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Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Environment - Turning hog waste into black gold in Illinois

"Pig farm strives to breathe easy with suburbs: Hog waste turned into no-odor compost" is the headline to this story today in the Chicago Tribune. Some quotes from the lengthy article:

When pork producer Bill Dumoulin sits on his combine and gazes across his family's fields in far northwestern Kane County, he can just begin to see the approach of suburbia 2 miles to the east. * * *

Those new residents might enjoy the sight of the Dumoulins' wide-open fields but would likely wrinkle their noses at the odor of their 25,000 pigs.

"We want to be good neighbors," said Bill Dumoulin.

"And good stewards," added his son Pat Dumoulin. "If at all possible, we'd like our kids to farm."

So the Dumoulins have embraced an ages-old recycling method, with an innovative twist, that they expect will help them accomplish both goals without raising a stink. And it could serve as a model to help save the livestock industry statewide.

Aided by state researchers, the Dumoulins have concocted a non-offensive-smelling, nutrient-rich compost from hog manure and landscape mulch that they have been using to fertilize the roughly 700 acres they till.

The operation reduces odors and waste from the farm and recycles landscaping mulch from the nearby suburbs. And the family hopes someday to get the needed permits to sell the compost for landscaping use, another benefit for those anticipated new neighbors.

The operation might help brighten the future of the state's livestock industry as well, said Illinois State University professor Paul Walker, an animal science researcher who has closely monitored the success of the Dumoulins' composting operation.

"We are at a crisis point in Illinois," he said. "We are about to lose the livestock industry in the state, particularly family-owned livestock farms. They are decreasing in number, and one of the big reasons is odor in livestock manure management."

The Dumoulins' 25,000 hogs produce tankloads of waste--more than a million gallons of "slurry" a year.

Instead of injecting manure directly into the soil, the traditional management strategy, the Dumoulins opted to mix manure with landscape waste to produce a compost that they apply to the soil.

"It doesn't smell at all," said son Mike Dumoulin as he scooped up a handful of the final product and sifted it through his fingers.

ISU tests showed scientifically that odor was dramatically reduced at an ISU farm when compost was applied to soil instead of manure.

ISU has not done any odor testing at the Dumoulin farm, Walker said, but, "there's been no odor complaints about the Dumoulins since they started the composting operation. And usually neighbors complain if they smell hog manure odor." * * *

The Dumoulins got started composting manure for their own use about three years ago after ISU supplied them with the scientific know-how and some equipment funded through an Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research grant.

They create the compost by spraying a prescribed amount of liquid manure atop pyramid-shaped windrows of carefully screened, mulched leaves, grass and wood chips that are churned and aerated periodically. The family has diverted about a million gallons of manure from being applied directly to their farmland and has recycled more than 30,000 cubic yards of landscape waste from such municipalities as Elgin, Geneva and Batavia.

Recycling part of the roughly 85,000 tons of landscape waste generated annually in Kane, which can't be landfilled and can't be burned, is a bonus as well, said Walker. The towns deliver the material directly to the farm at no cost to the Dumoulins.

"They are positioning themselves to survive as urbanization moves out around them, which is going to happen," Walker said. * * *

The Dumoulins hope eventually to market their compost to other farmers as well as turf growers, garden shops, golf courses and landscapers.

Compost can cost between $10 and $32 a ton to produce and can be sold for between $10 and $200 a ton, depending on quality, said Walker. And corn and soybeans grown on soils amended with compost yield similarly to crops grown with inorganic fertilizer, he said.

"Good compost is like black gold," said Bill Dumoulin. "It's a `win' situation for the cities and it's a `win' situation for us."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 13, 2005 12:54 PM
Posted to Environment | Indiana economic development