Spring 1995 (v7n2)
by Lyra Halprin, SAREP
Photo by Ralph Ernst
[Editor's Note: This is the second part of a two-part article on the Oct. 20,1994 conference "Animal Agriculture Impacts on Water Quality in California, ' which reported the results of a year-long study of the same name undertaken by the UC Davis Animal Agriculture Research Center and the UC Agricultural Issues Center. Proceedings are available from both centers (See Resources, page 18). The first part appeared in Sustainable Agriculture, Winter 1995, Vol.7, No.1]
The third research team report on management practices, technologies and regulations and their effectiveness at preventing water pollution was summarized by Valerie Mellano, environmental issues advisor in the UC Cooperative Extension office in San Diego County. She reviewed pertinent regulations including the 1969 Porter-Cologne Act, which is California's lead water legislation, and the Coastal Zone Management Act. Her team's report includes descriptions of existing practices for confined animal operations in the state, and comparisons of four major California regions. She said monitoring of individual operations can vary from inexpensive manure application records or photographs to record the status of water bodies and vegetation, to more technical methods like laboratory analysis of water quality. She also itemized the areas where research is needed to provide new practices and technologies.
"Management options that are appropriate for one producer may not be appropriate for another, so regulations and technologies need to be flexible," she said. "You can't write a regulation or provide a technology that fits everything and expect it to working all situations-it simply won't. Therefore, the input of producers is absolutely necessary. I realize there's a need for regulations, but instead of the government specifying how it has to be done, it would have greater success if it stated the goal and let the producers come up with a way of meeting that goal."
Yolo County hydrologist Steve Deverel reiterated that a systems approach is necessary to truly understand the processes involved in water pollution. He said in addition to monitoring, an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to defining and responding to water pollution problems is required.
Self-Regulation
Paul Feder, an agricultural policy specialist in the US-EPA's San Francisco water management division, also urged an approach to water issues that is not "too attached to technologies, but rather is holistic." He pointed out that air pollution, as well as water pollution, is a by-product of animal agriculture. He suggested a possible tax on nitrogen fertilizer, which he called "the most unregulated chemical out there." He noted that "it is not whether, but how we regulate" that is important. He wondered if the "top-down' approach is useful, or whether it might be better for the industry to look at self-regulation.
"The conservation ethic exists in the field," he said, "and finger-pointing hurts the small producers and taxpayers." He noted that the Sonoma Marin Dairy Waste Task Force is an outstanding example of self-regulation and success. "Strong leadership is needed," he said, "and producers have to demand accountability."
Feder said agricultural leadership also needs to put pressure on the EPA and other regulatory agencies to support more systems approaches to problem solving. He urged producers to "move beyond fear and reactivity, and base solutions on a conservation ethic. Who better to do it than the people on the land?"
Ernie Gemperle, a poultry producer with 1.5 million chickens, talked about the successful conservation efforts used in his chicken houses. He has one acre of lagoon for every 10,000 chickens, which dilutes the salt content of the waste. Automatic systems clean out the chicken houses twice daily, waste goes to holding tanks, and the chicken manure is used on Gemperle's and neighboring farms.
"We have never had a problem getting rid of 200 tons per day of (wet) manure,' he said. His new chicken house are designed so that "bone-dry manure" is under the pens. Dry manure only has to be removed and spread every one or two years, compared to the daily or three times a week spreading that is required for wet manure. Gemperle said that as his facilities are modernized or replaced, there will be no manure on the ground in the rainy season.
Hog Lagoons
Pork producer Roy Sharp talked about his 17,000 hog operation in Tulare and the triple lagoon system he has used for 18 years to handle three tons per day of manure dry matter.
"With the amount of waste that we produce, we have to do something with it," Sharp said. "With this triple lagoon system, we digest the waste materials, clean up the water, use the methane gas byproduct we produce for electricity, and we recycle the water both through a flushing system as well as through irrigation and fertilization of crop land."
The manure dry matter is flushed daily into the covered primary lagoon. The lagoon acts as an anaerobic digester on the waste materials. Sharp adds a bacterial enzyme to the primary lagoon as an enhancement for this process. The digestion byproduct is methane gas. Water used in the system is further cleaned in the other two lagoons.
The gas has been producing energy for the Sharp operation for 12 years. The system includes a 75 kw engine generator, which uses a 1/2 hp blower pump. The lagoon produces 70 to 80 percent methane, in comparison to most bio-gas systems which only produce 50 to 60 percent methane, according to Sharp. He said he built his system in 1982 with a $90,000 loan, which he has since paid off. In 1985, the operation added a 100 kw generator to make use of the additional volume of methane from the lagoon. "The system is cost-effective and doing a sustainable job for the environment, " Sharp said. "It has been so successful that we now have four cogeneration systems in operation on different sites, and are completing a fifth system. It has been a significant savings in overhead costs."
Watershed Perspective
The fourth team report on strategies and options for sustaining animal agriculture from a watershed perspective was presented by Wesley Wallender, professor of hydrologic science at UC Davis. He noted the complexity of California's watersheds, and stressed that it is necessary to identify the impact of animal agriculture on each one in order to protect the long-term viability of the watersheds and the animal systems themselves.
"Without this information, the door is open for favoring short-term economic gains over long-term environmental quality, or vice versa," he said. He noted that better measurements and observations are making it easier "to estimate the flow of pollutants across boundaries and to appreciate the cumulative impacts over multiple interconnected land uses."
Wallender said "liability and regulation" are the two categories of tools which guide the management of animal agriculture systems toward both economic and environmental viability. His team's report analyzed them using a systems analysis approach. "With liability, there are penalties for polluting, and with regulation you try to prevent pollution," he said. Tools include cost internalization (producers absorbing all costs), regulation (regulators setting standards of pollution), and voluntary compliance, which combines pro-active self-regulation with other issues.
"Right now we're at regulation, and we're moving toward voluntary compliance, but the final stage should be cost internalization," Wallender said. "However, with cost internalization, the cost of the products must go up to cover production costs."
Beef Ranchers
Cattle rancher Jack Hanson, Jr. noted that half of California's 39 million acres of range land, which includes approximately 80 percent of the critical, water-filled riparian habitat, is in private hands. "A lot of us within our industry believe we borrow this land from our children," he said.
Hanson said that beef ranchers "are essentially 'price-takers,' and if there are additional costs added to production, we can't just pass this on to consumers." He said in California, ranchers are "ahead of the game," but fear being too far ahead.
"A California steer is the same as a Wyoming steer, " he said, "If we have regulatory costs that they don't have, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage."
Gordon Rausser, dean of the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley, said that regulatory agencies will encourage self-regulation in manure management by "defining the default options." He said this will create incentives for farmers and ranchers to "come together to collectively set their own regulations, which in turn, will lead to standards that will hopefully be accepted by the regulatory agencies. That's what's beginning to happen in other areas, and I expect that to happen here, too."
George Wingate, a US Bureau of Land Management watershed specialist noted that "a watershed is a system contained by a boundary, and includes lots of resources, uses, and values." He said pollutants flow through watersheds in the waterways. He said the information presented at the conference must be disseminated throughout the state.
Systems Approach
Terry Young, a senior consulting scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, agreed that a systems approach is necessary to solve water problems. She said the function of a systems approach is to analyze the problem (i.e., animal systems and waste management) and to determine the technical options for solving the problem. The next step is the solution, "figuring out what regulatory or voluntary system will be optimal for where you want to use it."
She said the producers must be made accountable for the pollution they generate, and environmental objectives must be achieved. Ideally, however, a regulatory system can also "acknowledge that the person on the farm knows better how to solve the problem than bureaucrats." The ideal programs are therefore those that are decentralized and flexible, as well as equitable, fair and easily administered. One option for designing such a system is to use a range of financial incentives that "ease the pain of regulation." Incentives are especially attractive if the proceeds from any taxes are kept within the community and used to fund operations that the producers would have to finance anyway.
Trying to figure out if solutions should be voluntary or mandatory is asking the wrong question, Young said. "Instead, the regulatory agencies should set the goal, then let folks in a watershed consortium decide how to accomplish the goal, but hold the producers responsible for results."
Research Summary
Kenneth R. Farrell, UC Vice President for the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources summarized the conference's research results at the program's conclusion. He noted that many of the California agriculture animal systems use non-edible forage to make food. In addition to their own value as food producers, their byproducts include manure, which can be both a fertilizer and a pollutant. The conference identified several approaches to the use and disposal of that manure. Site specificity is very important to the manure's use and disposal, as no two areas are alike. Technologies are available to turn manure's potential detriments into benefits. Priority problem areas include nitrate and salt contamination of water, runoff into surface water, and sedimentation. Regulatory alternatives include voluntary solutions, voluntary with economic incentives, and farmers and ranchers internalizing the cost.
He noted that exporting manure from some areas of the state is necessary, and determining how to make that economically feasible with transportation is a challenge. Farrell reiterated that technologies from other states are not readily or obviously adaptable to California, thus there is a need here for research and information dissemination. Research areas include the characteristics of wastes after treatment; manures as fertilizers; information on combinations of manure and chemical fertilizers; economic feasibility of bio-gas production; and dietary means of altering animal efficiency.
He urged researchers to integrate their information well, because "holistic and systems approach solutions based on particular ecosystems will have the best chance of succeeding."
[Correction: In the first part of this series, incorrect figures were given for the amount of manure produced daily by the 300 million agricultural animals in California. The correct figure is approximately 250 million pounds of manure/day.]
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