Farmer Calls For ‘Managing Manure To Save Mankind’

[groovedaddy]

Long-time Ohio farmer Gene Logsdon says human and animal waste, including that from pets, is our greatest and most misunderstood natural resource. He points out that we spend billions to throw it away, and billions more to manufacture synthetic fertilizers.

Logsdon sees a future when companies might actually pick up human and pet refuse to compost and sell to farmers, and he argues that finding ways to turn our waste into fertilizer is crucial to our survival. Gene Logsdon’s book is “Holy Shit, Managing Manure to Save Mankind.” He also writes the blog, “The Contrary Farmer.”
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I half-jokingly suggested about a year ago that animal manure—used livestock, horse, and chicken bedding—was going to be the hottest commodity on the Chicago Board of Trade one of these days. Shortly after that I got a call from a close acquaintance who manages an awesome business of growing 8,000 acres of corn and soybeans—which he knows I consider insane. He wanted to tell me something I never expected to hear from him: he was think¬ing of going into the feedlot beef business. I reminded him that this is rarely profitable in Ohio except as a tax shelter, but he said he didn’t care if it only broke even. It was the manure that he was after, for fertilizer. And he had not read what I had been writing in that regard. Holy shit. I almost dropped the phone. Most of the farmers in my neck of the cornfields agree with what one of them told me over a martini one day: “The only shit that is going to drop on this farm is mine and my wife’s.” He much preferred fertilizing with anhydrous ammonia (one whiff of which could kill him and his wife).

My 8,000-acre friend is no fool, believe me. There are indica¬tions now that such a seemingly absurd prediction about manure might not be so absurd after all. Even the agricultural colleges (almost always among the last to recognize either agricultural or cultural shifts) are scheduling what Ohio State University calls Manure Science Review days. The main reason that manure is suddenly seen as a science is that chemical fertilizer prices are on the rise. Yes, they rise and fall with every paranoid scuttlebutt of the marketplace, but the general direction is definitely north. The price of a specialty fertilizer like ammonium polyphosphate is nearly $1,000 a ton as I write. Deposits of potash in Canada, which we have long relied on for potassium fertilizer, are dwindling, and there is no other known supply as readily available. There is much talk of opening a huge phosphorus mining operation in the South American rain forest, which will hardly be hailed with joy by envi¬ronmentalists. Natural gas, the major source of commercial nitro¬gen fertilizer, is rising in cost as other users compete for it. In fact, there are reasons to believe that the era of reliance on manufac¬tured and mined fertilizers is passing. A society so utterly urban¬ized as ours may not want to face up to what that means, but the end of cheap chemical fertilizer would be almost as earth-shaking as a nuclear bomb explosion.

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2011/05/11/farmer-resource-manure

[LiberalLoner]

1. Actually there is a lot of good in this idea. n/t K&R

[Fly by night]

2. Composted livestock manure (+ fowl manure) is a definite resource. Human and pet shit, not so much.

Take that from an organic farmer (for the past four decades) who is aware of the many enteric disease outbreaks in the developing world associated with using human shit for fertilizer AND who has tried to use dog shit in a garden back in the 70s in Austin, with very, very underwhelming results.

[Sal Minella]

5. But if human manure is composted at high temperature,

doesn't that kill the enteric bugs? I've heard of compost heaps so hot they catch fire -- and at the other end of the spectrum is the vermicompost bin (kitchen scraps) in my kitchen.

Allowing soil nutrients to flow down the Mississippi into the already-dead zone of the Gulf is a ridiculous waste.

[Fly by night]

8. Properly composted and aged human manure should kill all bugs, and ....

... I do agree that it seems an awful waste not to find some way to use it to our advantage, not counting the waste of clean waster to flush that other waste down the sewer.

However, I also agree that livestock and fowl manure can be used much easier, with less risk to health (ours and our crops). Wasting any of that is truly an inexcusable waste of a valuable resource, one that I am happy to use every year in my Garden.

[druidity33]

6. Have you ever read The Humanure Handbook?

I think if it wasn't for the excessive amount of pharmaceuticals coursing through people, it would be a viable addition to a serious composting regime. I've seen it work well at 2 different intentional communities (and not work at all at another... that's another story).

I wouldn't use dog poop, i don't know anyone who has tried it though.

Any word on the pardon?

[Fly by night]

9. No. It sounds like a book I should read.

Re: the pardon. It took the feds all of three days to reject my application on a technicality. (I got their letter on April Fool's Day.) Seems my probation sentence was a prison sentence after all, according to them. (There are different timetables for applying for a pardon, depending on whether your sentence was probation or imprisonment.) That was news to me and to my judge, who told me that the sentencing guidelines for my probation sentence were specifically "... in lieu of imprisonment".

I haven't posted anything here on this rejection because both Illinois and Delaware political leaders are still working to try to get some clarification on the whole process (and the Orwellian pretzel-logic applied by the Pardon office.) I still don't want to interfere with what they are attempting to accomplish on my behalf. I will post an OP some day soon on all that, I expect.

In the meantime, I have planted an asparagus bed in my Garden and have decided that if I can wait two years for my first meal from that new bed, I can wait another minute on the feds. Thanks kindly for asking and for your support.

[Shagbark Hickory]

14. Have you heard of a product called Milorganite? It's sold at Home Depot.

Google it.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Well, I've learned something today. I didn't know that chemical fertilizer--one of the most toxic

water and soil polluters on earth--has entirely replaced, or almost entirely replaced--horse, cow and chicken dung on American farms, such that, rising prices of chem fertilizer and growing scarcity of its components, would cause this cry of alarm.

Stupid me. I certainly knew that chem fertilizers were big and are an environmental disaster. Didn't know that traditional manure was so on the outs. Figured they were using that--as always--plus chem fertilizers for max growth or something. But the traditional fertilizer is being THROWN AWAY.

Yikes! That's the chem corps for you. Addict farmers to their highly toxic product and get them to ABANDON the natural product, then squeeze 'em--jack up the prices.

I would like to see these and certain other too-big, too-powerful corps dismantled--their corporate charters pulled, their assets seized for the common good. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely--as an English lord once said (and they should know).

As for meateaters' manure (humans, pigs), I think it would be perfectly usable, properly processed, of course. I don't know how traditional societies processed it--probably some composting (heating) process, but human poop has been used from time immemorial to fertilize crops and it is no doubt used in many places in the world right now. However they do it, we can do it, too--or think up some even more hygienic process. (I've seen ads for and articles about composting toilets--the tray of compost that accumulates goes from your bathroom to your garden.) This CAN be done. But horse, cow and chicken manure can go straight from the barn or the corral to the fields, with merely some time for ripening. No worries about meateater illnesses. That this clean green product and life force is being THROWN AWAY is appalling. That there are probably millions of people starving for lack of such fertilizer is APPALLING, while we throw it away!

[kestrel91316]

4. I'll chime in with a plug for one of my favorite books:

The Humanure Handbook
http://humanurehandbook.com/

It's shameful how we waste all the HUMAN output of nutrients, too.

[bvar22]

7. Feed Lot Manure can be dangerous.

Most Feed Lots overdose their cattle on Antibiotics, Steroids/Growth Hormones, and gawd knows what else (insecticides?, rat poisons?)
The massive doses of antibiotics are essential because animals that stand in their shit all day tend to get sick.
The Steroids/Growth Hormones just sweeten the bottom line.

There is a Sale Barn close to our house that gives their shit away for FREE,
and we won't take it.
Sale Barns aren't quite as bad a Feed Lots, but we don't want the possible problems.

Some say that antibiotics and steroids are filtered out by the plants (no uptake),
but we will err on the side of caution.

[The abyss]

10. Years ago, 18th & 19th century in many....

towns and communities "night soil" was collected from trays specially built into outhouses. This human waste was taken to local powder manufactures where it was leached through layers of wood ash (potassium). The resulting potassium nitrate crystals becoming the primary ingredient for the black powder propellant of the time period.

Probably off topic for this thread but sometimes posting is rather like a TAT :)

[groovedaddy]

11. Very interesting. n.t

[fasttense]

12. There are just so many waste products that can be used as fertilizer.

People don't realize them because they are so use to chemical fertilizers. It's like we are trained to buy something instead of using what is around us.

Grass clippings, especially in the spring, are filled with nitrogen and the grass hasn't gone to seed yet so it's great for that kick of nitrogen plants need for spring.

I make a compost tea from chicken manure that seems to really help my tomato plants. I know some people who claim compost teas don't work but I've noticed a marked improvement in my tomato plants.

Have you seen those workers on the side of the road chipping weeds and junk trees that have grown too big and block traffic views? We get that dumped in our backyard and compost it for about three years. It really does make a rich black compost.

And my favorite compost/fertilizer is leftover, depleted mushroom substrate. I grow white elm mushrooms in coffee ground and after the last flush I put it right around my swiss chard. It keeps the weeds down and the chard seems to like it.

Do you want your soil to be alive with earthworms? Put some paper or cardboard down. I use it as a weed barrier then throw wood mulch over top. For some reason, those earth worms just can't get enough wet paper and cardboard.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

13. Weeds make some of the very best compost, and they can FIX bad soil

Weeds
Guardians of the Soil

http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/weeds/WeedsToC.html#contents

[Shagbark Hickory]

15. There was a story on Al Jazeera yesterday about how Cow shit is used to make gas for cooking stoves

in Africa where gathering firewood had always been the norm. And it's a dwindling resource. Unlike cow shit which is plentiful. They mix it with water and put it in a fermentation tube. Some basic plumbing later and voila. Flame