This shit is looking more and more like gold...

This article from The Atlantic caught my eye the other day, and I just had to share it. Anything called 'Why Farmers are Flocking to Manure' is sure to catch my eye... Gene Logsdon, who wrote the article says:

Fertilizer machines reporting for doodie...

"In 2009, with no assurance that grain prices would be high enough to cover the high cost of manufactured fertilizers, farmers lined up at animal confinement operations willing to fork over good hard cash for the manure, since it seems to be cheaper (depending on how you jigger the figures) than commercial fertilizers for farms close by."

He even describes how a friend of his is considering starting a cattle operation next to his corn/soy fields just so he can have access to the manure produced there.

Microbe-inoculated organic fertilizer!

What this article shows me is that farmers are starting to really want alternatives to chemical fertilizers. While the move to source manure from CAFOs is not my favorite, I do see it as a perceptual step in the right direction. Now, if we can get farmers to recognize that the real valuable stuff will be the fully composted form of that manure, we are on the right track. Heck, even better, if we can get farmers to realize that giving their fields a period of rest, wherein they are holisitically grazed, they can cut out the whole process of buying/producing and then applying the manure to the fields.


Does this sound to anyone else like a step toward the good-old-days when farms integrated multiple species of animals into the farm both as a cash crop and as a system of resource generation? Personally, I like it. Turnin shit to gold...