News

Manure Composting in Southern Alberta’s Beef Feedlot Industry
Dr. Frank Larney, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Research Centre, Lethbridge, AB

Since the mid-1990s, composting has been increasingly adopted as an alternative means of handling manure generated by southern Alberta’s feedlot industry. It maximizes the potential for recycling manure nutrients by soils and crops while protecting surface and groundwater resources from over-application of manure nutrients. Associated benefits include elimination of pathogens, parasites, weed seeds and veterinary antibiotics. Compost can be used as a substitute for fertilizer inputs in cropping systems and as an organic amendment in well site reclamation. This seminar will present an overview of composting research on beef feedlot manure at Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge Research Centre.

Location: Cox Institute, Room 257,
Dalhousie Faculty of Agricultural Campus, 50 Pictou Road, Truro, Nova Scotia
Time: Thursday, December 5th 3:00 pm

Speaker Biography
Francis J. Larney is a Research Scientist with Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge, Alberta. He has B.Agr.Sc., M.Agr.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from The National University of Ireland (University College Dublin). His research program focuses on soil erosion and productivity, reclamation, composting and organic soil amendments. He is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Dept. of Soil Science at the University of Manitoba. He served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Environmental Quality (2000-02), and Associate Editor (2003-05) and Editor (2006-08) of the Canadian Journal of Soil Science (2006-08). He was honoured with Fellow Awards from the Canadian Society of Soil Science in 2010 and the Soil Science Society of America in 2012. He is President of the Canadian Society of Soil Science for 2013.