Media Clipping — Friday, September 6, 2002, The Daily News

More livestock could help farmers - study

By Stephen Bornais

More cows, goats and sheep producing more manure has been suggested as a way to save the soil supporting Nova Scotians farms.

A report released yesterday by GPI Atlantic, a Halifax non-profit research group, said increasing the number of livestock raised on farms in the province could add millions to incomes, and improve soil quality.

Soil is eroding six times faster than it can replenish itself, the report said, with quality worsened by the loss of organic matter and the planting of more soil-degrading crops such as corn and potatoes.

All this costs farmers money to repair, threatening the future of Nova Scotia farms and potentially reducing food quality, the report concluded.

In the past decade, the area of land used to grow potentially soil-degrading crops has increased 30 per cent. And since 1971, numbers of livestock on crop-growing farms have dwindled.

GPI researcher and report author Jennifer Scott estimates these developments cost more than $11.5 million yearly in lost income on farms.

In Nova Scotia, we’re importing most of the beef we eat, and that is ridiculous, Scott said. We should be producing it here.

One of the Scott’s chief recommendations is to integrate ruminant livestock operations cattle, goats and sheep into crop-growing regions.

These solar-powered grass converters eat plants that humans can’t digest, such as hay and silage, making more efficient use of Nova Scotian croplands, Scott said.

The animals’ processed manure, a cost-effective, safe, and efficient means of improving soil quality, would then be available to crop farmers. The animals also create a demand for pastures and hay crops that help build the soil.

There’s two things what comes out the end and what goes in the front, she said.

Scott said crop yields would increase, while fertilizer and fuel bills would drop. The report indicates that the fertilizer value from manure and crop remnants in Nova Scotia is worth an estimated $17.5 million per year.

Lawrence Nason, executive director of the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, said Nova Scotia is well positioned to increase its livestock numbers.

Our climate and soils are particularly suited to the produce of forage, Nason said.

But farmers face economic hurdles, namely low commodity prices, that have to be overcome before they would make that investment.

Commodity prices would have to rise to draw additional land and resources into livestock, he said.

Another problem for Nova Scotia farmers, Nason said, is that many of their neighbours newly transplanted from urban areas don’t take kindly to farmers spreading nutrient-rich, but smelly, manure.

That’s one of the issues that is predictable when you start to talk about the expansion of livestock production, he said.

Scott said properly composted manure should smell more like rich soil, rather than pukey.

With a good ecological system ... you don’t have the fly problems, you don’t have the smell problems, she said.

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