Construction is well underway on a new $9.5 million facility for
Premium Standard Farms that will turn hog manure into an
odorless organic fertilizer that’s perfect for the putting green.
As a hefty dose of nutrients in an easy-to-deliver slurry, pig
manure has a lot to recommend it. But with an aroma likely to put
a duffer off his swing, it’s never really found its place as the
fertilizer of choice on American golf courses. “We have the philosophy of trying to make something valuable
out of the manure,” says Dave Townsend, vice-president for
environmental affairs at Premium Standard Farms. “We want to
offset the cost of the technology required to process the manure,
but we also want to do something beneficial with it, rather than
just treating it as waste we’ve got to do something with.”
The result is a process, now under construction, that is both
complex in design and elegantly simple in operation. The system uses an approach developed by Crystal Peak Farms to
combine anaerobic digesters, a centrifuge dewatering system, an
ingenious freeze-thaw system to capture nutrients from the
effluent, and the dryer-fertilizer facility. The end result is a granulated product that “doesn’t have dust
and doesn’t have odor. It’s in nice, solid black granules. It handles
like a traditional fertilizer and has zero odor,” says Townsend. To ensure market acceptance, “we test-marketed the product on
golf courses in Hawaii, and I think it’s going to be very well
received,” McGinnis says. To bolster the appeal of the fertilizer,
McGinnis is also seeking organic certification for the product, and
working closely with distributor J R Simplot Co.