regulatory policy frameworks, the global rise of African Swine Fever (ASF) has characterized the pork industry narrative in recent years, which intimately affects hog producers as much as packers and others in the value chain.

Continued trade requires disease control

CMC consults with the Government of Canada closely on international trade agreements to ensure meat remains front-and-centre in negotiations. Better access for Canadian meat abroad demands consistency in standards at home. This includes mandatory preventive control programs and enforced outcome-based regulations in meat plants, all the way back to on-farm programs. When Canadian production standards align with international expectations, trade barriers are much easier to overcome.

Starting in 2018, with the spread of ASF in China, the establishment of zoning agreements became a priority for the industry, and today, agreements are in place with the U.S., U.K., European Union (E.U.), Singapore and Vietnam. An agreement with Japan remains a high priority, as Japanese officials prepare to visit Canadian farms, plants and labs in the coming months to perform audits. Should an agreement be struck with Japan, taking into account the other existing agreements, more than 40 per cent of Canadian pork exports would be theoretically secure, if ASF were to strike.

“Zoning is Canada’s best chance at ensuring business continuity in the event of ASF,” said Rick Bergmann, Chair, CPC. “The importance of these political decisions cannot be overstated, even as producers focus on day-to-day farm operations.” 

In alignment with other national stakeholders, CMC is concentrating on supporting ASF mitigation efforts, such as enhancing surveillance to avoid the entry of pork products from infected countries through various ports of entry, enhanced biosecurity at the farm and plant level, wild boar eradication, passive surveillance sampling at key sites, small-scale producer awareness and by examining cross-border transport vehicle traffic on industry biosecurity. As such, CMC is an active partner on Canada’s ASF Executive Management Board (EMB), which includes representation from industry stakeholders and government officials working to implement the Pan-Canadian Action Plan on ASF. To reinforce the organization’s commitment in this area, CMC has joined CPC and the Government of Canada to study how an ASF outbreak would impact the Canadian industry from an economic perspective.

In the event trade comes to a halt due to ASF, pork supplies already in cold storage, awaiting export, will need to stay put, with additional back-filled pork arriving until the supply of market hogs on-farm and in transport is finally siphoned off. This would quickly become a complicated situation, as the Canadian public is not equipped to absorb (consume) the surplus pork that will be left in the lurch. For the countries with which Canada has agreed on zoning, a necessary first step would be to wait until CFIA has successfully established primary control zones (areas where the virus is known to exist) before declaring the rest of the country free of ASF. At that point, trade may resume in areas outside of the primary control zones with partners who are confident in our industry’s efforts to stop the spread.

As CMC furthers its advocacy on cultivating new trade relationships and strengthening existing ones, it would seem to be the unanimous opinion that ASF prevention, rather than response, is the preferred course. But it does stand to reason that, the more zoning agreements we have with our valued trading partners, the less the damage might be if the inevitable occurs.

Labour shortage has a ripple effect

When COVID-19 struck Canada’s meatpacking plants, the beef and pork value chains were in for a shock. Several federally inspected pork and beef facilities experienced voluntary or mandatory shutdowns, due to COVID-19 cases among employees. CMC played a pivotal role – working with provincial and federal government officials and other stakeholders – to ensure plants were able to be up-and-running as soon as possible, with worker safety in mind.

On the whole, labour availability remains a major challenge for packers and producers. Last year, CMC reported more than 9,000 vacancies within Canadian packing plants, ultimately affecting livestock slaughter volume. Vacancies also reduce capacity for further processing, which limits packers’ ability to create value-added products, prompting them to sell primal cuts at a lower price than what more detailed cuts could fetch on the market. This is why CMC advocates very strongly for an enhanced Temporary Foreign Worker Program, in addition to extended opportunities for workers to become Canadian permanent residents or citizens, as newcomers are much likelier to stick with their jobs when opportunities for long-term employment are available.

As labour challenges continue to hamper all aspects of the industry, this reality affects domestic and global food security, which depend on stable food supply.

An industry hungry for excellence

More than nine out of 10 Canadians still eat meat, and a growing affluent population in the developing world is seeking out meat more frequently as a dietary staple. This is great news for both producers and packers, so long as the industry can continue working toward the common goal of sustainability and progress.

Canada’s hog producers and pork packers, bolstered by the work of CMC, continue to prove to buyers that the Canadian red meat industry is poised to serve their needs for years to come, as it has done for the past century and even longer. The COVID-19 pandemic, political regime changes, economically protectionist ideologies and industry hurdles aside, much opportunity exists for Canadian red meat to thrive in spite of challenges.