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kcstar.com
Research team tries to sniff out ways to make air near hog farms breathable
By: LYNN FRANEY Staff Writer
Date: 01/10/98
In a laboratory at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, professional smeller Vicki Larson puts her nose up to a bag of air and checks for intensity by taking a whiff.
Whew! The air carries the unmistakable aroma of ... of ...
Hogs.
Larson, a 22-year-old student and self-proclaimed ''city girl,'' gets about $8 an hour for sniffing agricultural odors in three-hour sessions every few weeks.
She finds the hog farm odor a tad unpleasant, but not disgusting.
But plenty of hog farm neighbors - who, obviously, are not getting paid to inhale - find the cloying, stomach-churning stench downright disagreeable.
And the clash over hog farm odor is intensifying, mainly because of two developments: urbanites moving to the countryside for quiet but ending up holding their noses; and hog farms concentrating thousands of pigs in small spaces, producing lots of manure and gases.
The growing debate has prompted the National Pork Producers Council, a trade association of 84,000 pork producers, to show that it's serious about odor prevention.
Its plan of attack: sending groups of three agricultural engineers on odor-finding visits to hog farms, both large and small.
This new odor assessment program has begun with a $1.5 million pilot study focused on six farms each in Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota and North Carolina. If it is successful, it will be expanded to 6,000 hog farms of all sizes across the country by the year 2000. The cost for that will be several million dollars.
The odor assessment program is the result of increasing pressure on producers to reduce odor from hog farms.
In Missouri - which produces 6 million hogs a year, a number higher than the state's human population - the attorney general has asked the Air Conservation Commission to no longer exempt large hog farms from restricting obnoxious odors. A large hog farm is one with 17,500 or more mature hogs.
Many rural Kansans have voted to ban large hog farms from their counties, saying they'll stink up the countryside and pose water pollution problems. Kansas hog farmers must place their animal buildings a certain distance from nearby houses to try to cut down on the unpleasantness for neighbors.
Kansas has about 4,100 hog farmers, who produced about 2.1 million hogs in 1996.
The odor assessment program is one of the National Pork Producers Council's strategies to help farmers reduce odor.
The council boasts that this is the first time engineers from three different entities - private firms, universities and the federal government - have teamed up to visit hog farms together.
Don Peterson, an engineer with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service in Iowa, has conducted the odor assessments in Missouri's neighbor to the north.
He said triple-teaming is good because an engineer with a specialty may catch a potential odor source that a different engineer may miss or downplay.
''There's been excellent cooperation,'' he said. ''There's been no turf fighting. It's just been super. ''
The council also has highlighted a second plus: Engineers can best gauge odor problems and solutions if they study the farm as a whole, rather than just investigating one part in isolation.
But three engineers taking a piece-by-piece, hours-long look at an entire hog farm can be costly, ranging from $500 to $2,000. That's why the council decided to use some of its check-off funds - money collected during each sale of pork products - to pay for the assessments.
How the assessments work:
First, the hog farmer answers a questionnaire with questions including: How many hogs do you produce? Are they kept inside or outside? If they're inside, how often is the manure drained? Where is the manure stored? How is the manure spread on nearby fields for fertilizer? How close are the pens or production buildings to the property lines? How are dead hogs disposed of?
Second, the engineers visit the farm, noting any possible sources of odor. Such sources include: Dust, which can carry the stench to neighbors' yards; dirty pigs in pens where the manure's not cleared out very often; and cracks in the buildings housing the hogs.
Third, air and manure samples are collected.
Air is gathered in thick plasticlike bags, which don't allow odors to escape. The technician notes where the sample was collected, and the surrounding conditions, including air temperature, wind direction, wind speed and humidity. The bags of air then are shipped to olfactometry laboratories, such as the one at the University of Minnesota where Larson works. There, eight panelists determine how many dilutions it takes before the air no longer smells and test for intensity by smelling the entire contents of the bag.
Such tests will help scientists decide what weather conditions make the smell the worst, and how far away one has to get from the buildings and manure storage areas before the smell subsides.
Manure is sampled, usually from the lagoon or slurry tank, and chemists measure certain strong chemical compounds, such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia.
Fourth, the engineers tell the farmer what they found and suggest ways to reduce odor. Then it's up to the farmer to decide whether to make any changes.
The question of implementation poses a serious challenge to whether the odor assessment program will actually make a difference.
''The problem is, it all costs money,'' said Clay County hog farmer Harley Bogue. ''No one is willing to assist the producers. ''
And some producers, including Bogue, say they don't believe that odor is a big enough problem to cause all the governmental hand-wringing, and that city dwellers have a whitewashed notion of the countryside.
''The odor problem is one the media has perceived and created because of the press they can create with it,'' Bogue said. ''The smell has always been there, but now it's suddenly a focus. It used to be that everybody had bomb shelters. That was a scare tactic. Now, it's the environment. ''
But regardless of where the outcry has come from, hog producers are facing more governmental odor regulation.
And so research is escalating into ways to reduce odor.
For example, chemists are analyzing hundreds of chemical compounds in hog farm air, trying to determine which ones actually cause odor.
Researchers are studying how effectively oils reduce dust from feed, and whether manure tank covers cut down on odor.
And they're experimenting with biofilters that, when added to a building's mechanical ventilation system, use enzymes to eat up the chemical compounds that contribute to odor.
''We hear people talk about 'solving' the odor problem,'' said John Hoehne, an agricultural engineer with the University of Missouri-Columbia who has conducted odor assessments at Missouri's hog farms. ''Solving probably means lessening. I'm not sure we'll ever eliminate it. ''
Hog producers also say odor eradication is many years in the future.
''(The assessment program) is a positive step, no doubt about it,'' Bogue said. ''But the people are asking for answers immediately and that kind of research is long-term. You can't put a Band-Aid on it. ''
That is not the view of some government officials, however.
Roger Randolph, Missouri's air pollution director, said odor-reducing technology is advanced enough to save hog farm neighbors much of their nasal discomfort.
''This is not a technologically difficult problem,'' he said. ''It's a problem of balancing economics with good technology in order to create the economic benefit and the environmental benefit. ''
He said cooperation between regulators and producers will make rural living more enjoyable for everyone.
The environmental quality division of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources has sent a letter to the Missouri Pork Producers Council offering a special piece of air sampling equipment for use in hog farm odor assessments.
''What we do well is control and measure air pollution,'' Randolph said. ''And what they do well is grow animals. I think we can bring these things together and find cost-effective solutions. ''
All content c 1997 The Kansas City Star
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