Just priced fertilizer..WOW!!!

What was probably being spread was manure lagoon waste. A company would come in, aggitate the material in the lagoon and then pump it into spreader trucks. Some trucks were equipped with a type of chisel plow which incorporated streams of it below surface.

About 15 years ago I visited a place in WI with a dairy across the road. Heard when they spread two woman who lived nearby went to stay with relatives for several days.

Many municipal sewer plants today produce humanus fertilizer from what remains after the sewage is strained, treated and returned to a water source somewhere.

Personally I have no access to organic fertilizer. We have no chicken farms anywhere nearby. Two dairies in county, but they spread all of their own manure. Its spread by the Co-op or go without. And, when I have them spread, I have them include sulfur, boron and a couple bags of grass/clover seeds.

You got that right. I see here a distinct and tragic lack of out-of-the-box thinking. Before the days of chemical fertilizers and ocean dead zones, there was this odd thing called CROP ROTATION.

Folks would do well to read up on how Gene Logsdon runs his farm. Those sily things called legumes are an essential part of the picture. Continuous corn (or continuous ANYTHING) is the road to ruin.

Most farmers don't use rock phosphate. They use SUPERPHOSPHATE, which requires vast amounts of natural gas and energy to produce.

do you have a copy of these studies? any that i have seen have shown an improvement in the quality of operations and sludge monitoring. any site used for spreading is carefully monitor here in canada as a waste water treatment plants.

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àigeach carnaid
chaora dhubh
"Don't raise your voice, improve your argument."

cruachan

add acid and volia! superphosphate!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_superphosphate

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àigeach carnaid
chaora dhubh
"Don't raise your voice, improve your argument."

cruachan

Superphosphate requires NO natural gas to produce. The only energy needed is the electricity to power the motors to grind and mix it. Nor does the sulfuric acid to release it from the ground phosphate rock require any more than that same electricity. Fuel oil is used to start the initial burning process. After that, the burning sulfur supplies its own heat.

Martin

Check around your smaller communities and find out what they do with their sewage waste. I suspect that a lot of it is used "under the table". Original sewage disposal for this city was on a step-uncle's farm. Part of the agreement for putting up with the smell was obtaining the sludge solids for his fields and pastures. That continued until the early 1980s when a larger facility was needed further from the city. Same thing was taking place in the next city west of us on a huge hayfield. It was via a spray irrigation system. That also ended about the same time as ours and now that area is a huge industrial park.

Martin

I have regulated and managed sewage my entire career. I am a professional soil scientist; I have researched the use of municipal sewage sludge (biosolids) as a fertilizer since the early-1970s. My Masters Degree thesis dealt with the use of sewage sludge...which we now call biosolids...as fertilizer. I have spoken on the beneficial use of biosolids at national EPA and Water Environment Federation conferences. I have managed the largest biosolids recycling program in Minnesota for 13 years and currently I regulate Minnesota cities that process and land apply biosolids and septic tank pumpers who land apply septage. I am not bragging, I just want to establish the fact that I know something...I know a lot...about this subject.

In the United States, all biosolids that is recycled as fertilizer must be processed to remove pathogens and analyzed to ensure quality. Over 50% of the municipal biosolids in the USA are used as fertilizer. Every one of you has eaten corn flakes or drank orange juice where some of it was grown with the use of municipal biosolids....that's a fact. As Paquebot has implied, the safe and beneficial use of biosolids is necessary for sustainable agriculture. The EPA, USDA, FDA and all state environmental agencies that I know of support the safe and beneficial use of biosolids. These organizations rather see this resource used in a safe manner than dumped in a landfill, incinerated or worse, discharged to rivers and streams.

If we want to use a truly sustainable approach to all food production, every bit of organic waste must be used efficiently. Let’s say, for whatever reason, that all industrial nitrogen manufacturing and all phosphate and potash mining was discontinued. And let’s also say that we, as a nation, had the goal to maintain food, fiber and feed production at present levels. In this scenario, only two major sources of fertilizers would remain: (1) waste products (biosolids, septage, manures, food-processing wastes, wood ash, etc.) and (2) nutrient-fixing plants (legumes, seaweed, etc.). The value of waste products would skyrocket. Because of the increased value, generators could afford to dewater and dry the waste by-products which would concentrate the nutrients and make them less costly to transport. Many of the municipal biosolids managers that I deal with are saying that their phones keep ringing with inquiries from interested farmers.

Probably one of the best examples of a biosolids recycling success story is Milorganite. Milorganite is 100% municipal biosolids from Milwaukee Wisconsin and it has been used for over 70 years. You can buy it at just about any garden center or nursery. Milorganite been used on probably every golf course in the USA.. Milorganite and Houorganite (biosolids from Houston Texas) and other biosolids products are heavily used to fertilize citrus crops in the southeast.

The use of biosolids is heavily regulated and tested. Heavy metals concentrations are 90% less than they were 30 years ago. Nowadays, cities regulate industries that use the sewer system. Heavy metals concentrations in biosolids are about the same as they are in natural soil (yes, all soils naturally contain heavy metals). Biosolids are treated to reduce pathogens and odors. And all of this concern over pharmaceuticals, antibiotics and hormones in unfounded. Soil is the best place to put these compounds because the soil is an environment where they will easily decompose. Besides, most of these compounds are too large to be taken up by plant roots.

Any parasites, bacteria and viruses that may be left in the final biosolids product are filtered by plant roots. The problem with using untreated biosolids on vegetable crops is that some of these disease-causing organisms can cling to the OUTSIDE of the vegetable. If the vegetable is not washed and eaten raw, a human can potentially ingest these organisms. In the USA, all biosolids that are applied to land are required to be treated to remove pathogens. Depending on the degree of pathogen treatment, the biosolids can either be used on field crops (lower degree of treatment) or on lawns and gardens (higher degree of treatment).

Interesting factoid, the White House lawn has been fertilized with composted human waste (municipal biosolids)...no joke, just fact. I can supply photos.

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http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...8th2007012.jpg
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...8th2007009.jpg
like Cabin i have worked with biosolids as well as farm manures for the last 25 years, longer realy as i have spread manure on our own farm since 1972! as well my wife is a waste water treatment operator/supervisor and has licenses (and knowledge!) to treat potable water, sample water and do microbiological testing of water and biosolids/sludges. none of our coworkers or ourselves have gotten sick from handling biosolids and as far as i know there has been minimal impact too the environment from our activities. the above pix are biosolids spreading from a dragline system suppied by 10,000 gallon (imperial) hiway trailers applied at 9,000 (c of a was 10,000 imp gals/acre) on a former gravel pit/topsoil stripped farm. grows nice crops now after 16 years of spreading with no metal contamination.

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àigeach carnaid
chaora dhubh
"Don't raise your voice, improve your argument."

cruachan

Given what I know about what people put down their drains I will not spread municipal biosolids / waste / sludge on my fields. It is also banned for those of us who wish to be in the Certified Naturally Grown program. (http://www.naturallygrown.org/producestandards.html) I suspect Certified Organic is similar.

Of course, President Bush and other people can spread it on their lawns. I won't take the risks.

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There's one example on the list of approved things which proves the hypocrisy of the whole works, elemental sulfur. Just about every bit available now is a by-product of petroleum refining.

Martin

It's all a shell game, Organic Producers have to promote their product as better, so to that end ......anything that sounds nasty or gross must be bad....elemental sounds pure....Biosolids are real good option my area in the future as most new homes are going onto step or sewer systems....They will be more and more available....Chicken houses are looking more profiable now aren't they.

But what feeds the chickens, 21 bushels of corn per acre or 160?

Martin

Hey CabinFever is copper from biosolids generally as available as copper from other sources? The biosolids applied here are limited to half the normal rate because of the amount of copper in them (mostly from circuit board manufacturing in the past I think), HOWEVER the soils in this area have always been badly deficient in copper to the point of harming crops, particularly winter wheat. We've noticed in the last 5 years or so that the only exceptional crops of winter wheat we get are on fields where we've applied at least one round of biosolids (some of our property has had three applications now in the last 15 years). On fields too far from home to get manure (which we don't have nearly enough of anyway) we've gone to applying biosolids in August after the wheat comes off, then minimum or no-till corn, then minimum till soybeans, then no-till wheat and those are the fields where we're getting our best wheat. Not to mention some nice tomato crops along the fencerows.

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I understand the hesitiation on putting biosolids on fields. But it is the only really efficient, circle of life thing to do.

The local town had a story in the paper, someone was putting too much nickel into the wastewater, if they couldn't stop the nickel from showing up they would either have to install $$$$ seperator, or start landfilling the solids. I assume this was a message to one oft several manufaturers in town to clean up before we send in inspectors, hard to believe they couldn't track that down pretty quickly.

Heavy metals were a problem years ago, and monitoring for it is still a concern.

The bio-stuff really wouldn't bother me much, breaks down in the soil real quick, it's not like there is 6 inches deep applied, 'here' it's knifed into the soil.

I thought it used to be, you couldn't raise human food on soil that had biosolids applied in the last 12 months, a lot of commercial peas & sweet corn grown around here... Perhaps those rules have changed, or I misunderstood them as I'm not really involved.

--->Paul

I'm beginning to do some research on biodynamic agriculture. Looks like it's used primarily with the organic growers, but I'm curious to knowing if it's cost is higher than the chemical way of fertilizing.
It sure would be nice to get rid of the chemicals, they obviously can't be all that good for the eco-system.
Biodynamics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture

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Joy at Secretplace Farm

Thanks for the info. Maybe the usage will become more widespread as costs for chemical fertilizer continues to rise.

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Joy at Secretplace Farm

there's not that much fertlizer in horse s---t, maybe some compost.. Chicken s- in high in nitrogin and can burn some things if put on freah.

I was responding to Ravenlost's post #12.... kind of tongue-in-cheek. We are aware of which poos are hot or not. We don't even own horses anymore.

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Paul, there are two levels of pathogen treatment for biosolids....Class A and Class B. With Class A treatment, the biosolids are completed pastuerized (or sterilized). With Class A treatment, the biosolids can be used on parks, yards, gardens, food crops (like sweet peas), etc. This is the treatment method that New Ulm uses.

Class B treatment removes over 90% of the pathogens. This material can be used on animal feed crops (hay, corn, oats, etc) and human food crops that do not touch the ground (sweet corn, wheat, barley, soybeans).

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....