Texas A&M System recognizes air quality research team
COLLEGE STATION – The “Air Quality: Reducing Feedlot Emissions” research team won the Vice Chancellor’s Award of Excellence for Research at the recent AgriLife Conference held at Texas A&M University in College Station.The Vice Chancellor’s Awards of Excellence have been presented since 1980 to recognize outstanding achievements by faculty and staff in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences within the Texas A&M System.
The federal-initiative funded research team is coordinated by Dr. John Sweeten, Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center resident director at Amarillo.
“This project has involved five entities working together to conduct research to develop science-based emission factors and cost-effective abatement technologies, and to extend that research to the feedlot and dairy industry and regulators,” Sweeten said.
The field and laboratory research is aimed at dust/particulate matter, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, odor and volatile organic compounds from cattle feedlots, he said.
Team members recognized during the awards ceremony were Dr. Brent Auvermann, AgriLife Extension, Amarillo; Dr. Ken Casey, AgriLife Research, Amarillo; Dr. David B. Parker, West Texas A&M University, Canyon; Dr. Calvin Parnell Jr., Texas A&M University Center for Agricultural Air Quality Engineering, College Station; Dr. Saqib Mukhtar, AgriLife Extension, College Station; and Dr. Ronald Lacey, Texas A&M University, College Station.
Additional members of the award-winning team are: Drs. Andy Cole and Richard Todd, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service, Bushland; Dr. Steve Amosson, AgriLife Extension, Amarillo; Dr. Jim MacDonald and Kay Ledbetter, AgriLife Research, Amarillo; Dr. Mike Brown, West Texas A&M, Canyon; Drs. Ronaldo Maghirang, John Pickrell and Bill Hargrove, Kansas State University; and Dr. Sergio Capareda, Texas A&M University Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department.
With six years of monitoring, sampling and testing behind them, the researchers involved have developed a number of significant findings and accomplishments applicable to the livestock feeding industry in Texas and Kansas, Sweeten said. These two states account for 42 percent of the cattle fed in the U.S.
The benefits of the project findings already have been documented, he said. Based on project data and expertise, almost 80 Texas feed yards have received USDA-Natural Resource Conservation Service cost-sharing for dust-control measures under the Environmental Quality Initiative Program.
About 53 percent of Texas feed yards so far have adopted some form of feedlot dust-control measures; either solid-set sprinklers, traveling-gun sprinklers or frequent manure harvesting, Sweeten said.
Continued federal funding beyond the initial six-year period, which was funded at $4.7 million, has been provided to the project from the USDA-Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, he said. -30-
