Boozman, Blunt receive ideas on poultry litter use
Posted on Thursday, March 20, 2008
POINT LOOKOUT, Mo. — A southwest Missouri farmer told two congressmen on Wednesday he’s using the age-old practice of bartering to find a new answer for poultry litter.
Bill Harvill, who raises chickens for Tyson Foods Inc. near Stark City, Mo., trades poultry litter to a Lamar, Mo., farmer in exchange for corn. Harvill then trades the corn again for wood pellets.
The pellets are burned to heat up his eight chicken houses, reducing Harvill’s propane costs.
“Poultry litter needs to help us become independent from fossil fuel,” Harvill said.
Harvill was among 15 people who talked about water quality and quantity and water pollution issues affecting Northwest Arkansas and southern Missouri at a field hearing attended by U. S. Reps. John Boozman, R-Ark., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo., at College of the Ozarks.
Boozman loved Harvill’s idea, which was brought up as officials from Missouri and Arkansas talked about ways to better protect Table Rock Lake and Lake Taneycomo in Missouri and Beaver Lake in Arkansas.
“His idea is using common sense to work something out,” Boozman said.
Farmers, soil scientists and researchers in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma have been trying to find cost-effective uses for poultry litter, a combination of bird manure and either wood chips or rice hulls.
It’s commonly spread on farm fields to fertilize pasture land and hay crops, but heavy rain can carry the nutrients it contains into streams where it can degrade water quality.
Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson alleges in U. S. District Court at Tulsa that fecal bacteria in poultry litter threatens human health in the Illinois River watershed. Edmondson, during a nine-day hearing that ended last week, asked the court to ban poultry litter spreading in the watershed.
Judge Greg Frizzell hasn’t ruled on the request.
Missouri and Arkansas have supported projects to burn litter and warm up poultry houses.
Lynn Jenkins, a National Resources Conservation Service district conservationist who attended Wednesday’s hearing, said the service tried burning litter at three different southwest Missouri farms. It didn’t work effectively, but one Southwest City farmer keeps trying it.
Jenkins believes the project was unsuccessful. Farmers can’t store enough litter and keep it burning well for long periods. It was also difficult to get litter dry enough to burn it well, Jenkins said.
In Arkansas, Lynndale Systems Inc., a Harrison company that began making furnaces for homes, schools and industrial plants in 1974, started tinkering with a poultry litter furnace in 2004.
Lynndale is modifying the device after working with Tom Costello, an associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Costello helped the company try to obtain better heat efficiency, and the furnace continues to be tested, said Bob Dodson, Lynndale’s president and chief executive officer.
Dodson said he hopes to have the furnace for sale to farmers by the end of this year. It’ll cost $ 25, 000 to $ 35, 000, but farmers will eliminate much of their spending on propane to heat chicken houses, he said.
“It’s doable,” Dodson said.
Harvill remains focused on his farm with the bigger idea of seeing other farmers ship litter to the nation’s Corn Belt, a region that stretches from western Ohio to eastern Nebraska.
“The future is not in lands of foreign oil,” Harvill said. “The future is what we can do here in America. Everything I’m doing right now, the money stays right here.”
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