Doug Redekop, the President of Precision Pumping of La Broquerie, MB said livestock manure applicators have stepped up

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their attention to biosecurity in the wake of the arrival of PED in North America. Applicators are much more focused on ensuring their equipment doesn’t give the virus the opportunity to move.

In a recent interview, Redekop also compared two distinct years 2016 and 2004, both wet, wet seasons and maybe 2016, wet over a longer period of time maybe even wetter.

However, he believes that things have changed making the wetter 2016 pumping manure season a little bit better than the wet year of 2004.

“Well, I think the big thing is our willingness and ability to adopt new technologies. That has been critical to our success,” said Redekop. “And also recognizing that we don’t want to hire just anybody. We want to hire and foster only the best people.”

There was a time when manure was mostly an out and out waste and how over time it’s turned into a commodity.

“It’s very critical. I know that the agenda on part of the integrators is to gain value for the manure, and every year to try to do better than the year prior,” says this professional manure integrator who works hard at improving the value of that commodity. “It is happening, when I worked for Maple Leaf going back to the late 90s and early 2000s we were writing up deals for value added and how to gain monetary value for the manure. We set the stage back then. We haven’t really gained a lot of ground since then in value wise, but in education, the customer is buying into that value. Yes, absolutely, yes.”

Redekop offered some ideas and forward-looking thought.

“Well, I think the big thing in my mind, especially after coming through a wet year we need to be able to apply the nutrients when the crop needs it the most. That, in my mind, is ultra-critical to us going forward.”

“I think we need to adopt equipment that will allow us to go in-crop to apply manure into standing crop. We’ve done it before, we need to grow that window of opportunity to spread manure in standing crop,” he said.

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Looking back, when the hog industry was booming there was abundant manure to go around. When the hog industry tanked for some years and Manitoba lost almost half of the production, farmers missed that manure seeing what the value really is. Redekop said his brother-in-law said to me one day without manure, he would not be growing corn. Absolutely without a shadow of a doubt, no manure, no corn.

Look at the Midwest US, where he visited with a number of existing and new producers those hog producers told him flat out this is a manure manufacturing plant first.

Redekop is excited about the hog industry going forward. “I see real opportunities. I watch the integrators identifying and cultivating new opportunities in new marketplaces, and I see that we need to restart the engine that we had going 12 years ago in order to help them satisfy their needs at the plant. Yes, I’m very excited about the industry going forward,” he said.

There was a time when people started to integrate manure into the ground. The equipment was at one point quite archaic.

“Well, one thing I think that’s helped a lot is we’re now adopting new methods of mixing and agitation. Mobile agitators and lagoons have certainly helped us deliver a more consistent product to the field. I’m also extremely excited about John Deere, they have a new near Infrared technology sensor that they’re implementing in Europe that I’m certain is going to be here sometime in the near future. This new technology will allow us to see the value of manure as it’s passing through the line. That’s available in Europe right now already as we speak,” he said.

“We talk about using either manure separation either in a non-mechanical or mechanical form to isolate phosphorus and be able to haul those nutrients a distance so we can manage those better,” said Redekop. “I think that’s definitely an interesting thing going forward. But also, we’re talking about applying manure in the crop, whether it be wheat, corn, or soybeans where we can actually apply the nutrient in a row as the crop needs it.”

Redekop said research shows how for every bushel of yield the crop needs about 1.15 pounds of nitrogen. And if they apply it when the crop really needs it, that could cut the input cost by about 30 per cent. •

— By Harry Siemens