Why we are different!
We create new products for the dairy and pork producers to sell and we make them out of the stuff you have – and maybe have too much of – your manure.
Why did we do it? We found farmers wanting to face their challenges but with no power to pass on increased costs. The answer was clear – create a new source of income and if we were lucky, reduce some of those challenges at the same time.
We found farmers wanting to face their challenges but with no power to pass on increased costs. The answer was clear – create a new source of income and if we were lucky, reduce some of those challenges at the same time.
What could we use to make that new product? We looked around and found that operators already had realized the value of manure as a replacement for chemical fertilizers and most of them were already raising crops for sale or feed – a win/win situation. But the wind was changing. Improved soil sampling told us that there was an imbalance between what we were feeding the soil and what the crops needed and some of it was being wasted through leachate and groundwater contamination. Another problem was also surfacing – herds were growing and the land base had not. We were running into longer trips to move the manure to a field and sometimes had to use a neighbor’s fields where we not only applied it but gave it away as well. Our water supplies were also changing with rain coming at us faster but less frequently, rivers drying up and aquifers retreating.
Our answer is to take the water in our manure that makes it expensive to store, move and apply and recycle it back to our animals to reduce our fresh water needs and by doing that we would reduce the weight of our solids so we could put more on a truck to cut the cost of moving it. Those solids held about 70% of the phosphorus and it was going to be easier to sell it to farms that needed it even if they were further away. The nutrients that didn’t go with the solids would now be in a concentrated form on the farm, nitrogen intact, easier to store and apply.
The ATD system of manure management has been tested and it is ready to be installed in a full-scale demonstration. ATD proposes to make it available at cost to the host farm ready to lead the industry into a new concept of nutrient management, in return for accepting visitors, keeping detailed records of output and eventually allowing us to use their operation in our advertising. The door is now open to allow herd increases on the existing land base because we can now export all solids and nutrients that we can’t use. The operation will be more sustainable and its legacy value will increase.
This has a significant capital cost and that means we will have to assess payback to see if you qualify. Larger volumes with higher solids levels make it easier to attain a reasonable return.
If this sounds interesting to you and would like to investigate it further please contact me at:
J. Victor Van Slyke
ATD Waste Systems Inc.
604-736-4474 or contact me through www.hogmanure.com or www.dairymanure.com
ATD Waste Systems Inc. 3099 West 24th Ave.,Vancouver, BC, V6L 1R7 Canada
Tel: (604) 736-4474 Fax: (604) 736-4493
e-mail: 1cleanfarm@hogmanure.com web: www.hogmanure.com