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Should
I compost?
Rob Freeland
Decision Case study
Agroecology internship 2003
The Situation: A livestock farmer has excess manure
after spreading it on his/her cropland in the spring and he/she
also has some extra hay from the previous season which needs to
be removed from the barn in order to make room for new hay. The
farm has basic manure handling equipment; a tractor used to pull
the manure spreader, and a tractor with a loader to load the manure
spreader. The farmer has seen composting operations in their travels
and has seen them on the internet. They have all the materials necessary
to begin and manage a compost program.
The Question:
Should the farmer actively pursue a small scale composting program
or should they just pile the extra material they have somewhere
on the farm?
The Options:
Pile it somewhere on the farm and lose the nutrients in the manure
to leaching; and go to the pile to get material when it is needed
for fertilization.
OR
Export it off farm to
another farm possibly, or to a commercial compost facility.
OR
Take the manure spreader
and make windrows, long piles no wider then the width of the manure
spreader and roughly 30’ long. Then twice a month take the
bucket tractor and load the piles into the spreader and form new
windrows. This promotes decomposition and also reduces the odors
produced by the anaerobic bacteria which produce hydrogen sulfide,
which is what we smell when manure is spread.
The Benefits:
The material which comes out of the compost piles is stable, doesn’t
smell, and is nutrient rich. Composting also allows storage of manure
without the loss of nutrients into the ground water through leaching.
The Disadvantages:
This process increases wear on the machines involved with the turning
and mixing process. Another disadvantage is that two days out of
the month are spent turning compost instead of working on other
farm projects.
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