Iowa livestock confinement and commercial manure applicators should start to plan now for taking their required training to renew their certificates. Jeff Prier, at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, says testing will begin early next month. “It starts in January and it runs through February for most of the confinement applicators,” Prier says. “The commercial guys, there’s basically two days that they can get video or live training. It’s a three-hour class that the commercial guys sit through and it’s a two-hour class that the confinement people sit through.”

Prier says classes will be offered at locations all over the state. “There’s different county extension offices that they can call into to make a reservation so there’s enough seating,” Prier says, while there are day and night classes available for the confinement applicators. Prier says there are a couple of reasons why applicators need to take the training course. “The most important reason is that state law requires it,” Prier says. “The second reason to get certified is there’s a lot of knowledge gained on how to handle spills and respond so you minimize the impact to the environment which sometimes minimizes the impact to your pocketbook.”

The Iowa D-N-R certified 2,538 commercial and 2,310 confinement site manure applicators in 2013. Learn more about the training at www.iowacnaa.org or by contacting your nearest Iowa State University Extension Office.

(Radio Iowa)