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Down on the Farm
Sewage treatment shoulders some of the blame for the pollutants that are causing massive algae blooms in Lake Winnipeg – but the farm is another major source.
David Reykdal's farm looks like a picture on a postcard, with dozens of cows ambling across open pasture against the background of scenic Lake Manitoba. Reykdal has farmed the land for more than 30 years.
"Some of the cattle drink along the lakeshore [and are] going to defecate some into the lake," he says. "But like I said, the buffalo did it for millions of years before we came here, and there was no problem from that."
But the days of buffalo roaming the Great Plains are over.
And as picturesque as Reykdal's farm is, scientists say his defecating cows are causing a problem. What goes into Lake Manitoba can end up in Lake Winnipeg, about half an
hour's drive away. The two lakes are part of the same watershed.
In Lake Winnipeg, a massive algae slick is growing, fuelled by two main ingredients: nitrogen and phosphorus. Both are found in cow manure.
But the patties left behind by grazing cattle are only the tip of the iceberg.
Reykdal also uses cow manure on his pastures. He collects it, composts it for several months, then spreads it on the fields. Last fall, he put about 125 truckloads of composted manure onto the land.
"We spread it on 20, 30 acres," he explains. "It's spread on so we can produce a
crop. We don't over-fertilize it – that's a waste. What the land can take,
that's what we put on there."
Twenty or 30 acres may not seem like a lot of land, but Reykdal is not the only farmer doing this.
In Manitoba, in the past decade, the number of livestock – mostly pigs
and cows – has increased by 65 per cent.
Those animals produce a lot of manure. When the snow melts in the spring and the run-off heads towards
the lake through a network of ditches and waterways, it carries traces
of manure in the form of nitrogen and especially phosphorous.
Stuart Manness also puts manure on his land.
He runs a large hog operation in the Red River Valley, just south of
Winnipeg.
"We're not
just dumping hog manure into the waterways," he says. "What we're putting on the land
is to feed a crop, and that's what we're doing."
A report by the provincial government says agriculture in Manitoba's part of Lake Winnipeg's watershed is responsible for some
of the nitrogen and much of the phosphorus polluting the lake.
But Manness doesn't buy that.
"It's not a
case of whether I believe it or not, is it? We build
hog operations with permits and so on. We have to meet regulations before
we're allowed to build them. And so that's going to dictate where they're
placed," he says.
Manness says he has done more than just meet government
regulations: he gives his pigs special feed to reduce the amount of
phosphorus in their manure, and he rotates the land where manure is applied, so
fields are not over-fertilized. He's skeptical that agriculture – or at
least his farm specifically – has anything to do with the pollution in Lake Winnipeg.
"Well, I'll put it this way. We're doing a much better job
environmentally today than we did when we started in the hog business 30
years ago. I think we're doing as good a job as any of the components of
the livestock industry," he says.
Near Arborg, Scott Sigurdson runs a small farm with about 320 sows. Like Manness, he says he is careful about where he puts his manure.
"We always spread it on the high land, so that's where it won't
get washed into the ditches and everything in runoff," he says. " It doesn't seem to be
a problem. I've never seen it as a problem in our area."
Sigurdson has heard about the algae in Lake Winnipeg, but like the others, he's skeptical.
"They're quick to point fingers at farmers. I know, it's been told to
me, it's a heck of a lot easier to chase after farmers and make it look like
they're doing something than it is to actually go after the City of
Winnipeg, which dumps raw sewage into the river on a regular basis. That
would cost taxpayers money, whereas this would just cost individuals money," he says.
Individual farmers in Manitoba may have to spend more money in the future. The
provincial government is poised to pass the Water Protection Act, which is expected to bring stricter controls on many aspects of agriculture.
The use of manure is expected to be a central issue in the legislation. Currently, when a farmer decides how much manure to apply to the land, the number one factor is how much nitrogen the crop needs – the prevailing view has been that the soil has the capacity to absorb or handle the phosphorus. The new regulations could change that.
"Increasingly there is a concern that there is a limit to the capacity of these soils," says Garland Laliberte, past chair of the Manitoba Livestock Management Initiative, which promotes research and education on industry issues.
"Now the new regulations have a clause in them that require the government to review the regulations with the possibility that phosphorus will also become a criterion. So notice has been paid by government that we have to start paying attention to phosphorus."
That could significantly affect how much manure farmers could apply in areas where the phosphorus content of soil is already high or approaching saturation. In some cases, land may have to be put out of production, or the yield on a farm may be reduced to give the soil time to recover.
The new law could also affect intensive livestock operations, where producers keep thousands of animals in barns. Currently, operators are required to find land to safely spread the huge amounts of manure produced; most rent land from someone else or buy it. If new rules mean less manure can be spread on the land, that could mean producers have to find more land to spread – or land prices could double or triple due to competition for manure spreading.
A study conducted recently at th University of Manitoba provides a glimpse of what could be ahead. Researchers applied new phosphorus regulations in Ontario and Minnesota to four pig farms in Manitoba. In the short term, they found, there would be little effect on how manure is applied. But in the longer term – and that could mean within a year – the phosphorus levels at the farms would exceed the targets, which would trigger a need to find from two to eight times more land than now required.
For farmers who are already struggling with poor weather, low
commodity prices, and the fallout of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the new law is one more worry on the horizon.
"These are all wonderful ideas and we'll all live in a wonderful and pristine environment, but who pays for it?" says Sigurdson. "Is it the consumer, at the end, by paying an extra two cents per pound for his pork chop? Or is it us, who go out of business because we just get layer upon layer of extra cost added on to our business that we're unable, just completely unable to pass on."
"We are governed to death in Canada, and it's getting worse and worse all the time," says Reykdal.
"It's in our own best interests to look after the our land. To put strict controls on it, I don't think is necessary. It's absolutely not necessary, because we are stewards of the land. We are not here to ruin the environment."
The Water Protection Act is expected to pass by the end of 2004. Government officials say the changes to regulations will be rolled out in stages, and will include extensive consultations with farmers. It's expected to be a year or longer before farmers feel the impact.
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