Ag Business Briefs
2018 Brown County 4-H Public Presentation Day
Four Brown County 4-H Members participated in Public Presentation Day on April 2 at SDSU Extension Aberdeen Regional Office. Participants gave demonstration, illustrated talks, and public speeches, which related to a 4-H project they were enrolled in. Each participant could receive a purple, blue, red and white ribbon placing. Receiving top purples were: Gabe Mattson, Matthew Sperry, Ashlynn Warrington, and Logan Warrington. All the participants will be giving their presentations at the Brown County Fair. They also have the option to participate at the State Fair over Labor Day weekend.
— Brown County 4-H Program
Turkey facility building permit approved in Edmunds County
The Edmunds County Planning and Zoning Commission voted 3-2 during a special meeting in Ipswich on March 30 to approve a building permit for a turkey facility.
The permit was submitted by Farm Holdings S.D. 12, a limited liability company owned by Hendrix Genetics, which is based in the Netherlands. It would allow for seven connected barns to be built as part of a “pod” that would house 26,800 turkeys, according to information from Hendrix Genetics. It would be about 2 miles southwest of Ipswich and about a half-mile away from an existing home. Some residents expressed concerns about odors.
Nathan Davis, Werner Mohr and Audie Crouch voted to approve the permit, while Dennis Hoyle and Galen Gisi voted against it.
The permit was originally approved by the planning and zoning commission March 8. But it was sent back to the board by the Edmunds County Commission. That was after more than 60 residents signed a petition asking that the permit be revoked and it was determined that the March 8 meeting agenda was not published on the county’s website as required.
Turkeys will be hatched in the barns and grow until they are 30 weeks old before being sent to Bridgewater.
Nobody objected to permits for two other turkey pods to be built in Edmunds County.
— by Shannon Marvel, American News reporter
Minnesota watershed uses woodchips, wetlands to treat water
HASTINGS, Minn. (AP) — Watershed experts are using wetlands and woodchips to try and reduce nitrate runoff in Vermillion River and other Minnesota waters.
Minnesota Public Radio reports that runoff from local farms has polluted the waters. Nitrates can give adults headaches and cramps, and cause life-threatening blue baby syndrome in infants.
Vermillion River Watershed experts have created a 3-acre artificial wetland with more than 1,000 cubic yards of woodchips mixed into the topsoil in an effort to filter out those nitrates.
A recent University of Minnesota study found that wetlands are effective natural filters for water. Vermillion’s senior watershed specialist, Travis Thiel, says bacteria that grow on woodchips are also useful nitrate filters.
Thiel says the project is estimated to cost between $200,000 and $300,000. The watershed organization estimates the project will treat 13,600 pounds of nitrate annually.
Lawsuit blames pork giant for noxious farm smells
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The world’s largest pork corporation is facing the biggest threat in decades to its low-cost, high-volume method of raising animals by discharging liquefied waste over croplands.
A hearing began Tuesday on a federal lawsuit that could force changes on the hog production division of Virginia-based Smithfield Foods. It’s the first of several nuisance lawsuits by more than 500 neighbors of industrial-scale hog operations in North Carolina, the country’s No. 2 pork-producing state.
Neighbors’ attorney Mark Kaeske says the contracts North Carolina farmers signed with Smithfield obligate them to use the inexpensive but smelly waste-disposal method. He says new, less-odorous technologies that have been adopted by the company at its location in Missouri.
Smithfield attorney Mark Anderson says the farmers who work for the company never faced complaints until out-of-state lawyers showed up.