Commercial fertilizer is easier to handle than manure and is less likely to draw nuisance complaints from neighbors. Yet if we want to have both an expanding livestock industry and high quality water resources, it is these farmers without livestock that must somehow be induced to use the growing supply of livestock manure. Yet this is exactly the policy environment in which we are trying to encourage proper land application of manure. The incentives are all wrong. Use of nutrients from manure cannot be separated from use of nutrients from commercial fertilizer sources.
Manure is a locally produced source of plant nutrients.
Commercial fertilizer, on the other hand, is imported. Furthermore, the livestock industry adds value to feed crops and is an important part of the economy of rural Minnesota. But in listening to most feedlot debates, you come away with the impression that we have too much manure. Consider the case of Martin County, a leading hog-producing area in southern Minnesota. The county is also in the watershed of the Minnesota River, for which studies have shown substantial concern for water quality degradation due to agricultural nutrients.