Claude Lampron is from Saint Vincent. He has an operation of 2,400 acres of barley, peas, canola and wheat, and a small feedlot.

“We keep 200 heifers from October to the end of April. This is where my compost material comes from,” he said.

As soon as the cow goes out and their corrals are dry, Lampron piles the manure in the corral and leaves it. After silage, when there is room in his field, he does some windrowing and spreads the manure after harvest in the fall.

“That’s as simple as it is, and it’s just manure and straw.”

Claude Lampron

WHY IT MATTERS: More producers are turning to compost instead of synthetic fertilizer to cut costs.

Colby Hansen farms between Westlock and Athabasca. His land has variable soil types, ranging from beach sand, peat moss, clay and number one black soils. He runs about 3,000 acres and about 350 cow-calf pairs, growing grain as well.

“We’re using municipal compost on our farm. I’ve used gypsum added into the compost and wood ash,” said Hansen.

Steve Cowan farms south of Camrose. He is also an agronomist with Crop Management Network in central Alberta. He is currently farming with a family friend and will eventually take over the farm.

His grain farm consists of 3,000 acres of canola, wheat, malt barley and pulses.

“The land has been annually cropped for many years. Livestock isn’t part of a lot of the land that we now own or we rent,” he said.

“We have pretty good soil, but I was certainly seeing a lot of challenges from the continuous annual cropping. And that’s what got me interested in looking at compost.”

Canola meal used as compost

Cowan farms right near a canola crush plant at Camrose. The plant needed to get rid of canola meal, and he was able to spread it on his land a few falls ago.

“With that, I got some compost as well that I mixed in, and that I also spread and saw firsthand the value of carbon-based fertilizer,” he said.

Cowan started using variable rates for seeding and fertilizer in 2025.

“I stumbled into some of the compost a bit accidentally, working with Colby and another friend of ours,” he said.

Since then, he has composted with gypsum and wastewater lime as well. He applied 2,000 pounds an acre of the canola meal, which allowed for a release over three to four years. The canola meal helped his crop get through the dry years of 2024 and 2025.

“I’m seeing evidence of something on the zone soil samples, but I certainly feel that I saw it on my yields and the consistency of yields,” he said.

Building soil health

Knowing the land had been continuously cropped for many years encouraged Cowan to think about composting. He could see crusting and sodium issues on his soil. His goal is to build resilience into the land and into the crop, so the crop can survive a year of drought or heat stress.

“By building that soil health, I think I should build some resilience into the soil to overcome those stress periods so I can continue to make money and keep farming,” he said.

Lampron said he had always composted, but co-operating with the Living Lab helped him see how he could maximize it.

“I just wanted to have some data and see if I’m doing the right thing, because there’s a way to do it better. It’s kind of simple for us, just two piles and spread it,” he said.

Lampron said compost was his main soil health amendment, improving soil structure and bringing more biology into the soil.

“That’s all I need. But it’s not a lot. I’m doing one quarter per year,” he said.

Hansen’s decision to compost came from a piece of rented land where a farmer had fed his cows for 50 years.

“You could see the texture of the soil. It looked like chocolate cake. And every year, I wouldn’t put any nitrogen, and the crop would be 11 tonnes of silage. And where he stopped feeding, it would be seven tonnes or less,” he said.

He was driven to find out more about compost because he wanted to cut costs on synthetic fertilizer.

Using municipal waste

Hansen has spread compost on all his acres, as he is a part owner of a compost facility.

“We’re taking a resource that was going to a landfill and now we’re making it into compost and diverting it and it’s going to my farm. I won’t be using commercial fertilizer this year. I’ve slowly been reducing my rates the last few years and I take a soil test to confirm that there might be one field that I might not get compost on in the springtime, so that might get a little bit of fertilizer,” he said.

Hansen’s compost is tested by the facility, which must test every 1,000 tonnes. The compost does contain some foreign material, including microplastics. Hansen said things needs to change to avoid microplastics in municipal compost.

“My understanding is that they are developing microbes to eat those microplastics and nature takes care of itself. It’s in the back of my mind, but it’s never a perfect world,” he said.

Hansen said the compost facility uses a large sifter and removes all the large plastics out before screening it.

“I think some people don’t know what’s compostable and what’s not. That won’t be fixed anytime soon. It’ll take years to change peoples’ mindsets,” he said.

The importance of livestock

Hansen said his success in building soil is not just through compost, but by growing polycrops, having livestock and recycling nutrients.

“My recent realization is that the biggest bang for my buck is doing a swath grazing or a corn grazing with the polycrops. I’ve done this a couple of times. I’ve grown this massive polycrop and put all my cattle on there. I keep my calves on the cattle all winter, so I’ve doubled the number of animals per acre. They are doing the fertilizing for me, providing the nitrogen inside of it, and all the corn stalks and the residue is providing the carbon side of it,” said Hansen.

“I’m basically turning my whole field into a compost pile in one year.

“For me, the quickest way is for grain farmers to realize cattle farmers are an asset and to take your first quarter of land out of production for one or two years and let the cattle farmer run their cattle on it with a massive polycrop on it, and fertilize it as recommended and you’ll see the benefits next year.”

Cowan said his goal is to bring nutrients in from off the farm and try to emulate what manure does.

“We can stop putting stuff into landfills, those nutrients can be recycled and put into the ground and that will create more products to go back to growing food. We can kind of create that circular green economy, but it’s probably a regulatory thing,” he said.

The post Alberta farmers cut fertilizer costs by turning to compost appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne made the announcement March 17.

“Agriculture is without a doubt one of the most important and investable sectors in our economy,” said federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald in a news release.

“The pace of technological advancement we’ve seen across the industry in recent years has been impressive, and investments like this will continue to accelerate innovation.”

The federal cash is part of an $50 million equity commitment alongside Idealist Capital to support the next phase of Solugen’s growth and commercial expansion.

Solugen produces and commercializes Azogen, a fast-release liquid ammoniacal nitrogen fertilizer derived from hog manure.

The investment will allow Solugen to expand capacity at its existing plant in St-Patrice-de-Beaurivage, Que. and construct a second facility in the province.

Solugen was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Lévis, Que. Its Azogen is produced through a fully circular process. By converting manure into high-performance fertilizer, it reduces greenhouse gas emissions associated with conventional fertilizers, the news release said.

The funding comes through the Canada Growth Fund, a $15 billion, arm’s length public investment vehicle launched by the federal government to attract private capital and invest in Canadian projects and businesses.

The post Federal government funds Quebec organic fertilizer company appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Amendments to Alberta’s Agricultural Operation Practices Act (AOPA) now permit digestate and “select organic material” from non-agricultural businesses to be stored or composted in manure storage facilities before being applied to land.

These changes stem from the passage of Bill 44, a provincial bill created to allow amendments to the AOPA, a provincial act dedicated largely to environmental sustainability in Alberta.

The bill is now law, having received Royal Assent May 15. It came into force June 23.

According to an Agri-News story published by Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation, these amendments are meant to “reduce regulatory barriers, encourage innovation and promote environmentally-responsible practices in agriculture, particularly the management of manure, agricultural processing by-products and compost, and biogas production.”

Digestate is a by-product of anaerobic digestion, the process of bacteria decomposing organic waste. In this case, that’s predominately manure and other approved feedstocks.

The amendments were made in part to give producers a break from high-cost fertilizers, wrote Jeanna Friedley, communications director with Alberta Agriculture and Innovation, in an email.

“The changes give crop producers access to lower-cost nutrient sources to grow crops and improve soil health.”

The amendments apply to people or operations that produce, store, transport, receive or apply manure, organic materials and compost on agricultural land, explained Friedley.

“This includes producers who use manure as fertilizer, manure applicators, livestock producers who use seasonal feeding and bedding sites, and existing and new confined feeding operations.”

Tracey Smith, executive director of Organic Alberta, expressed optimism over the move, although she saud she had yet to read the bill.

“Anything that allows us to do more on-farm is a good thing,” said Smith in an email.

“This opens up a lot of opportunities for our organic farmers.”

Janine Gibson, a Manitoba-based organic verification officer of 32 years, spoke to the various benefits of digestate.

“Composting and making digestate minimizes handling manure and produces valuable fertility inputs for animal feed crops on farm: cycling nutrients within the operation while minimizing costs,” explained Gibson in an email.

The bill’s allowed feedstocks are listed in Section Five of the new On-Farm Storage and Land Application Code.

“(Bill 22) made amendments to AOPA to allow digestate and select off-farm organic material to be stored or composted in manure storage facilities before land application, or be directly land-applied following AOPA requirements,” wrote Friedley.

These feedstocks encompass a broad range of categories, including certain fats, oils and greases; food processing residues; kitchen and market residues; and animal by-products.

The listed feedstocks can be mixed with manure comprising 50 per cent or more by wet weight of the total feedstock on an annual basis; or one or more of the feedstocks listed in the code, again including 50 per cent or more by wet weight of the total feedstock on an annual basis.

These substances can be mixed with solid or liquid manure depending on the nature of the material. On the solid side, a few of these include wet distillers’ grain, silage hay, fruits and vegetables and sugar beets.

Some of the allowable substances in the liquid manure category include raw milk, whey and distillery stillage.

Any substances not listed in the code will continue to be regulated by Alberta Environment and Protected Areas, which delivers the AOPA.

The materials in Section Five of the code have always been appropriate for use on crops, wrote Friedley. “The changes to AOPA allow these materials to be land-applied following AOPA legislation.”

The AOPA amendments also address the transport of approved organic materials, allowing qualifying organic materials to be transferred from off-farm agri-processors or other agricultural operations onto other ag operations.

Prior to the passing of Bill 44, the fate of these organic substances depended on where they were produced.

Those produced on ag operations could be applied to agricultural land owned or managed by the operation, while any produced off-farm had to be taken to an Environment and Protected Areas-permitted waste management facility, including composting facilities, landfills or biogas facilities.

Although he had little knowledge of the bill at the time of interview, mixed organic producer Ward Middleton from north of Edmonton says any additional tools organic farmers have to improve their crops is a win.

“In a general sense, anything that would be a new additional feedstock for composting or a fertilizer source for organic farmers would be welcome,” he says.

“It is very difficult for organic farmers to find cost-effective nutrient replacements to offset what gets exported from their land with every bushel of grain or whatever produce that they’re producing and selling to consumers.”

However, he emphasized that the federal Canadian Organic Standard is the pre-eminent document governing organic practices in the country.

“Just because the provincial government might say, ‘Yes, we agree that digestate can be used’ it still has to be an input for our compost that complies with the federal organic standard.”

A backgrounder on proposed revisions to the Canadian Organic Standards appears to align with the goals of Bill 44.

“It is permitted to use anaerobic digestate as a compost feedstock if it is added to other substances which are then composted,” reads Table 4.2 of the document.

The post Digestate can now be stored and applied as an organic fertilizer appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

If the inclusion of manure seems like a typo, I assure you it is not. As a long-term advocate for animal agriculture as part of a balanced ecosystem, I believe that manure from animals and birds and the green manure from plants not only adds nutrients to the soil, but shapes it. Manure helps retain moisture, build organic matter, sequester carbon, and is more readily available for the plant.

In our history here in Canada and around the world, the distribution of manure was a natural occurrence through roaming herds and the nomadic movement of people. As herds and flocks of a multitude of species from bison, camels, sheep, goats, birds and zebras moved across an area, they left behind the nutrients to feed it for the following year.

The division of land and the housing of animals was not detrimental to the distribution of manure, but the delivery shifted from the source to the farmer who had to haul it onto the land. And as manure is largely water, this is an expensive endeavour which requires careful management.

Intensive agriculture grew to feed populations, and that required a large land base for nutrient distribution. At the same time, demand exploded, placing extra stress on land where organic manure was not available. And thus came the creation and introduction of commercial fertilizer.

Commercial fertilizer is a mined product made up of nitrogen from natural gas, phosphorous from phosphate rock and potassium from potash ore. At first glance it would seem reasonable to continue along this vein as Canada has the world’s largest potash reserve and an abundance of natural gas. Phosphate reserves are dominant in Morocco and China, which provide shipments to Canada.

Manure, however, has the properties of all three – nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. In addition, it contains decent levels of iron, sulfur, calcium, copper, zinc, boron and magnesium. It is nature’s all-in-one solution to plant nutrition.

And now it is traded in a dry form by the tonne.

India has taken to exporting cow patties and ground manure which is an important new market for local farmers. The manure is dried and formed into a giant patty and like any instant cereal — you just add water! Or, the manure is dried and ground into a powder. Both are easy to apply and especially attractive to crops that need to be grown in well-drained soil. Currently the product is shipped to Gulf nations who are turning desert lands in high production farms using a combination of scrubbed sea water and nutrients.

The output on desert farms is extraordinary, but it lacks one key component and that is the quick building of the soil. Adding manure helps create tilth and allows for a broader variety of foods to be grown.

India has the largest cattle population in the world and an estimated daily output of 30 million tonnes of manure a day. Five million of those cattle are stray and are considered sacred, left to drift in the heavily populated cities and towns. However, there is a growing desire to collect manure as a business across the nation. Even if the animal itself is not used for food, the by-product can be used in the production of other edibles.

There are advanced systems in place that use belt drying, rotary drums, maxi drum and solar drying which allows for the manure to be sold in pelleted, patty or ground form. In Europe, many of these systems are on farm, so the production of transportable manure volume is still relatively small. Research in Alberta has also been successful on a smaller scale in capturing the nutrients in fluids and larger farming operations are capturing the gases to create energy.

The technology to dry manure while maintaining the nutrient profile is working. What is needed now is the ability to scale up on the concepts to make dried product nutrients available in our country and worldwide. For Canadian farmers, that also translates into defining the regulations for the production of manure for sale. In addition, we are in the infancy of developing the transportation systems for a biological product. More research is desperately required.

This will, of course, be done. At some point the demand for commercial fertilizer will outstrip the supply, the shipping will be interrupted or the costs will become too great. The pressure from the current population growth places heavy production demand on the land. We need a robust and complete solution that is beneficial for the soil, the environment and the farmer.

From a local value add to a global export market and in every food production system on earth, manure is the next greenback and soon to be more precious than gold.

The post More precious than gold appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The study, led by soil scientist David Lobb and Marcos Cordeiro of the University of Manitoba’s department of animal science, sought to model nitrogen and phosphorus levels in the surface runoff of three watersheds: one each in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Their model, calibrated to be specific to Western Canada’s conditions, incorporated 15 years of weather data to account for the impacts of precipitation. Statistical analysis allowed researchers to estimate the relative contribution of soil, vegetation and manure to nutrient export. Simulations captured the dynamics in snow accumulation and stream discharge.

Their findings suggested that manure was, at most, a secondary source of nitrogen and phosphorus in those watersheds. They also found that nutrient levels ascribed to manure were relatively constant during the simulation period between 2005 and 2019, despite variation in precipitation.

“This is interesting because, for the most part, we tend to think that beef production is one of the main sources of nutrients,” Cordeiro said.

Of the three nutrient-causing factors, the researchers put manure in third place in Manitoba and second place in the two western Prairie provinces. Manure’s reported contribution to total nutrient export ranged between 7.9-20.2 per cent for total phosphorus and 6.9-11.8 per cent for total nitrogen.

The impact

The Beef Cattle Research Council, which helped fund the project, noted the importance of having accurate models for runoff to help producers better understand how management affects pasture watersheds, as well as what they can do to mitigate nutrient loading.

“It will also give policymakers accurate, Canadian-specific data to use when writing future policies around watershed management,” a BCRC-published summary of the project read.

The BCRC also noted that the regional variation in the findings implies that there’s no one solution for excess nutrient loading. Solutions will have to be region-specific.

Challenges and next steps

Using a model helped save time and money compared to field research, said Cordeiro, whose specialty is environmental modelling.

“The idea for us was to set up a model for a couple of watersheds first and see what the model tells us,” he said. “And then, from there, we can go to more targeted field research where you can monitor (with) a much clearer idea of what you’re trying to assess.”

That field research is the next step in homing in on nutrient sources.

“Rather than starting from scratch having no idea of where the nutrients came from, we now have a good idea,” he said.

The journey, however, hasn’t been without bumps.

Models are only as good as their data. Going in, the researchers knew that all watersheds in the study had a grassland cover proportion of approximately 75 per cent and relatively large cattle-grazing density. However, these pasture areas were not what Cordeiro would describe as “data rich.” The only watershed with stream flow and water quality data was the Alberta location of Meadow Creek. The Manitoba and Saskatchewan watersheds (Beaver Creek and Maple Creek, respectively) lacked this information.

“Agricultural areas are not really well monitored, so we had to select some watersheds that had the best data available … we worked with models and tried to represent them as best as possible. And we feel that we had — given these caveats — a very good result and a handle on at least how this system behaves,” he said.

The Alberta location could be assessed directly with the available information. “The other two were validated using regional data available, water yield, for example, which is less precise,” Cordeiro said.

Eyes on the prize

All of Cordeiro’s grasslands research plays into a goal to preserve landscapes and the ecological goods and services they provide, while also enabling producers to manage those services.

“What we try to show with this research is that these landscapes have value. They provide services that are important for society as a whole,” he said.

“We need to show this value because it’s very romantic to talk about lush landscapes and beautiful scenery, but at the end of the day people have to make a living out of those landscapes.”

The project was funded by the Beef Cattle Research Council, the Canadian Beef Cattle Check-Off and Environment and Climate Change Canada.

The post U of M study looks into sources of water nutrient loads appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Trevor Wallace, provincial nutrient management specialist with the Alberta government, says extreme weather events, full manure storages, delayed harvest or contractor availability may be some of the most common reasons a farm operator may need to spread manure on frozen and/or snow-covered ground.

However, when the ground is frozen or snow-covered, the risk of losing applied manure and nutrients in runoff is much greater due to limited soil infiltration, reduced vegetative filtering and increased runoff potential. It is important to be aware of the increased risks and manage them. 

The post Winter manure management appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

It seems I am not the only one to believe our regenerative future rests in water and manure.

The story was about California dairy farmers entering into long-term contracts to sell their manure to the energy industry to make biogas (also called renewable natural gas). There is nothing new in using dung as fuel — indeed people in rural areas in developing countries have always used manure as a heat or energy source, and they still do.

However, one of the concerns expressed in the article was the formalizing of manure as a commodity. I agree that it is — and a very valuable one at that. In many of the countries I have visited there was often banter about manure. People would say how you were on a lucky street if you or your neighbour had livestock and were able to fertilize gardens or fields with manure. In those parts of the world where fertilizer is not available or unaffordable, gold is found at the end of the cow’s tail, not at the end of the rainbow.

Energy companies are now building bio-digesters on farm sites. That makes more environmental sense than transporting manure and it’s also cheaper to transport gas. This isn’t a novel idea and I’ve seen these types of units on European farms.

A few years ago, the Dutch government launched a major project in which farmers could lease farm-size anaerobic bio-digesters and receive a 12-year fixed price for the gas produced. They could also sell the excess electrical energy and enjoy the benefit of keeping the extracted nitrates and phosphates and applying them to the land. These small units on farms reduced the cost of transporting manure (which requires a permit) and there wasn’t much in the way of public concern about odour. (At the farms I visited, the bio-digesters were nearly odourless.)

This is an example of not only recognizing manure as a valued commodity, but of supportive policy in the development of closed-loop solutions that start and end on the farm enterprise.

To say that we need to kill cows to reduce methane is folly. Between science and production practices, methane production has already been reduced significantly. But some now worry, according to the Guardian article that programs that support bio-digesters “could end up incentivizing farms to increase herd sizes to produce more manure” or even turn dairy farms into “feces farms that happen to also produce dairy.”

To say that treating manure as a commodity will result in more cattle production is hypothetical because all of the other elements of increased production also would need to be addressed (including water usage and environmental concerns).

So just what does society want? And why the fear about the commoditization of manure and using natural sources of energy?

The public outcry for a reduction in the production and processing of fossil fuels has been loud and long. One of the solutions is tickling our noses and suddenly there is a fear of a natural and organic product that could very well stop such practices as fracking. A little manure bio-digestion does not use millions of gallons of fresh water to extract gas, release hydrocarbons, disrupt aquifers or add pollutants to the lithosphere. And there is the measurable benefit of adding digestate nutrients to the soil, thus working toward meeting targets on the reduction of commercial fertilizer emissions.

Today we have a more fulsome understanding of the importance of utilizing biological and farm sources of fertility. To build healthy soil is, or should be, the ultimate goal.

It is the soil that feeds us, along with the animals that produce milk, meat and a wide range of critical byproducts. Soil will develop its own ecology over time and may be less dependent on the incorporation of nutrients, but one has to get to that space first and be prepared to continue with nourishment as required. As plants, animals and humans intersect in this world, we will always be drawing from those life sources — soil and water.

Everything is a source of energy. All organic waste has a high value, and the farm is at the core of the solutions for the future.

Most biomass has some property of fertility, be that kelp from the sea, human sludge, food waste or wool pellets from sheep. It is about understanding the value and the interconnectivity of one to the other.

The technology exists to create the systems needed on any scale, to reduce the release of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide in conventional oil and gas production, while maintaining food systems that address food security. It is these two culprit gases that have a long atmospheric life span and it is these gases that need to be the focus. It is important to capture methane but the urgency should reside in the reduction of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide from fossil fuel extraction by creating gas through bio-digestion.

The manure on our farms is a highly valued commodity. How we move forward in ensuring its appropriate use while maintaining robust and regenerative food systems will depend on both knowledge and enabling policy.

The post Schoepp: Misconceptions about manure fly in face of common sense appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Hempalta Inc. and Livestock Water Recycling, both headquartered in Calgary, are two of eight ag-focused technology companies on the 2022 Foresight 50 list. The list is compiled annually by cleantech accelerator Foresight and is designed to attract investor attention for promising Canadian start-ups.

Hempalta is the smaller of the two in terms of sales, reporting 2022 revenues of $400,000.

In its pitch to be included on the list, the company pointed to strong and growing demand in North America for a wide range of industrial hemp products.

But most are imported, it said.

“At the heart of the problem is the lack of industrial hemp processing plants,” the company said. “While farmers are interested in growing the crop in many instances, specialized technologically advanced hemp processing facilities are needed to produce high-value products.”

Hempalta, which says it is one of only a few commercial-scale hemp processors in North America, makes consumer products such as hemp cat litter, animal bedding and HempZorb for cleaning up spills without chemicals. It also produces hurd, the woody inner parts of the hemp stalk, for hempcrete and is working on insulation made from hemp.

Livestock Water Recycling, which expected revenues to hit $16 million in 2022, has already attracted large-scale investment and bills itself as “the world’s leading provider of manure treatment technology.”

“LWR’s data-driven technology reduces manure volume and unlocks the exciting profit dynamics trapped inside storage lagoons by converting manure into two distinct, high-value fertilizers — concentrated biogas feedstock and recycled clean water,” the company said in its pitch to get on the Foresight list.

Its system employs both mechanical and chemical treatments to remove manure contaminants and separate fertilizer nutrients at large livestock operations. The company says its process produces potable water (manure is about three-quarters water) along with dry solids with high amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen, and “a concentrated stable ammonium and potassium liquid.”

The system can reduce a “manure footprint” by 75 per cent and eliminate odour at a feedlot or other livestock operation, it said.

Another ag company on the list is B.C.-based Farment BioSolutions, which uses naturally occurring bacteria with nitrogen-fixing capabilities along with fermentation to make nutrients, like manure, more efficient.

“We take organic wastes in different forms and by fermentation turn them into a biofertilizer,” said company official Ryan Klatt.

“We work with dairy farms and feedlots in B.C. and Alberta currently. But there are many different organic waste problems in need of a solution, like municipal wastes, for example.”

The company is also looking at ways it can help fish and insect farms deal with their organic waste streams like sludge in the bottom of fish tanks and frass, the manure produced by insects.

“Currently, fish waste is composted, so getting rid of it represents a cost to aquaculture businesses,” said Klatt. “Our long-term goal is not just to provide a better fertilizer that is rich in nitrogen, but we want to close the loop where we grow fish, and create a better fertilizer for land-based crops that provide feed for those fish. This would create a local supply chain.”

This is the second edition of the Foresight 50 list. Last year, companies named on the list went on to collectively raise almost $600 million in investment.

Other ag companies on the list are:

• B.C.-based Lucent Biosciences, developer of a smart micronutrient fertilizer called Soileos.
• Manitoba’s TheoryMesh that is building traceable and transparent food supply chains for sustainability and food safety.
• Psigryph Inc. from Guelph, Ont., that develops food tech for health, redefining how molecules with health benefits enter cells to improve plant and animal nutrition.
• Takachar of B.C. that turns crop and forest residue into higher value chemicals, biofuels and fertilizers in remote communities.
• Verdi from B.C., builder of a platform that lets growers build, manage and scale precision agriculture systems to deliver plant-level healthcare.

More about these companies and others on the Foresight 50 list is available online.

The post Venture capitalists urged to check out Alberta ag tech appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The government said protocols for four other sectors including agriculture and forest management are now being developed. It will also start developing protocols for carbon capture technology, which Canada’s high-polluting oil industry is betting on to slash its emissions, this summer.

For agriculture, the federal offset protocols now under development for future launch include “enhanced soil organic carbon” and “livestock feed management.”

As those and other protocols are completed, work on protocols including “livestock manure management” and “anaerobic digestion” will begin, the government said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has pledged to cut climate-warming emissions 40-45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Greenhouse gas emissions from waste, including landfills, make up seven per cent of Canada’s total carbon output.

The greenhouse gas offset credit system is intended to support a domestic carbon offset trading market, and the government said it will create new economic opportunities for companies and municipalities reducing emissions.

Participants can register projects and generate one tradeable offset credit for each tonne of emissions reduced or removed from the atmosphere, providing their projects follow the federal offset protocols that set out exactly which activities are eligible.

Credits can then be sold to others, such as heavy industrial emitters obliged to limit carbon pollution, or to companies wanting to voluntarily offset their emissions.

“Starting with landfills, we’re putting in place a market-based mechanism to incentivize businesses and municipalities to invest in the technologies and innovations that cut pollution,” Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in a statement.

Once adopted, the livestock feed management protocol will credit methane reductions from livestock, the government said, while the enhanced soil organic carbon protocol would allow eligible farmers to generate offset credits by adopting “sustainable agricultural land management activities.”

The exact ag practices that can be followed to generate offset credits are to be determined during the protocol development process, the government said. Public comment periods will take place for future draft protocols, and “technical expert teams” have been set up to advise on “the latest science.”

Farmers “have made significant gains in reducing the GHG emissions intensity of the sector in recent years,” Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said Wednesday in a statement. “We look forward to the development of specific details on how the agriculture sector can benefit under the federal offset credit system.”

The government expects the price of credits to broadly track Canada’s price on carbon — which is currently set at $50 a tonne and is scheduled to ramp up to $170 a tonne by 2030.

However, environmental groups warned allowing polluters to purchase offset credits instead of cutting their own emissions risked undermining climate goals.

“Offsetting doesn’t stop carbon from entering the atmosphere and warming our world, it just keeps it off the books of big polluters responsible,” said Greenpeace Canada spokesman Shane Moffatt.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nia Williams. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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Now, facing a global shortage of commercial fertilizers made worse by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more U.S. growers are knocking on his door. Sandquist says they’re clamouring to get their hands on something Old MacDonald would swear by: old-fashioned animal manure.

“I wish we had more to sell,” said Sandquist, founder of Natural Fertilizer Services Inc., a nutrient management firm based in Iowa. “But there’s not enough to meet the demand.”

Some livestock and dairy farmers, including those who previously paid to have their animals’ waste removed, have found a fertile side business selling it to grain growers. Equipment firms that make honeywagons are also benefiting.

Not only are more U.S. farmers hunting manure supplies for this spring planting season, some cattle feeders that sell waste are sold out through the end of the year, according to industry consultant Allen Kampschnieder.

“Manure is absolutely a hot commodity,” said Kampschnieder, who works for Nebraska-based Nutrient Advisors. “We’ve got waiting lists.”

Sky-high prices for industrial fertilizer are projected to reduce American farmers’ corn and wheat plantings this spring, according to U.S. government data. That further threatens global food supplies as domestic wheat inventories are the lowest in 14 years, and the Russia-Ukraine war is disrupting grain shipments from those key suppliers.

While manure can replace some of the nutrient shortfall, it’s no panacea, agriculture specialists say. There’s not enough supply to swap out all the commercial fertilizer used in the U.S. Transporting it is expensive. And prices for animal waste, too, are rising on strong demand.

It’s also highly regulated by state and federal authorities, in part due to concerns about impacts on water systems.

Manure can cause serious problems if it contaminates nearby streams, lakes and groundwater, said Chris Jones, a research engineer and water quality expert at the University of Iowa.

Livestock farmers say it’s a heavy lift to meet all the government rules and track how manure is applied.

Race for waste

Regardless of the drawbacks, demand is booming.

In Wisconsin, three dairy farmers told Reuters they turned down requests to buy their manure sent via text and Twitter messages.

North Carolina-based Phinite, which makes manure-drying systems, says it’s fielding solicitations from growers as far away as Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa and Indiana.

Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, has noticed the shift at the U.S. hog farms that supply its slaughterhouses.

“We’re definitely seeing farmers move toward manure with the increase in fertilizer prices,” said Jim Monroe, a spokesperson for the company, which is owned by Hong Kong-listed WH Group.

Industrial fertilizers such as nitrogen require a lot of energy to produce. Prices started to surge last year amid rising demand and lower supply as record natural gas and coal prices triggered output cuts by fertilizer manufacturers. Extreme weather and COVID-19 outbreaks also roiled global supply chains.

War in Ukraine has made the situation worse by reducing fertilizer exports from Russia and its ally Belarus due to Western sanctions and shipping snags. That threatens to shrink harvests around the world at a time of record food inflation. Combined, Russia and Belarus accounted for more than 40 per cent of global exports of potash last year, one of three critical nutrients used to boost crop yields, according to Dutch lender Rabobank.

As of March, commercial fertilizer prices reached a record high, with nitrogen fertilizer jumping four-fold since 2020 and phosphate and potash up three-fold, said London-based consultancy CRU Group.

One person left bereft is Dale Cramer, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat on about 6,000 acres at Cambridge, Nebraska. Searching for alternatives, he has sniffed around feedlots for manure since last August with no luck.

“A lot of people have put their names in for the same thing,” Cramer said.

Honeywagon scramble

With demand for manure surging, prices have followed, delivering an unexpected windfall to livestock producers and cattle feedlots.

Prices for good-quality solid manure in Nebraska alone have reached $11 to $14 per ton, up from a typical price of $5 to $8 per ton, consultant Kampschnieder said (all figures US$). A dry winter helped drive up prices by leaving manure with less water in it, making it more concentrated, and thus more valuable, he said.

Iowa farmer Pat Reisinger is relieved he has dung from the pigs and dairy cows he raises to fertilize the corn, soybeans and hay he grows to feed those animals. He sold a little manure to one neighbor and is getting phone calls from others in need.

“If I sold any more, I’d have to turn around and buy commercial fertilizer, which makes no sense,” Reisinger said.

The boom has also has lifted machinery companies that make spreading equipment for solid manure as well as so-called honeywagons: wheeled tanks hitched to trucks and tractors for transporting and applying liquefied waste.

In Ontario, Husky Farm Equipment is sold out of honeywagons. The company built its first contraption back in 1960 as a way to make collecting and spreading manure more efficient, according to company president Walter Grose. Today Grose sells directly to farmers and machinery dealerships, and he can’t keep up.

“We have people looking for equipment right away and we’re sold out for six months,” said Grose who sells honeywagons in several sizes. Bigger tanks come with a $70,000 average price tag.

CNH, the American-Italian farm and construction equipment giant, said it has seen strong demand for its New Holland brand box spreaders — essentially, a steel box that attaches to a tractor to haul and spread solid manure.

Kansas equipment dealership KanEquip Inc. is sold out of New Holland spreaders, even though prices have jumped 10 per cent from the normal list price of $30,000, said regional manager Bryndon Meinhardt. He said the dealership has ordered 10 more to meet demand.

No poop for you

Even in states where large livestock herds generate massive quantities of manure, there’s not enough to replace commercial fertilizer completely. Iowa, the top U.S. producer of pork and corn, already applies all of its manure on land covering about 25 per cent of its corn acres each year, said Dan Andersen, an associate professor at Iowa State University who specializes in manure management.

On average, Iowa uses about 14 billion gallons of manure annually, said Andersen, known as @DrManure on Twitter. He expects Iowa growers may suck out an extra billion gallons this year from storage in tanks on farms to substitute pricey commercial fertilizer.

Part of the current supply problem is rooted in the evolution of the U.S. farm economy. As America’s livestock sector has consolidated, there are geographical hubs where animals are raised for eggs, milk or meat, and where the most manure is produced. As a result, some places have too little, while others have too much and have wrestled with ways to dispose of it.

Last October, Pennsylvania dairyman Brett Reinford thought he might be tight on manure storage space over the winter. So he made an offer to local farmers: You come and haul it away, you can have it for free. He got no takers.

Fast forward six months and Reinford is now sitting on liquid gold. “We’re keeping it all and I wish we had more,” he said.

Manure could become even more precious later this year, as U.S. livestock herds and poultry flocks shrink.

The number of hogs in the United States has dropped to its lowest level in about five years, as producers grapple with swine diseases and rising costs for feed and other inputs. Bird flu, meanwhile, has wiped out more than 22 million chickens and turkeys on commercial U.S. farms since February.

But even hard-hit poultry farmers could have something to use: Their dead birds can be composted and applied as fertilizer, according to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

— Reporting for Reuters by P.J. Huffstutter and Tom Polansek in Chicago and Bianca Flowers in Chicago and New York. Additional reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington, D.C.

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