Manure Market Emerges

Sfx: country music

DG: Andy Howe grows a little bit of everything at his place in Gilford....vegetables, beef, hay, flowers.

Right now we’re standing in one of Howe’s greenhouses, where he’s removing the roof.

It’s just another step he’s taken to reduce his energy costs.

TAPE: we’re doing things like that left and right around here.

He’s concerned, in part, because he’s watched those costs climb, including fertilizer which has gone from $625 a ton to $750 in just the past few months.

Some in the agriculture industry speculate it could hit $1000.

Howe says those numbers mean the old approach to spreading fertilizer isn’t sustainable anymore.

T.334
10:30... That’s crazy for us. this year we bought 18 tons, so we are talking about $18,000...we don’t want to do that b/c then the price of tomatoes will be $10 a pound, a dozen ear of corns will be $15.

DG: In an effort to get away from fertilizer Howe wants to use as much manure as he can.

He’s got plans to double his cattle herd...for the manure.

T.334
12:!1...it’s almost to that point where the manure is worth more than the cattle.

The farmer says he never imagined the value of beef would be on par with the manure from his herd.

Ev Thomas from the Miner Institute- an agricultural think tank- says farmers like Howe are going to have to get used to the new economic reality.

Fertilizer has become so expensive, in part, because it’s highly energy dependent.

Natural gas is needed to secure the nitrogen, heavy mining equipment is used to get to the phosphorous and potassium, and then it’s got to be transported.

But Thomas says energy costs don’t tell the full story.

2:02....Basically in the past five years, countries like India, China and Pakistan have created another US in terms of fertilizer demand and that is what is driving the tremendously high prices.

The pressure on fertilizer prices has effectively doubled the value of manure in the past five years.

In New Hampshire signs of a manure crunch are coming.

There are reports that farmers have stopped selling it so they can keep it for themselves.

And companies that produce compost and fertilizer are even importing manure from as far away as Delaware.

T.318
:58 these are the girls ….

Egg farmer Jesse LaFlamme, president of Pete and Jerry’s Eggs, has stepped into the corner of a 400 ft. long, 60 ft. wide barn.

We’re surrounded by 18 thousand brown laying hens.

Laflamme explains its happy hour here in the barn- now that the girls have laid their eggs for the day.

....they are very, very, very social.

Right now, LaFlamme is paying people just to dispose of his manure, two dump truck loads a day.

He knows there are buyers who would love to get their hands on it, just not in its current form.

7:00... it’s really a paste almost, ideally we would like to dry it up, tie it, or compost, palletize it.

LaFlamme says he’s almost ready to invest the $3-400,000 dollars it would take to convert the manure into a commercial product.

T.319
21:42...We’ve been trying to weigh the economics of it for the last five years, and haven’t seen it, but this is it. There is definitely something going on.

More manure does mean more work for farmers.

It takes more trips to spread it than fertilizer.

And dairy manure tends to be low in nitrogen, so farmers must get creative, hunting out new sources.

Despite those challenges, University of New Hampshire Natural Resources Professor John Aber says the shift from fertilizer is a good move.

TAPE:...by recycling manure and the nutrients in manure, we’ve reduced the economic cost and the environmental impact of keeping fields fertile.

Aber says less fertilizer will reduce the runoff that creates harmful algae blooms in waterways, like the infamous one at the mouth of the Mississippi.

Just as fundamental, farmer Andy Howe believes the emergence of a manure market by itself suggests big changes are on the horizon.

T.334
9:14 this is a change in our society in the way we operate. We can’t continue to throw away everything. Everything is going to be recycled. Mark my words. Everything is going to be recycled.

For NHPR News, I’m DG.