Manure application is a big business. Commercial manure services and custom haulers or applicators are a very important component to agriculture, providing services that allow livestock producers to focus on livestock concerns and crop producers to focus on production practices.

It has been a journey, but you have finally completed the task of developing a nutrient management plan (NMP) or having someone else develop an NMP for your farm; now what?

An article published in the Journal of Agromedicine provides a summary of the frequency and characteristics of deaths related to on-farm manure storage and handling facilities for the period 1975 – 2004. Sources included published government reports, national and local media, online searches, published farm fatality reports and prior litigation.

Every year, a hefty dairy cow tucked away in a snug barn produces more than 20,000 pounds of milk, along with an impressive amount of manure and an array of gases. New modeling work by an Agricultural Research Service team in University Park, Pennsylvania, suggests that a dairy cow living year-round in the great outdoors may leave a markedly smaller ecological hoofprint than her more sheltered sisters.

Few technologies are currently available to effectively treat and/or dispose of dairy washwater, particularly for dairies without a waste storage facility. Dairy washwater contains milk and animal waste, resulting in a wastewater source with high oxygen demand and a significant nutrient content posing environmental concern for ground and surface water. Small quantities reaching water sources can result in fish kills, algae blooms and aquatic habitat destruction.

Trending topic article: Manure This article, written by Editor Karen Lee, was chosen as 2011 Editors’ Pick. It was selected as a trending Manure topic article for the March 21, 2012 issue. to jump to the article below. Lee describes Minnesota dairy producer Jon Johnson taking advantage of a unique way to manage manure with sand bedding. He’s using a system where the manure is scraped from barns over a ledge into a storage area. From there, the liquids seep toward screen-lined towers where they are drained via pipes into a liquid storage basin. The process occurs by gravity and without any moving parts.

From the top of the main silo at Don Bennink’s North Florida Holsteins dairy farm, all I can see are cows – about 9,000 of them, grazing on some 2,500 acres. To the untrained eye, the scene is innocent and bucolic. But there’s something else going on here that, if not managed properly, can threaten ground water, the aquifer and springs. Cows are prolific producers of manure and urine. In an average day of grazing, milking and just mooing about, one dairy cow can generate more than 100 pounds of manure and urine. Multiply this by several thousand cows and you’ve got a serious potential source of groundwater pollution on your hands. Animal wastes washed directly into surface streams, sinkholes and leached through the soil by rainwater introduce nitrates into the groundwater.

The livestock sector has been reported to be responsible for 18 percent of the total anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on a worldwide basis.

TRENDING TOPIC ARTICLE: MANURE Published: May 31, 2011 This article highlighted the AgSTAR National Conference in Boise, Idaho, in 2011, where Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy's Jerry Bingold announced a goal of 1,300 anaerobic digesters to be built by the year 2020. This would mean a digester built every day for four years. to jump to the article. Click here to learn about a new report being developed by the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. Bingold explains the development of digesters and why the 1,300 number may no longer be necessary.