Finding Solutions to Land Application Barriers

Rick Koelsch Author

03/05/2021 Added

31 Plays

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From "Benefits & Barriers to Manure Use" portion of Land Application Training 2021

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[00:00:00.640]We're going to jump
[00:00:02.090]into a short discussion around barriers of manure.
[00:00:06.410]We asked this same question.
[00:00:09.100]We had a total of 35 potential challenges
[00:00:12.520]and asked people to identify their top challenges.
[00:00:16.320]And this was a nationwide survey.
[00:00:18.870]There was over 800 people
[00:00:21.520]in advisory roles,
[00:00:23.120]crop farmers,
[00:00:23.953]livestock farmers that participated in the survey.
[00:00:28.020]And maybe just focus up here at the top.
[00:00:31.620]Transportation and application costs was the number
[00:00:34.658]one barrier that this group identified.
[00:00:37.980]And it was true for all three
[00:00:39.820]of those audiences there
[00:00:42.210]for cropped farmers,
[00:00:43.680]and advisers odors was
[00:00:45.430]the second highest ranked issue.
[00:00:50.020]And then you can kind of see them going
[00:00:51.970]from there. On fuel conditions
[00:00:55.070]was four or two depending upon the audience.
[00:00:57.710]And that was our top one tonight.
[00:01:00.900]Let's see compaction.
[00:01:03.810]I'm not sure.
[00:01:04.643]Yeah, that showed up as number six, cross the boards.
[00:01:07.860]So that was pretty high on many people's view.
[00:01:10.570]Water quality impairment
[00:01:12.160]I think, let's see that showed
[00:01:14.160]up as number 10 among the advisors.
[00:01:16.410]It was not in the top 10 list
[00:01:18.640]for farmers in that particular survey.
[00:01:22.330]Well, I expect this
[00:01:23.770]answer is going to be a little bit different
[00:01:25.350]for each of us and a lot depends
[00:01:27.120]upon the situation, the neighborhood that we live in, the
[00:01:31.460]the water resources that we're connected with and so forth.
[00:01:36.510]What I would suggest though
[00:01:39.010]that it is a worthwhile exercise to go through working
[00:01:42.730]with manure of identifying what are the top challenges
[00:01:49.380]for your farm that often become a barriers
[00:01:52.850]to manure being used in some fields and trying to piece
[00:01:57.160]through a strategy that will minimize that being a barrier.
[00:02:03.400]And I'm only going to have time to do this
[00:02:05.570]for a couple of examples that I'm going to
[00:02:08.270]pick the top two that are listed here tonight.
[00:02:12.270]And we'll walk through those very briefly
[00:02:15.860]but it's important that you pick your top issues
[00:02:20.090]and come up with a strategy specific to those issues.
[00:02:25.820]We're going to return again to this,
[00:02:30.746]our calculation
[00:02:31.579]of the value of manure, and now ask
[00:02:33.930]can we afford to haul manure
[00:02:35.640]to these little bit more distant fields.
[00:02:38.680]And I think this is equally as important
[00:02:41.553]an exercise for you to walk your way through.
[00:02:45.980]I'm going to use some values that may
[00:02:48.160]or may not represent the cost that you would add
[00:02:50.860]for transporting manure, but trying to come
[00:02:53.650]up with a value for your farm
[00:02:55.740]I think is a worthwhile exercise to take from time to time.
[00:03:01.110]Now, what I want to do is jump let's see.
[00:03:05.600]Yeah, I guess we'll just stay for right here for now.
[00:03:10.990]So for those three fields
[00:03:14.340]we're going to use some numbers that are shared
[00:03:17.110]with us by SECI Agra services.
[00:03:19.890]This is a, a rate that they are paying commercial appliers
[00:03:27.150]or commercial applicators of manure for application costs
[00:03:32.080]and transportation costs. Their about a year old.
[00:03:36.220]We got these November of 2019
[00:03:38.680]and this was the rates they were playing paying
[00:03:41.420]through the winter of 2020.
[00:03:44.490]Now I'm going to use these two
[00:03:47.840]the estimated cost going to those three fields.
[00:03:51.880]One of those fields was about
[00:03:53.542]we were applying 20 tons to the acre.
[00:03:56.240]So let's do that for the application costs
[00:03:59.840]and using their rates from a year ago at 20 ton
[00:04:05.300]per acre rate was about a $4 per time cost or $80 per acre.
[00:04:12.060]So that is one part of the cost.
[00:04:15.520]And the second part of the cost is the transportation cost.
[00:04:19.670]It's a cost to move that extra mile or extra several miles.
[00:04:23.990]For that one mile distance to that first VOD field
[00:04:29.290]it was about $45 an acre
[00:04:32.440]for traveling about three to four miles
[00:04:36.800]or looking at across
[00:04:38.010]that was closer to $3 per ton, $60 per acre.
[00:04:44.120]So with those numbers
[00:04:49.235]I can now go back to this example
[00:04:52.960]and put them here on the screen.
[00:04:56.440]So, add up my transportation
[00:04:59.900]and my application costs for Von.
[00:05:02.890]It comes out to the cost of $125 to achieve a value
[00:05:07.690]of a hundred dollars
[00:05:11.690]for the North tillers.
[00:05:14.430]So $140 per acre cost, and
[00:05:19.404]for roughly the same cost to get it delivered
[00:05:23.530]to the South tillers, maybe just a little bit more
[00:05:26.150]I might've underestimated
[00:05:28.414]or overestimated the cost for the North tillers.
[00:05:31.440]So here's our three cost
[00:05:34.440]and our value.
[00:05:36.510]And now by comparing these two numbers, I have some idea
[00:05:40.990]as to where I might want to haul minority
[00:05:45.180]at least get the value from a nutrient benefit.
[00:05:51.960]Now, I might also want to ask what would be
[00:05:54.530]the soil quality value, soil health value going
[00:05:58.000]to each of these three fields?
[00:05:59.850]Is there one that has a lower organic matter
[00:06:03.222]maybe has a history of tillage?
[00:06:05.780]And so organic matter is lower
[00:06:08.030]lower microbial activity in the soil,
[00:06:13.210]more drought gnats.
[00:06:14.580]So that might change this in your own mind
[00:06:17.550]but now I've got at least some idea which
[00:06:20.950]of these fields going to give me some greater value
[00:06:23.870]over others and just looking
[00:06:25.670]at the nutrient value versus the cost moving manure.
[00:06:29.900]It might suggest that North
[00:06:32.220]and South tillers have have some advantages.
[00:06:35.490]So it's an exercise.
[00:06:37.280]I encourage you to go through, try to come up
[00:06:40.830]with some cost of transportation for, for your own equipment
[00:06:46.620]or use these if you have nothing better
[00:06:48.760]but use this as a starting point to try to decide where you
[00:06:55.350]how far you can transfer manure.
[00:06:58.510]I'd like you to just crop into the chat box,
[00:07:02.200]if you wouldn't mind.
[00:07:05.730]How far are you,
[00:07:07.639]you feel, for your farm,
[00:07:09.760]you can transport manure and you might put, besides that
[00:07:13.640]am I dealing with the, a, B solid manure
[00:07:17.358]a swine slurry manure, but just
[00:07:21.720]for your own current perspective, not, not having gone
[00:07:25.130]through this, how far do you think you can transport manure
[00:07:29.180]and get value today?
[00:07:31.990]I think we have seen over the last decade
[00:07:36.871]a significant change in many people's attitudes
[00:07:40.200]to how far we can move manure
[00:07:43.020]especially with our dry manures.
[00:07:46.447]We now are talking oftentimes in that 10 miles
[00:07:48.740]maybe even more in some cases
[00:07:51.300]with our slurry manures or liquid manures
[00:07:54.770]we're probably only talking one to three mile range
[00:07:57.810]that we would be willing to move all of that, that volume.
[00:08:01.320]But I think we're seeing a continuing shift
[00:08:05.650]and it's from going through exercise
[00:08:07.510]like we've just gone through here of, of what is that cost?
[00:08:12.540]What is that value and recognizing we can move further
[00:08:16.970]and sometimes we would originally anticipate.
[00:08:21.057]So, I encourage you to go through that exercise
[00:08:23.050]and try to come up with some reasonable estimates and
[00:08:26.200]and just to see what that is for your particular farm.
[00:08:29.990]So, transportation costs, is it truly too expensive to go
[00:08:35.320]to some of those more distant fields?
[00:08:38.515]And walking through this strategy, I think, has value.
[00:08:44.520]Okay, uh
[00:08:46.940]There is also values in that PowerPoint handout.
[00:08:50.520]If you'd like to look at that for story manures
[00:08:53.120]we're going to skip by that.
[00:08:55.090]The second issue that some of us encounter are associated
[00:08:59.680]with neighbors, and a variety of neighbor issues.
[00:09:02.710]We're going to talk about odors in particular and
[00:09:07.810]in trying to manage odors associated with land application
[00:09:13.810]of manure, really only two strategies that we
[00:09:18.150]have an option to use probably the most effective is
[00:09:22.151]if it's available to us, is we'd like to move that manure
[00:09:26.520]into the soil as soil is a great aerobic environment,
[00:09:31.000]a great filter, and perfect place for stabilizing manure,
[00:09:36.810]and preventing odors from being released into the soil.
[00:09:40.190]It's great until you look at the cover that's
[00:09:42.980]on top of that soil, and many of us would say, gee
[00:09:45.880]that covers pretty valuable to us
[00:09:47.640]in terms of wind or soil or water erosion.
[00:09:51.830]And so, incorporating manure
[00:09:54.060]into the soil may not be an option for many of us,
[00:09:57.330]especially those that use the solid manure
[00:10:01.995]So, if that's our case
[00:10:04.810]there is a second tool I would suggest that you consider
[00:10:09.890]and that's selecting fields that you're going to
[00:10:13.360]apply manure on for any single day based
[00:10:17.957]upon what's the odor risk to that field.
[00:10:22.670]And I would suggest to you that
[00:10:25.220]with a weather report for the next three to five days
[00:10:29.280]we can make some really good determinations as
[00:10:33.270]to which field am I going to have a high odor risk
[00:10:36.670]in that field, which fields I will not.
[00:10:39.500]And let's walk through that process.
[00:10:45.575]So, I like to use this graphic to remind us
[00:10:51.380]how odor travels.
[00:10:53.700]Odor and smoke are very similar in terms
[00:10:57.520]of whether they rise into the upper atmosphere
[00:11:01.180]and disperse, and dilute quickly, like we're seeing
[00:11:04.680]on the left-hand side, or whether they travel horizontally.
[00:11:10.090]Now we see the smoke here rising
[00:11:12.960]because it's probably caused by a fire
[00:11:15.210]that's got heat in the air right in that area.
[00:11:19.109]But as soon as that air cools
[00:11:19.980]to what the air temperature is in general, or that area
[00:11:23.720]that smoke is traveling horizontally
[00:11:27.010]in that right-hand picture.
[00:11:30.260]Now think about when you see smoke rising
[00:11:34.660]versus traveling horizontally
[00:11:37.370]and what are the conditions that causes one
[00:11:39.660]versus the other? Give some thought to that.
[00:11:43.330]When have you spotted those conditions?
[00:11:48.820]Here's the most common conditions that allow smoke disperse
[00:11:53.810]on the left-hand side. Sunny skies, warming, temperatures
[00:11:59.926]warming temperatures, cause that air to be more buoyant
[00:12:02.170]to rise, carry that smoke,
[00:12:05.030]or that odor cloud away from our neighbors.
[00:12:09.690]The conditions that cause us the greatest risk are evening
[00:12:13.970]and are nighttime hours when temperatures are dropping,
[00:12:18.150]or holding steady.
[00:12:19.940]And that's when we tend to trap smoke or odor
[00:12:24.550]near the Earth's surface.
[00:12:26.220]Near where our neighbors experience.
[00:12:29.270]So, recognizing those conditions that cause that high risk
[00:12:34.010]on the right-hand side, we can forecast when that's going to
[00:12:37.890]occur and what fields might cause us the problem.
[00:12:43.690]So, the high risk conditions always occur in the evening
[00:12:49.240]or nighttime hours.
[00:12:52.928]If I have very low cloud cover,
[00:12:56.510]less than 50% on a clear night
[00:13:00.340]that high-risk condition extends over a wider range
[00:13:05.700]of wind speeds.
[00:13:07.040]So anything less than 11 mile per hour is high risk
[00:13:12.340]for clear skies, anything less than seven miles
[00:13:16.140]per hour is high risk for cloudy skies
[00:13:20.160]all during the nighttime conditions.
[00:13:22.660]During the daytime, if you look here,
[00:13:25.840]all of that, those conditions are
[00:13:34.391]are low risk, or very low risk.
[00:13:36.740]So here's, here's our red flags that we're watching for
[00:13:41.900]high nighttime conditions, and lower wind speeds.
[00:13:47.530]Okay. Let's use that information with that weather forecast.
[00:13:54.420]Now let's figure out when we have high risk conditions.
[00:13:59.560]Take a look at the first night,
[00:14:02.870]right through here
[00:14:07.100]and now nighttime conditions.
[00:14:09.160]What's our wind speed?
[00:14:12.489]Wind speed.
[00:14:13.322]Nine six two two.
[00:14:14.880]So here is high risk.
[00:14:20.010]The night of October 2nd is a high-risk evening.
[00:14:26.960]Look at our next night, October 3rd
[00:14:29.730]going into the morning of October 4th here.
[00:14:34.474]Wind speeds 18, 19, 18 mile per hour.
[00:14:38.700]High speed winds, good dilution from wind speed.
[00:14:43.498]Not much risk to our neighbors.
[00:14:46.890]So now how do we use that?
[00:14:48.990]Okay, well, we're probably gonna apply our manure
[00:14:52.850]the day before, over here on October 2nd.
[00:14:55.980]So if I intend to apply a manure
[00:14:58.780]on a field on October 2nd, here,
[00:15:02.280]I ought to be looking at what is the wind direction when
[00:15:07.130]I had these high-risk conditions that the evening
[00:15:10.100]after the evening of October 2nd.
[00:15:13.670]Wind direction here
[00:15:17.550]is out of the Northwest
[00:15:21.860]to Southwest during these period.
[00:15:25.480]So if I have a field that has neighbors
[00:15:27.690]to the Northwest or the Southwest,
[00:15:31.170]they're at risk.
[00:15:32.890]If I have fields that have no neighbors on that side
[00:15:35.770]but has neighbors on that East thought,
[00:15:40.521]I mean, not in other directions, probably a good time to
[00:15:44.110]I can apply manure on that field
[00:15:45.870]even though I might have neighbors close by.
[00:15:49.400]So let's go back to the lawn and tillers site.
[00:15:54.840]And remember on October 2nd, we have high risk
[00:15:59.320]for winds coming out of the Northwest
[00:16:01.760]and the Southwest.
[00:16:03.960]October 3rd, we have winds coming
[00:16:06.130]out of the Southeast, but that's a pretty low risk period.
[00:16:11.690]So on the Von site on October 2nd
[00:16:16.810]I've got some neighbors that might become quite
[00:16:20.000]irritated with me.
[00:16:20.980]If I decided to put manure
[00:16:22.460]on that field on October 2nd, if I waited till October 3rd
[00:16:27.490]I'm looking at wind blowing in this direction.
[00:16:31.910]I prob this neighbor to the North
[00:16:34.984]of me is probably not at much risk
[00:16:37.490]because of the wind speed.
[00:16:39.340]And if I was thought
[00:16:40.610]that neighbor was a very sensitive neighbor
[00:16:43.270]maybe I would just put manure on the
[00:16:45.896]on the East half of the field
[00:16:48.600]and keep as much distance to that neighbor as possible.
[00:16:52.050]But October 3rd
[00:16:53.250]I could probably put newer on the bond field.
[00:16:55.860]October 2nd would not be a good time down here
[00:16:59.840]at the North tiller site, wind
[00:17:03.510]out of the South and Northwest
[00:17:06.790]looks like my neighbors are
[00:17:08.150]got a pretty substantial distance
[00:17:10.670]may not be much risk.
[00:17:11.920]I might be able to apply manure
[00:17:13.300]on the 2nd as well as the 3rd.
[00:17:16.870]And so by using that weather forecast
[00:17:20.860]I was able to identify
[00:17:22.400]for this bond site that I've got two neighbors at risk.
[00:17:26.200]I avoid that site.
[00:17:28.160]I can probably avoid getting a disturbed neighbor call the
[00:17:32.053]on the morning block over third.
[00:17:35.950]So something to keep in mind
[00:17:38.553]a three to five day weather forecast that has
[00:17:42.140]that tells us what the wind speed and wind directions are
[00:17:46.480]can give us a really good idea where
[00:17:49.975]those high risk conditions are.
[00:17:52.650]Well, in terms of dealing with the barriers associated
[00:17:58.390]with manure, and the challenges we talked about
[00:18:00.940]a couple of those, there's a lot more
[00:18:02.650]that I'm sure that you've all run into
[00:18:06.160]and I guess we'll leave those discussions for another time.
[00:18:09.030]But in many cases I'm thinking just a good conversation
[00:18:12.980]among the folks that are involved in making decisions
[00:18:16.650]for a farm can help you think
[00:18:18.510]through a strategy that will help address many of those.
[00:18:23.580]So I think that's where we'll wrap up that.
[00:18:26.060]I encourage you to have that discussion
[00:18:28.190]around barriers or challenges
[00:18:31.070]and what is an appropriate strategy with your folks.
[00:18:34.350]And that's where we'll leave off this.

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Finding Solutions to Land Application Barriers

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