There are people here who think their, um, manure doesn't stink.
They are the salesmen, talking up the "odor elimination" features of their manure-handling systems, at their booths in the hall at the 2004 Manure-Science Review.
But there is also a sociologist, here for the first time, telling farmers their manure is probably far more disturbing to their neighbors than they imagine.
"Farmers tend to be much more optimistic about what the neighbors are thinking than what the neighbors are thinking," said Ann Reisner, who interviewed five neighbors near each of 60 Illinois farms that applied for permits to build large hog barns.
And there are scientists who are quick to say though manure smells today, they're applying for federal grants to study how different livestock feeds might lead to manure that "stinks less."
Those folks, along with a lawyer talking about the liabilities associated with manure, are among the speakers at the Manure Science Review, sponsored by Ohio State University, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Soil and Water Conservation Districts, and other agricultural organizations this week.
More than 100 people, most of them crop consultants, salesmen, farmers, and agricultural extension agents, were at yesterday's review at the Ohio State University campus just east of Lima. Today, the same program will be presented to about 70 people in south central Ohio and tomorrow it will be presented to about 100 in northeast Ohio.
Manure is becoming big business.
Far more grants are offered to scientists to study manure today from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and livestock trade associations than 10 years ago, said Todd Applegate, who studies poultry nutrition and manure at Purdue University.
Just in the last two years, the focus of many of those grants has shifted from studying ways to prevent water contamination to measuring the effects of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide in the air.
Hundreds of scientists nationwide studying manure and agricultural colleges are employing student assistants to collect, weigh, and analyze manure from thousands of farm animals.
"It's kind of surprising. It's not that hard to find help," said Mr. Applegate, who added that Purdue pays students $7 or $8 an hour to do his dirty work.
What is hard, for people whose business produces manure, is to be new to the community, Ms. Reisner said.
Neighbors are far less likely to complain about farmers they have known since elementary school than they are about someone who has moved into the community almost anytime after that, she said. And if the neighbors' great-grandparents knew and liked the farmer's great-grandparents, they're even more likely to find odors OK.
But farmers immigrating from Europe to build farms, such as many of northwest Ohio's large dairy farmers, and longtime local farmers whose neighbors have recently moved to the country often get complaints.
"It's getting harder every day," said Frank Morman, who two years ago built a barn for 1,000 hogs east of Lima after his job making television picture tubes in Ottawa, Ohio, moved to Mexico.
Ironically, the only complaints Mr. Morman said he has heard were second-hand, through a township trustee.
But Ms. Reisner said angst over manure among farmers who have never heard a direct complaint, let alone been sued, is not uncommon.
When many of today's livestock growers were young, they thought they had chosen a career that was almost without public controversy.
"It was God's gift," she said of how farming was viewed in many communities decades ago. "You are growing food. It is a wonderful, noble profession. You don't expect to get in a political situation where there are strong feelings. So just the idea you might get phone calls is an idea you didn't grow up expecting."
Her 30-minute talk on the public perception of livestock operations marked the first time a sociologist appeared on the program of the Manure Science Review, which has operated for five years. She was included because of the controversy among neighbors of new, large dairy farms in the area, said John Smith, agricultural extension agent in Auglaize County, who was a review coordinator.
In the review's first years, when the western Ohio session was in Auglaize County, the program included field demonstrations of manure handling. But yesterday, the only actual manure at the review was dried on a manure spreader displayed outside by a salesman.
No one in the group said it smelled.
