Excerpt
Encouraged by the desire to reduce water pollution and promote sustainable practices, composting has expanded within U.S. agriculture in recent years. Composting benefits the environment because nutrients contained in livestock carcasses, manure, and other raw materials are converted to stable forms in the compost. The nutrients are less likely to leach to groundwater or be carried off with surface runoff. Compost can be stored until land application conditions are favorable for application or it can be easily transported from environmentally sensitive watersheds. In addition, the use of compost improves agricultural soils by increasing organic matter, soil tilth, nutrient retention, water retention, erosion control and plant disease resistance. As this paper demonstrates, the benefits of composting are being recognized by a growing number of U.S. farmers.
In the United States, more farms are composting than municipalities, commercial/institutional establishments, and other private sector groups combined (Kashmanian 1995). The move toward composting is particularly strong within the poultry industry, as many poultry farms have turned to composting to handle their mortalities. However, composting is also increasing among other livestock and crop farms.
To obtain an overview of agricultural composting in the United States, representatives of industry, government, and universities from the …
Footnotes
Richard M. Kashmanian is a senior economist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency s Office of Policy, Planning, and Evaluation. Robert F. Rynk is an assistant professor with the University of Idaho's Agricultural Engineering Department. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and are not to be taken as official policy of the EPA or any other public or private entity. This paper is based on a presentation made at the European Commission's International Symposium, “The Science of Composting,” in Bologna, Italy, May30-June2, 1995.
- Copyright 1996 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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