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Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emission Measurements to Existing Dairy and Turkey Barn Gas Monitoring Projects

Odor - 2008

Minnesota’s turkey production differs from other areas of the U.S. because of our climate, liter management, and the predominance of heavy tom turkey production systems. Currently there is very limited turkey emission measurement research.

Steven H. Olson, Executive Director, Minnesota Turkey Research and Promotion Council

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Project Contact:   Larry Jacobson Funding:   $100,000
District:  
 Unknown

  •   The Problem  •  Objectives  •  

The Problem

Recent the U.S. Environmental Pollution Control Agency (EPA) has decided to apply two regulatory acts to animal agriculture. The two acts were originally intended by Congress to apply only to industrial facilities such as manufacturing plants and refiners. Within the next two years EPA is expected to begin enforcing emission standards for livestock operations. This creates a major challenge to the livestock industry because there is very limited research that has been conducted to measure emission levels of four air pollutants: ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, particulate matter, and Volatile Organic Compounds.

Animal agriculture is an important source of greenhouse gases (GHG). A recently released FAO study estimates that the livestock sector produces 18 percent of the worlds GHG emissions. Thus, there is a need to quantify the GHG emission from livestock/poultry production systems since very limited GHG emission factors exist for animal buildings. Baseline levels of GHG need to be established to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed mitigation technologies.

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Objectives

The short term benefits of this research will be important to governmental agencies and policy makers who will need to assess the global warming impact from production animal agriculture. Long term benefits of the quantification of GHG emissions will allow animal producers, researchers, publish and private technology providers, and consultants to develop mitigation strategies to control or reduce the GHG to acceptable levels.

The project will add methane and non-methane hydrocarbon gas emissions measurements to the researchers NRI funded turkey emission project. It will also add GHG emissions measurements to a commodity funded NAEMS (WI dairy) emission study

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