Packaging manure for sale in small quantities doesn’t necessarily require fancy equipment.
Life just isn’t as simple as it used to be. Nowadays there are even laws about how we can spread manure! There may be regions where even more regulations apply, but here are a few common ones to keep in mind.
Many areas of the United States are covered by nutrient management planning rules that govern where, when, and how much manure can be applied to cropland. These rules came about because of widespread groundwater and surface water pollution that arose from excessive fertilization (with both manure and other fertilizers) and poor cropping practices. This combination has allowed many drinking water supplies to become contaminated with nitrate and has caused both nitrate and phosphate pollution in surface waters (lakes, streams, rivers, and even parts of the ocean). The specifics of nutrient management planning regulations vary from place to place, so it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with whatever rules govern your area.
In general, the rules are designed to prevent fields from receiving too much nitrogen and phosphorus, so soil testing is usually part of the program. The amount of manure you can apply to a field will probably be limited, considering the existing levels of nutrients in the soil and the requirements of the crop. In addition, the rules often have guidelines designed to minimize the chance for losing nutrients in manure to runoff. This may mean limiting manure applications to times of the year when the ground isn’t frozen, limiting the slopes to which manure can be applied, and limiting how close manure can be spread to wells, waterways, and ditches.
For a farmer to be able to represent his or her products as organic, the production system has to follow all of the requirements of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program (NOP). This isn’t just a requirement for larger, commercial farms — it applies to everyone who sells products that are represented as being organic. Even small-scale organic operations that are exempt from certification still have to follow all the NOP rules for organic production if they market their products as organic.
The organic rule prohibits almost all synthetic fertilizers and pesticides from being used in organic production systems, but manure, being a natural product, is permitted. The rules allow even manure from conventional farms to be used as a soil amendment for organic crop production, as long as no prohibited materials (such as insecticides) are added to it. If there’s bedding with the manure, it can’t contain prohibited materials like sawdust or chips from treated wood.
This brings up a question that many organic farmers are wrestling with. Conventionally raised livestock are often treated with hormones and antibiotics to increase their growth rate or milk production or to synchronize breeding. Residues from these treatments can pass through the animals into their manure. In addition, pesticide residues from livestock feed may contaminate their manure. More recently, people have started to question the effect of feed from crops that have been bred to withstand many popular herbicides, especially glyphosate (Roundup). Many organic farmers have chosen not to use conventionally produced livestock manure, even though it’s legal, because of these concerns.
If you have an ample supply of manure and would like to sell some, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Manure sales aren’t regulated along the same lines as food products, but there still may be some legal requirements you need to be aware of to stay on good terms with the law. Local zoning regulations may govern what kind of commerce goes on in your neighborhood, traffic and parking, signage, and other associated issues. Check with your local authorities to find out if zoning affects your business.
It’s important to be able to give an accurate representation of your product. Follow the nutrient testing guidelines I discussed in the previous chapter to enable you to describe your product to potential buyers.
What quantities of manure are you interested in selling, and what are the units? By the bag, by the wheelbarrow, by the pickup load, or by weight? If you sell by volume, you should have some idea how much a given volume of manure weighs, so you can get a fair price for its nutrient value. If you sell by weight, you’ll need to have access to a scale. What about loading? Will you be forking the manure into someone’s container, or using a tractor and loader, or will the customer be responsible for this?
Packaging manure for sale in small quantities doesn’t necessarily require fancy equipment.
How and where will you advertise the manure? Try classified ads in farm-related publications or even your local newspapers. Web-based outlets like craigslist can give you lots of coverage for free, and the customers self-select their shopping interests. Post an ad on the bulletin boards in farm stores, feed mills, or garden supply businesses in your area. A brief description of your product (“stacked horse manure for sale”) is enough information for a classified ad or bulletin-board poster, but be prepared with a detailed description of the product and related information for follow-up inquiries.
There are several ways to estimate how much manure is worth. In the end, it boils down to how much someone is willing to pay for it. One way to come up with a starting figure is to put a value on the nutrient content of the manure and compare it to how much those nutrients would cost in the form of fertilizer. This isn’t a perfect method, because even though most of the monetary value of manure is in its macronutrient content, manure is also a great source of minor and micronutrients. It’s also very difficult to put a monetary value on the effects of manure’s organic matter and other biological contributions. Chemical fertilizers have their place, but it’s impossible for them to provide these other benefits that manure brings.
As a starting point, we can assign manure a conservative monetary value by considering how much nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium it has per ton. The content of these nutrients and how much it would cost to buy them in commercial fertilizer gives us an objective guideline.
Here’s an example.
Nutrient value. Let’s say we have beef manure available, and we assume its nutrient value is close to the averages presented in chapter 3. Conservatively each ton of manure will provide 3 lb of nitrogen, 6 lb of phosphate (P2O5), and 10 lb of potash (K2O) in the season after we apply it.
Current price. A call to the local fertilizer dealer gives us the current prices of several common forms of these nutrients: urea (45-0-0), diammonium phosphate (18-46-0), and potassium chloride (0-0-60). We find out that urea is selling for $500 per ton, diammonium phosphate is $550 per ton, and potassium chloride is $800 per ton.
Price per ton. We can calculate the price per ton of the nitrogen, phosphate, and potash from these sources easily. Here’s how: We’ll start with the diammonium phosphate, because it contains both phosphate and nitrogen, and if we were to use this product we’d need to buy less of another form of nitrogen. The price per pound of the entire product is $550 divided by 2,000 lb (one ton), or $0.275/lb. However, only 46 percent of each pound of this fertilizer is actually phosphate, so we need to divide that price by 0.46: $0.275/lb divided by 0.46 = $0.60/lb of actual phosphate.
Comparison. If there are 6 lb of phosphate in a ton of manure, the phosphorus value is 6 × $0.60 or $3.60. This is the same amount of phosphate we could have gotten from 13 lb of diammonium phosphate (6 lb of actual phosphate divided by the phosphate content of diammonium phosphate, 0.46, equals 13 lb).
Estimating nitrogen. Now, if we had bought the 13 lb of diammonium phosphate, we also would have gotten 2.3 lb of nitrogen, because that product is 18 percent N (13 lb × 0.18 = 2.3 lb). This is most of the amount of the 3 lb of readily available nitrogen that the 1 ton of manure would have supplied. If we substitute commercial fertilizer for manure, we’d need to account for an additional 0.7 lb of N that we would have gotten from the ton of manure. Urea is a common nitrogen fertilizer, and the dealer tells us it costs $500/ton. Using the same approach we used for phosphorus, we go through this sequence: $500/2,000 lb = $0.25/lb of urea. Since urea is 45 percent N (45-0-0), we divide the price per pound of urea by the percent N and we find that nitrogen from urea costs: $0.25/lb divided by 0.45 = $0.56/lb of N. If we multiply the price per pound of N by the amount of N we want to provide from the urea, we get 0.7 lb N × $0.56/lb N, or $0.39.
Estimating potassium. The last of the “Big 3” nutrients that give manure most of its direct fertilizer value is potassium. The most common form of potassium fertilizer is potassium chloride, and when we checked the price it was $800/ton. Applying the same method we used in the examples above: $800/2,000 lb = $0.40/lb of potassium chloride. At 60 percent K2O, this equals $0.40 divided by 0.6 or $0.67/lb of potash. From the table, average solid beef manure provides 10 lb of readily available potash/ton, so the potash value is $0.67/lb of potash times 10 lb of potash per ton of manure, or $6.70.
Total it. Adding up the values of the equivalent amounts of these commercial fertilizers that 1 ton of average beef manure would provide, we get $3.60 (phosphate) plus $0.39 (nitrogen) plus $6.70 (potash), or $10.69/ton of manure.
As I mentioned above, this is a very conservative value.Manure provides some amounts of all the other nutrients required by plants; some of the total nutrients in manure are released after the first year and aren’t included in the credits listed in the table, and the value of the organic matter and the biological benefit of manure are very difficult to quantify.
If you’re an organic farmer, the value of manure is even greater because the selection of organic fertilizer sources to substitute for the nutrients in manure is limited. Even when we can substitute organic fertilizers for similar conventional products they are often more expensive than the conventional ones.
If you’re buying manure, you can use most of the information in the preceding section to help you determine how much you can afford to pay. It’s true that spreading manure is usually more work than using ordinary fertilizers, but its benefits outweigh this concern. Nevertheless, logistics are important. You’ll have to be able to haul, handle, store, and apply the manure appropriately for whatever farming or gardening system you use. Whether the manure is fresh or it’s been composted or rotted affects how easy it is to work with and how stable it is in the soil.
It’s also important to remember that not all manure is the same. For instance, poultry manure generally has more concentrated nutrient levels than cattle manure. If there are several types of manure available at different prices, understanding how to calculate the nutrient value of each will help you determine how much one type is worth compared to another.
Whether you’re buying or selling manure, the real monetary value still ends up being what the buyer is willing to pay. The information in this section should help you determine how much you can afford to pay when you need to make these decisions.