Industry-wide expo comes to Cayuga County for the first time
By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
About 2,000 people are expected to attend the North American Manure Expo in Auburn this summer.
Held in different locations throughout North America each year, the expo will be part trade show and part farm tour as Cornell’s PRO-DAIRY program leaders along with University of Vermont Extension agents co-host the event.
“Folks get to go out to farms and see things happening in our region,” said Jason Oliver, Ph.D., and senior extension associate and dairy environmental system engineer for PRO-DAIRY. “It’s an educational event.”
Oliver anticipates attendees from Ohio, Pennsylvania and New England.
While manure as a topic may not seem rife with educational opportunities, it certainly is for farmers.
Manure represents to agriculture both a problem and an opportunity.
Dairy farmers need to do something with their animals’ waste that’s safe, odor-reducing and efficient.
One Holstein dairy cow generates about 100 pounds of waste daily. An average dairy herd in New York is 183 head, according to American Dairy Association North East, an industry trade organization. You do the math. That’s a lot of poop.
But manure also offers opportunities.
In light of fluctuating chemical fertilizer prices, averaging per acre $99 in 2020 to $273 in 2022 and now about $160, learning more about using manure for soil fertility makes sense. And learning that manure does far more for farmers.
“One of the key takeaways is manure is more than fertilizer,” Oliver said. “It’s a soil health amendment. The organic matter is good for soil. It’s a crucial part of a livestock operation’s circular economy. They’re taking a byproduct of milk production to grow crops.
“Our dairies in the Northeast are relatively quite sustainable. They’re producing a lot of their feedstuffs with manure on the farm. The average farm show you might have shiny new manure equipment but you don’t get to see it in action. A big part of the show is seeing it in action. The farmer and custom manure haulers, you can see it performing in the field to shape their understanding of how it works and is it worth investing in.”
The expo will include sessions with experts about safety and innovations in agronomy, soil health and the environmental aspects of spreading. Most farmers want to hand down their farms to their children. Part of creating that kind of economic sustainability is protecting the water quality on the farm, including preventing manure runoff into water sources and manure spills. Oliver said that the expo will include sessions on manure spreading, custom liquid spreading by third parties and manure treatment processes that separate solids so they can be sanitized to recycle as bedding.
More farmers are turning to low-till and no-till systems that reduce the amount of tillage on a field. This practice is helpful in maintaining soil health because it disrupts the soil microbiome less than conventional plowing. Oliver said that the expo will discuss ways to inject manure into fields to reduce odors and retain nitrogen and integrate into a low-till or no-till system.
“It’s all about best management of those nutrients,” Oliver said.
Some farms load manure and sometimes restaurant food waste into on-site methane digesters to generate electricity. Oliver said that one of the farms on the tour operates a digester. Farmers using methane digesters to power their own operations and sell the superfluous electricity to the power company.
Annex Media organizes the Manure Expo. The event is slated for July 17-18. Tickets are $5 to $30, depending upon the number of days and tours attended.
