Benchmarking

[cakadu]

Do any of you know if there have been studies done, or some sort of benchmarking system put in place so that we can monitor just what all of these Confined Feeding Operations are doing/not doing when it comes to leaving an ecological footprint?

How are we going to know if there are good things occuring or irreparable harm being done if we don't know where we've started from? Five years from now are we going to see soils saturated with manure that aren't good for much of anything? How will we know when we've reached the breaking point?

I'm curious.

[rodbradshaw]

Linda
The government has limits today on what can be spread and any new operation will need a land base to spread their manure on. We must remeber that this is a valuable commodity if used properly and the industry is putting pressure on the bad actors.
Rod

[countryguy]

If the manure is being spread properly on fields that are in production I don't believe that it could ever become saturated.I know of a rancher in Sask using mig that has actually added an inch of topsoil to his land while greatly increasing his grass production.I think the key to manure is that it has to be used up wherever it is spread whether it be by grass,hay or in a cropping rotation.

[cakadu]

Rod, what about the expansion of existing CFO's as they are now called? I recognize and agree with you that the manure is of value and that for future operations all of this has to be covered by a plan of some sort, but these rules that have just come in to play, or at least my understanding of them only affects future operations and doesn't really cover expansion which is grandfathered. Please feel free to help me understand the situation a little better.

I'm sure that it will not be too surprising to find out that I won't believe that there hasn't been some sort of change to the environment because of these operations. I'm afraid that I've been around long enough to not take anything at face value anymore.

What would be the harm in doing some sort of benchmarking if for no other reason than to use it as a means of dispelling concerns of neighbors and the various and sundry interest groups?

I can't help but be concerned at the fact that we keep cramming more and more animals into such small areas. Not only is there concern with the manure that has to be managed - 133 million metric tonnes is a lot of crap to move - but what about the use of antibiotics, growth hormones etc. that are showing up on more and more consumer radar screens these days? How can we determine that there haven't been detrimental effects, or for that matter improvements, if we don't have a starting point?

Your thoughts?

[Deb]

I just came back from a lecture about antibiotic resistance. The lecture was sponsored by the Alberta Cattle Commission and the speaker, a vet from Western vet college said what the feedlot owners wanted anyway. She didn't say non-theraputic drug dosing wasn't a cause at all, it is one small problem. She stressed that it is mostly humans taking antibiotics improperly that caused most of the problems. the thing I found interesting was that she admitted that they don't know how much antibiotic is used for vet purposes in Canada. But in the United States, in 200, they used 20.5 billion pounds of antibiotics in food and companion (pets) animals. 17.8 million pounds were used to prevent and treat disease and 2.8 million pounds for growth promotion or feed efficiency. She said to wash your hands if you have a pet that is being treated with a drug and keep the pet away from people with compromised immune systems.

A lot of drugs are used only on animals, not people. Bye the way, no drug treats calf scours now. Only water and electrolites will work.

She also said consumers are very stupid (I rather agree) and get all worried about food safety while they smoke their cigarettes and drive without a seat belt.

She said drug residue is a non-issue. Very rare thing (I think I agree). She said the media is pretty ignorant too and prefers to sensationalize stories of drug resistence.

Benefits of using drugs in feed or implants is about a 2-3% increase in feed efficiency and 3-5% increased rate of gain. In feedlot cattle it is a good way to treat liver abcesses and all cattle being brought into the restricted feeder program from the States, are given antibiotics as a preventative for anaplasmosis even though they most likely don't carry the disease. But it was just announced that the feds want this stopped because of the possibility of adding to the problem of antibiotic resistence. So the cattle feeders that take advantage of this importation of U.S. calves are upset.

Sweden banned antibiotics so the pig farmers use zinc which I gather has antibiotic properties but isn't one. Anyway now they have too much zinc in the soil and water.

She said that child daycare centres are cesspools of antibiotic resistence and in some countries you are not allowed to send your child to a daycare if he/she is on antibiotics.

Global movement of people, animals and food pose a risk to disease and antibiotic resistence. Destruction of the rainforest is going to release all kinds of disease organisms. the refugee camps around the world are cesspools of antibiotic resistence. And she said that the government's reduction of funding for health care will be disasterous. She talked about the superbugs in hospitals. Eek! She said that whenever health care is run by a for-profit outfit, the profit for the shareholder matters more than the health of the patient and corners are cut to save costs.

In Mexico, the drug mis-use is phenomenal. They can get antibiotics over the counter!

I won't give the whole lecture, but it was interesting. We are all to blame. She never said that keeping thousands of animals in confined places and having to use antibiotics was a bad thing, but said she was more interested about saving starving people than worrying about antibiotic resistence. I thought to myself, yeah, but starving people on this planet can't afford to buy beef or pork. You'd feed more people if you grew grain for people not for animals that poop most of the nutrients out! For once I kept these thoughts to myself.

As for manure, if a CAFO has a manure management plan, they should know to put the manure on at agronomic rates so the crop takes everything up. The problem is that if you rate the manure needed for the crop by the nitrogen, you put too much phosphorous on, which is going to be the big problem of the 21st century as it builds up in the soil (when it's not running off in surface water to cause eutrophication of ponds and lakes.) And if they put too much nitrogen on, and the soil allows it to trickle down with moisture into the ground water, watch out! If Alberta can actually send people out to monitor what farmers do, and check up on them and police them, it will be okay, maybe. Enough for now.

[cowman]

This is sort of a different perspective on this problem(which with the new guidelines I don't believe is really a problem). Do you realize that the new practice in the oil patch is to spread the contents of the drilling pit on farm land? Do you know what is in this drilling mud mixture? Well the engineer will tell you that any harmful chemicals have been neutralized and it actually has some fertilizer value.Give you anywhere from $500-$1000 to spread it on say 80 acres.
Now this is okay but this mix isn't exactly harmless. It contains quite a few goodies including radio-active isotopes! Enough to make a geiger counter crackle!
So maybe you can grow some barley that glows in the dark? No need for lights in the feedlot then!
Actually this practice is probably more safe than when they just buried the pit. Just think of all the little environmental time bombs lying just below the surface. That is one reason if you have a surface lease you NEVER want to sign the clean up agreement. Let the government sign it and then if there is a wreck down the road it is up to them to pay up and not you!

[rodbradshaw]

Cakadu
Older operations must still comply with the manure guildlines, they must also apply to expand, the only thing grandfathered is their existing operation. We have a neighbour who has purchased more land so that he can effectively utilize his manure. The biggest problem with spreading too much manure is salt and we all know what it does to plant growth.
Had the opportunity to hear a presentation on Agriculture on the weekend. Two of the panel come from CFO backgrounds. John Kolk (former chair of CFC) spoke on CFO's and perceptions. Did you know that if you took all of the hog barns in Alberta they would only cover 3/4 of a square mile. We have 3.8 sows per square mile of agricultural land in Alberta. Taiwan has something like 400. Not that we would want to get like taiwan or the Netherlands but we certainly aren't anywhere near the two counties in the Carolinea's with 600-800 sows per square mile. The other fact that I like using is everyone holds up Denmark as a good example. If we had the equivalent density of hogs as Denmark we would have 13 million.

There is nothing wrong with having a monitoring system, but it has to monitor everyone not just the CFO's. There are a few bad actors that calve on creeks and stream beds because when the ice goes out so goes their manure problem.

Antibiotics was another issue that was raised during this panel presentation. The resistance that is being built up is cause for attention. The livestock industry is not blameless but Doctors perscribe a lot of antibiotics for children and adults with colds. Colds are viruses and antibiotics don't even touch them.
Benchmarking
There is nothing wrong with monitoring if it will prevent the decay of our pristine countryside. That includes every septic tank pumpout, every sewage treatment plant as it is not only the four legged animals, there are 3 million other animals that use a lot of resources, take a lot of antibiotics and live in confined spaces and don't really care where there manure is gone once they flush the toilet.

We have to manage our resources, air, water and soil. If we abuse them it takes a long time to recover.
Rod

[cakadu]

Deb, I think that would have been an interesting talk to have been at.

More and more research is pointing to the fact that indiscriminant antibiotic use in our food animals is leading to increasing antibiotic resistance and it is becoming more of a problem, not a symptom.

I agree with the vet that a contributor to the problem is indisciminant and incorrect antibiotic usage by humans themselves, but when the most powerful antibiotics that we have are being used for both animals and humans, there is at some point going to be some resistance built up. Bayer who makes one of the antibiotics that is effective against anthrax - Cipro, also makes the animal equivalent - Baytril.

I would have to question whether or not the minimal gains in feed conversion are worth putting all the chemicals into the animals. Most of this comes down to money and trying to lower our costs, but we will never be lowest cost producers in terms of animals because we have to feed for too many days of the year. With hearing more and more about places like Brazil trying to position themselves to export beef - they have something like 160 million of them - it could be a serious threat to our beef industry here, once things come on line. The destruction of things like the rainforest is another discussion, but they are positioning themselves to one day export.

Cowman, maybe the new rules will prove to be effective and cause fewer problems, but how will we know unless we have some way to monitor them? We don't know what the last 15 years or so have done down in feedlot alley, so how can we reasonably predict what is going to take place in the future?

[cowman]

Linda: Who are we to argue with the experts and government? In their expert opinion these things are safe! Well, come to think of it maybe you are right!!! I mean these are the same idiots running the gong show,right?
The fact of the matter is without anti-biotic use modern meat production would cease to exist. Especially in chicken and hog barns. And actually big feedlots aren't a lot different.
The whole idea that feedlots and hog barns are poisoning our groundwater isn't completely true. The biggest feedlot on the Red Deer river is Red Deer!! The biggest feedlot on the North Saskatchewan is Edmonton!
Even the rain contains pesticides so we know they are in our atmosphere. In a perfect world it would be nice to have no pesticides/herbicides. And we could all farm like Grandpa! But that isn't going to happen. That is not reality.

[cakadu]

Good management practices will alleviate the necessity of using antibiotics as a management tool. If you work with the whole instead of just parts of it, then it can and does work. There are more and more people raising their animals without the use of antibiotics and I'm one of them.

I realize that the feedlots do this because there is mixing of large numbers of animals from various places, so it is rather a necessity.

It becomes a chicken and egg sort of thing. If we didn't cram all of these animals together in small spaces and want to continue to expand, we wouldn't need to have more land to spread manure and more drugs to keep them healthy. It is fast becoming a viscious circle and we better know how to stop it at some point or the momentum will steamroll all of us.

There are no easy answers to this, but I think we need to start doing something to find these answers. Can anyone answer how much of an effect - positive or negative - these feedlots have had and will continue to have? Just because we can do it, doesn't mean we should be.

[Deb]

I live near feedlot alley and it stinks from one end to the other. Anyone making money off the livestock industry doesn't care about the smell (the smell of money and all..). But houses in Picture Butte and Monarch, etc. sell cheap. Small livestock facilities cannot compete and everyone has to cater to the feedlot - sell them calves, feed barley - no use trying to be an independent farmer now. Some just expand to try to keep up with the really big ones. Small farm implement stores merge or sell out. The big guys have their own feedmills and buy in bulk from Manitoba and Saskatchewan (here comes the fusarium). The condition of the roads is another issue. B-trains going day and night, bringing cattle, picking up cattle, bringing food, taking away manure. Dust, dangerous truck drivers, manure sloshing out of trucks onto the road,and a livestock truck wash that doesn't follow any rules and has made the neighbours lives miserable (and the county council does nothing).

Thanks to the ass-kickers (environmentalists and concerned neighbours of feedlots worried about their water quality) the rules on manure management have been tightened. Monitoring and enforcement will be the test of this new legislation. It's usually neighbours that blow the whistle.

[Deb]

Cut out income tax breaks to every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to hid money at the feed lot and the cattle feeding will return to the small farm.

But quess what consistency and quality of the valued added product would suffer greatly.

[cowman]

Kernel is sure right about the income tax thing! Change that and the whole cattle feeding business would come crashing down.
Now it is all fine and dandy to bash the feedlots but lets not forget the positives. I'm old enough to remember when all the good calves went east a long with the feed barley. "Feedlot Alley" a long with many backgrounding lots through out Alberta provide about the best market in the world for our feeders and feed grains. Hog barns and feedlots employ a lot of people, buy a lot of grain, keep a lot of businesses going.
We can't go back to a simpler way of doing things. The economics just aren't there. Do you think someone like Cor Van Ray is going to go back to feeding 50 steers out in the pasture? He came to this country 50 years ago with the shirt on his back and today he deals in hundreds of thousands of cattle.
Do you really believe young farmers are going to settle for incomes that would make MacDonalds shudder? Why would any young person want a job that promised him $20,000/30,000 yr.? That just doesn't make it anymore!
I have a young Dutch neighbor who has a hog barn. 250 sows, farrow to finish. He rents the barns, buys all his feed, has his manure custom injected. He tells me after all expenses he clears close to $14,000/month. Now he wants to expand to 1000 sows and build a feeder barn farther from civilization. This is what the new agriculture is all about. A good income. The days when young guys will work for peanuts are gone.

[cakadu]

What makes me shudder is that everything comes down to money. Research has shown that as we get bigger, economies of scale actually work in reverse and the LESS efficiently we use our inputs. Therefore, if 230 sows nets $14,000/month, then 5 times as many sows does not necessarily mean 5 times the income stream.

Bigger is not necessarily better. And who says that we can't make a living being smaller? There are more and more people who are willing to pay to have their meat come from production systems other than feedlots. That's why there has been the growth in the natural and organic areas. Funny thing though, 50 years ago this is how it was done and we seemed to get along just fine. Who decided that we needed to go out and feed the whole world? Cowman, even you've said a time or two that we should just worry about feeding our own.

It scares me that here in Alberta what we seem to focus on is the almighty dollar and I'm wondering why. You can't take it with you and he who dies with the most toys and money is still dead.

[cowman]

Now Linda the fact of the matter is we all like to have the toys and the good life! There is nothing noble about being poor! Do you like to own a new car? Have a nice house with all the goodies? Take the vacation south every winter? Of course you do! You would be a complete idiot if you said you would like to drive a clunker, live in a shack, and vacation in Hanna in the winter(and my apologies to Hanna...you have a nice town even though it is out in the sticks).
Money does make the world go around and I would suggest to you if you have it you can afford to do all the noble environmental things. But don't tell people who don't know what they'll eat next week that they should be thinking about the future of the planet. For them the future is today! So you and I in our relatively comfortable positions can afford to take the high road. But it might just be a little different if our kids had empty bellies!