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THE VALUE OF MANURE
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 -- 11:45 am
Posted by Riley Hebert-News Director
With fertilizer prices as volatile as ever, more farmers are realizing the value of manure.
Clark County UW-Extension agent Richard Halopka recently put the pencil to paper to determine how much manure is worth as a fertilizer. He found the nutrients in a ton of solid manure are worth around $11; 1,000 gallons of liquid manure is worth about $23.
The average cow produces just under $300 worth of manure per year.
"Basically, (manure) contains a lot of micros, but the main three are nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. There's also a substantial amount of sulfur in there," he explains.
Halopka remembers when he was a kid, they’d just race to the nearest field to get rid of the stuff. Nowadays, farmers should utilize nutrient management practices,
"Today, with fertilizer prices being this high, we can take that value and reduce fertilizer input costs," Halopka notes.
Can crops survive on manure alone? That depends.
"If you have a dairy farmer that has had is soil up to snuff for a number of years...we can probably put on manures and a very small amount of starter for corn and we'll probably have a pretty good crop out of it," Halopka says.
Producers would be more apt to purchase manure like a commodity if it weren’t for transportation costs. He says some large-scale producers have even constructed miles of manure pipeline to get the nutrients to fields, according to Halopka.
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