They have always been here, but current circumstances enhance these economic possibilities. Environmental fears have created hostilities toward agriculture. The current image of manure creates real problems for livestock producers. Reuse of nutrients removes them from the environment. Markets for manure products create an incentive to move these nutrients into uses that do not harm the environment.
Markets already exist for organic residuals.
The agricultural industry has the most to gain by capitalizing on emerging manure markets, utilizing manure resources and removing environmental risk from livestock production. The Challenge Agriculture is under attack judicially, legislatively and administratively. Air quality concerns include ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and particulates. Emotion-driven, government regulations cost taxpayers and industry without necessarily solving problems. Unless consumers, lawmakers and the agricultural industry take rapid, constructive action to shift the political debate, we will lose the industry to foreign competitors, and with it, lose control over the safety of our food and the quality of the environment in the nations which will produce our food.