4/11/2023 0 Comments Happy farmer compostNot so - you just don't ever find large amounts of organic matter with the correct carbon-nitrogen ratio, water content and aeration carefully piled up by bears or gorillas working away in the forests with a compost fork and a watering-can, leaving it cooking away at high temperatures and emitting jets of steam. Garden guides often describe composting as "nature's way" of recycling. Manuals, how-to's, research reports (full text online) Once it is on the fields Skwor said compost improves soil structure and soil biology which ultimately helps improve crop yields.įor farmers who care about what their urban neighbors think, Skwor notes that composting is viewed socially as a better management practice than direct field-spreading and most people consider it to be an environmentally friendly practice.Classics on organic growing, soil and health (full text online) You don’t have to go on your fields when you really don’t want to.” “That gives you a lot of flexibility on when you spread it. Once compost is “finished” it is a stable product, he said, and can be stockpiled for use when weather conditions are most beneficial. That’s just based on known (tested) nutrient values without accounting for its other values, he said - fewer trips to the field resulting in less soil compaction, more bio-available nutrients and fewer tons per acre applied. His project report from that grant cites the dollar value of finished compost in the range of $24-$37 per ton from an agronomic perspective. Skwor worked on a comprehensive composting project with three dairy farmers under the USDA’s Farmer Rancher Grant Program and he believes that composting manure in winter versus winter spreading has great potential. “Compost needs to be managed in order to be successful,” he notes. The only one he could think of is that farmers “are not getting any more hours in the day” and working the material takes a bit of effort. Disadvantages are fewĪsked about the disadvantages of composting Skwor is hard-pressed to find one. The advantages of using compost, Skwor said, are that if done properly, composting kills weed seeds and pathogens it can be used for bedding at the appropriate point in the process and once spread on the fields it raises the organic matter level of that soil profile, bringing all the benefits that come with that. They find that it’s more beneficial than spreading liquid manure on those fields because there’s less burn on the plants. At that point it’s not fully broken down into humus for field application, but the pathogens are gone and it is “clean” to use as bedding.įarmers who take compost further into the process and use it as a soil amendment have found advantages to applying it on growing alfalfa fields. Several of the farms he consults with begin using compost after it has been worked for 10 weeks and they use it for livestock bedding. That characteristic also helps plants survive and thrive in drought conditions. That’s important because as rain events seem to be getting larger, the presence of compost allows that soil to hold onto that water and release it slowly to the plants, helping reduce erosion and increase infiltration. “But the process converts the feedstock into organic matter so it’s immediately available to plants.” An added advantage is that it helps increase the organic matter value in the soil and helps it retain moisture. Three hundred tons of manure will break down into 100 tons of compost, he said, and the plant nutrients in the compost will be more available to crops than they would be in raw manure.įinished compost’s ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (N, P, K) measures 1:1:1 and “doesn’t compare to commercial fertilizer at all,” Skwor said. That means fewer trips to the field to spread it. One of the advantages of composting he stressed is that when manure and bedding are piled, windrowed and composted, they will break down to about one-third in volume.
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