Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Play Audio Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape, Episode 1210

The Manitoba Livestock Manure Management Initiative has called for research proposals for a comprehensive study into odor and greenhouse gas emissions from hog barns and manure storage structures.

The call for proposals broadly targets universities, private sector consulting engineers and others who feel they can meet the call's very specific specifications. The submission deadline is April 30, the project must be undertaken by June 1st and it's intended to run over two summer seasons with a winter season in between.

Initiative Chair Dr. Garland Laliberte says the intent is to identify the source of odor between the barn and the earthen manure storage and the plan is to look at both covered and uncovered storages.

"We're looking at the usual odorous gases, methane, ammonia and hydrogen sulfide but we're also going to look at greenhouse gases...so it's kind of a combined odor and greenhouse gas project.

We're going to measure it at the exhaust from the barn and then over the earthen manure storage surface, measured at several points with a hood and integrating over the whole area, to determine the contribution to odor from each of those sources in a hog operation.

Then we are going to fan out downwind and take air samples at several locations and at several times so that we can determine the intensity downwind and how it changes with time."

Dr. Laliberte says there's also a requirement for developing a computer model which will allow the results to be extrapolated beyond the single study. He says the intent is to determine which areas are contributing to odor to allow future research to be more targeted.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.