On Tuesday representatives of the governments of Canada and Manitoba announced the allocation of just under one million dollars to support the development of a new research facility to be constructed at the Glenlea Research Station to support livestock producers in addressing production efficiency and environmental challenges.

Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch says the facility will provide livestock producers across Canada with new tools to help them protect the environment while maintaining economic sustainability.

Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council

This facility is going to go a long ways in doing some research on separation and also on composting and just dealing further with nutrients as we do have some areas in the province that the phosphorus levels are a little high for the livestock industry in general.

It's going to go a long ways into helping producers deal with that going forward.

What it does is it tests some of the technologies on a lot smaller scale and then after that, when it's proven on a smaller scale, you adapt it to the larger scale.

It saves the producer going out there and spending a lot of his money and finding out that something doesn't work.

This will iron out a lot of the bugs and allow the producer to be able to bring some new technology into his operation and just simply be better for the environment and also keep economic costs in line.

Research has two goals.

One is to find out what doesn't work and one is to find out what does work and then simply get it some it can be applied in a larger scale or applied on farm so it still makes economical sense and good environmental sense.

Construction of the new facility is slated to begin this coming spring and it's expected to be operation in late 2011 or early 2012.

Mr Kynoch says livestock across Canada will benefit from the research and technology that comes out of this new facility.