We all know the challenges poultry litter presents. After the grower, or some company, comes and cleans it out of the houses, everything after that is under strict regulation. Whether you’re applying it to your own land, shipping it to Oklahoma or storing it on your farm for future use, you need to know what the regulations are, all while remembering our urban neighbors and keeping up a positive image.
For too long, the industry folks who spread litter thought we could spread all we wanted, Frank Jones, University of Arkansas Poultry Specialist, explained. “The situation with Oklahoma woke everybody up to the issues poultry producers must pay attention to as far as litter is concerned.”
But, Jones countered, “I don't think anybody who is trying to be fair about it can say the Illinois watershed situation was caused completely by the application of poultry litter. But, the other side of the coin is that litter is part of the problem.”
The poultry producers and the poultry industry did come to recognize that fact, and are now doing their part to try and help remedy the situation.
“We’ve got the most productive farmers in the world, two percent of the population is feeding the other 98 percent. That’s something to be proud of, but it comes with a price. That price is we have to tell our story. Nobody knows what we do, nobody knows the record we have. We have to be able to tell our story or (the public) will get the wrong perception of things,” Jones explained.
“Producers need to be looking with a critical eye at their own operations.” When a person goes by a farm and they see a place where there’s a bunch of old equipment, weeds growing up beside it and it looks junky, their impression is not very good of that place."
Not to mention there are strict regulations for litter storage around the farm, and the public is more and more educated on these laws.
“If you store litter outside, it needs to be covered in some way because if one drop of rain falls on a pile of litter outside, and drops into the soil you’re in violation of the law,” Jones said.
Producers must cover their litter or have a litter stacking or storing shed, or they might find themselves suddenly falling under the more stringent wet litter regulations. Technically, Jones warned, they could be under those types of regulations if they let litter get rained on.
As northwest Arkansas’ farmers are becoming very aware, each farm must work with their NRCS office to get a nutrient management plan.
The NRCS will use topographical maps, determining the condition of the land in terms of topography, slope, etc. “They essentially divide your land up into areas and test those areas for nutrients, particularly phosphorus. From those results, a plan is designed to allow the grower or farmer to apply the nutrients where they're needed. Over application is where you tend to get runoff into streams,” Jones warned.
When a producer reaches the maximum allocated litter application on their farm, they must find somewhere else to distribute the litter. There are also regulations concerning hauling. “In Arkansas you’re supposed to cover your load and if you’re an applicator, you do have to have an applicators license, and that requires some training,” Jones said.
Sheri Herron, Director of BMPs, a nonprofit group that facilitates in the transport of poultry litter out of the nutrient surplus watersheds of Arkansas, said right now the poultry litter per ton price is at $10-$15 per ton. BMPs was developed in conjunction with another not-for-profit group set up as a result of the lawsuit with the city of Tulsa over the Eucha Spavinaw watershed in 2004. The original group was dedicated to education, and as an extension of that, it was determined the poultry producer’s greatest need was to have a market for litter, especially if they couldn’t apply it to their own land, Herron explained.
“BMPs has been hauling litter out of northwest Arkansas and northeast Oklahoma since 2005,” Herron said.
BMPs main goal is developing the markets, getting interest and cooperating with farmers needing litter for fertilizer.
“We coordinate the entire process for the growers. We sell it, charge a brokerage fee; we’ve had grants that would pay a portion of the cost. But producers just need options in exporting litter, and that is why we are here,” Herron said.
That demand for a place to export litter has raised awareness of the needs of surrounding regions for cost-effective fertilizers. Historically, poultry litter has been a more cost-effective fertilizer, compared to commercial fertilizers.
“The demand for litter follows the commercial fertilizer market very closely,” Joshua Payne, Animal Waste Management Specialist for Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extension Service, explained. “When we see a rise in commercial fertilizer prices, we see crop and cattle producers looking more closely into poultry litter over commercial fertilizer. More recently, commercial fertilizer prices have dropped to more normal levels, and as a result, demand for litter has dropped as well.”
For producers in Arkansas looking to market their litter to the nutrient-deficient areas of Oklahoma, Payne recommended the Oklahoma Litter Market – http://www.ok-littermarket.org/. “Approximately 70 percent of Oklahoma soils are deficient in phosphorus, we can use the nutrients that we find in poultry litter in much of Oklahoma, even within a 100-mile radius of the poultry producing areas, soils can use additional phosphorus input.”
But, the price of commercial fertilizer does not directly compare to the price of poultry litter. Payne warned that many factors affect the market price of poultry litter to the end buyer, like handling, transportation and application costs. “A buyer must place a value on litter based on those factors, as well as current commercial prices. If you can get the litter hauled to your farm for less of an expense than commercial fertilizer applied, then poultry litter becomes the better option.”
Still, Payne enthused, when it comes to northwest Arkansas poultry litter, “The solution is simple: Take this nutrient resource out of the heavy poultry-producing areas, and transport it to phosphorus deficient soils in central and western Oklahoma."
