WW-07401     2000  

WHAT'S NEXT?

Assessing your system

Is manure an expensive waste product or an integral part of nutrient cycling and an asset to your soil quality? Is your manure management system where you want it to be? Here are some questions to help you decide.

Review all the places where nitrogen is lost from manure - collection, storage, and application. (See pages 9-11.) Where are your major N losses? Are they acceptable? What would it take to make improvements?

• How close is your manure storage to surface water? Is that water protected from run-off and spillage? Is erosion under control on all parts of your farm where manure is applied?
• Is the cost of the system acceptable? Is the timing of labor requirements acceptable or do they compete with other operations?
• Is manure spread over your whole farm and not concentrated in small areas?
• Think about your soil problem areas. (You may have created a list of these areas in Soil Management, BU-7399 in this series.) If these areas are not receiving manure, it may be a useful treatment for poor tilth, disease, or generally poor productivity.
• Is it worth rethinking your whole system for housing animals and handling manure, or can you make adjustments to your existing system?

The economics and politics of manure

Manure management decisions are linked to many parts of your farm operation. But how are manure management decisions linked to the larger food production system?

In the past, nearly every farm in the country had a few animals. Now, livestock are concentrated in a few regions and in large herds. There have always been some poor manure managers, but the costs of poor manure management are rising as the size of herds and flocks grow.

Non-farmers are becoming concerned about these costs as manure spills increasingly make the news. Farmers’ pocket books and the quality of soil are affected as nutrients are carried farther and farther from their original field. For example, nutrients may be taken from a field in Minnesota (in the form of corn), fed to hogs in South Carolina, and deposited hundreds of miles from the source of those nutrients.

The modern system of livestock production is not just changing the distribution of nutrients across the land. It is also changing the markets for manure and forages. How has livestock production changed in your area in the last 20 years? If a farmer without livestock wanted to grow a forage crop, would it be easier or harder now to find a market for that crop? Could that farmer buy manure? The answers to these questions are quickly changing for many farmers, and are changing the way farmers manage their soil.

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