Burning Bio News

The state of Maryland’s Eastern Shore poultry industry has found enough alternative uses of manure that they at times don’t have enough. Recent research throws concerns on manure as a fertilizer from a water quality standpoint. –mj: There is not enough information presented in the article to replacing poultry litter with organic fertilizer (?) to assess whether it has merit or not.

Affordable Bio Feedstock, Inc. has developed a brown grease waste recycling plant which turns grease into biofuels in Kissimmee, Florida. In addition to creating biofuels, the company also converts food solids into fertilizer or animal feedstock. The company has developed a Thermal Depolymerization technology, which allows them to separate its contents (oil, organic solids and water) into three commercially marketable products: brown grease, nutrient rich organic solids and nutrient rich water. The plant will process 50,000 gallons of grease trap waste per day.

A Pennsylvania-based company that has made claims of being the largest producer of biochar in the world is being charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with fraud. The SEC alleges that since about September 2007, Mantria Corp. principals Troy Wragg and Amanda Knorr raised approximately $30 million from more than 300 investors in approximately 12 fraudulent and unregistered securities offerings to investors, totaling at least $122 million.

Washington-State farmers, particularly potato growers, raise fields of mustard around this time of year, then it is tilled into the soil before the next crop. The chopped and buried mustard plants release chemicals that kill root-knot, root-lesion and stubby-root nematodes — all enemies of Mid-Columbia potatoes. Green manure such as mustard also can increase water filtration in the soil and reduce wind erosion, which are the reasons farmer Dale Gies began experimenting with mustard as a green manure cover crop about 15 years ago. He soon found mustard also killed nematodes and fungal pathogens.

Technology advancements in the ammonia manufacturing process make the option of using hydroelectric power to produce this carbon-free fuel more viable and cost-effective than in the past. This article is an excellent primer in the evolution of ammonia production.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is co-sponsoring a bill with Sens. John Tester, D-Mont., Max Baucus, D-Mont., Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Tom Udall, D-N.M., that would promote the implementation of biochar production technologies using excess plant biomass on public land. The Water Efficiency via Carbon Harvest and Restoration Act of 2009 (WECHAR) would establish U.S. Department of Interior and USDA loan guarantee programs to develop biochar demonstration projects, including mobile and fixed biochar production units. – mj: This appears to me to be a bit unprecedented. The benefits of biochar are still being quantified. Since EPA prohibits biomass from public lands in the RFS regulations, this bill does just the opposite and ties up the public land biomass for biochar once we understand the benefits. (?)

Kansas City, MO, uses municipal biosolids to fertilize the City’s trees. One of the strategies includes additional planiting of trees. The city aims toward a goal of planting 120,000 additional trees in the coming decade. Kansas City saves about $20,000 per month using the biosolids rather than incinerating them. These biosolids are not processed enough to allow for use on human food crops, and they are not available to the public.

A Purdue University study has found carbon in land applied swine manure is not polluting nearby water. Manure carbon is staying out of nearby streams after manure is applied as a fertilizer to fields that are underlaid by drainage tiles. The study will next look at nitrogen loss at this specific study site.

Free, quality fertilizer is once again available from Oregon’s Wild Horse Corral Facility in Hines, OR. Approximately 5,000 cubic yards of wild horse manure are piled and ready for loading beginning Tuesday, July 7 through the end of the month. – mj: Free manure. Somewhere I saw a reference to an Endangered Feces Act. That has become one of my goals, to see that sufficient value gets added to manure so that it can not afford to be wasted. Today free horse manure is the Bureau of Land Management’s highest market.

In the Coachella Valley, CA, Thomas Azwell and Costco have forged a partnership — with the help of several million worms on a worm farm at the Salton Sea — turning green waste from Costco’s Palm Desert and La Quinta stores into high-grade organic fertilizer. Paper, cardboard, food scraps — anything that was alive at one time, Azwell said — are collected at the stores and then sent to California Bio-Mass, a composting facility in Thermal. The next stop is Salton Sea Farms, also in Thermal, where about 100,000 pounds of red wiggler earthworms chomp through the compost, refining and enriching it with beneficial microbes and bacteria. The resulting fertilizer, called Vermigrow, is now sold at 27 Costcos in California and is being used at organic farms.

In this final weekend of the 2009 Iowa legislative session lawmakers have voted to establish new regulations for spreading liquid livestock manure on snow-covered fields and frozen ground. Under the bill, liquid manure may not be spread on farm fields between December 21 and April 1. – mj: An interesting twist. As one moves further north in the US, the window to get crops in before the growing season begins gets smaller and smaller. An economic solution will almost necessitate the development of a non-fertilizer solution, or a fertilizer solution that has considerably more value than it has had historically.

A Kansas farmer, Brad Ohlde, discusses the nuances of getting the most use of the manure from his 1,400 dairy cow manure. Ohlde uses an umbilical manure spreader that allows the manure to be pumped up to 2-miles without compacting the ground by hauling it in a spreader. It uses less fuel and eliminates time in backhauls to the farm. With increased fertilizer prices the manure nutrients are also increasing in value.

Wisconsin took a large stride towards protecting our environment today with Gov. Doyle’s signing of Assembly Bill 3, a measure that prohibits the use of phosphorus in lawn fertilizer, State Senator Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac) said today in a press release. Assembly Bill 3 prohibits the use of phosphorus in lawn fertilizer with limited exceptions. Phosphorus from lawn fertilizers can runoff into lakes and streams and have a negative impact on water quality. The bill exempts new lawn development, agriculture land or land deficient in phosphorus. Animal manure and sewage sludge fertilizers are also exempt from the restrictions of the bill. – mj: This is pretty radical. An excellent idea, that is bound to change the value of organic nutrients.

University of Illinois Extension Service has created a point-of-contact website for those looking to buy and sell manure and other organic materials. The website includes registration forms for both livestock producers wishing to dispose of manure and for gardeners and landscapers seeking the product. There are also links to federal and state rules and regulations affecting the process. The website is located at http://www.manureshare.illinois.edu

Syngest Incorporated has selected Menlo, Iowa—45 miles west of Des Moines—as the location for the world’s first biomass-to-ammonia plant. Syngest will use a proprietary process to produce anhydrous ammonia fuel and fertilizer from corn cobs. The Menlo plant will use 150-thousand tons of locally supplied corn cobs per year to manufacture 50-thousand tons of bio-ammonia annually.

A Maryland County Circuit Court has ruled that Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation nutrient management plans will be subject to public scrutiny. –mj: Working on this issue as an advocate for a livestock producers right to own and use manure for 10 years, logically there is nothing to fear from a good planning document. However there is nothing logical about manure politics, or the knee-jerk issues that commercial agriculture must navigate every day. This new policy is really just one more layer for political adversaries to peck away at honest hardworking local small business people.

“I’ll take all the manure I can get,” said Wessling, whose Iowa Land Management Co. manages 70 farms in eastern Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota. “Right now, I figure I can save from $30 to $50 per acre in fertilizer costs by using liquid manure.” Manure nutrients are a great value compared to the even higher cost of commercial fertilizer. As the cost of production reaches record highs, neither manure producers - nor manure consumers - can afford to waste it.

A San-Francisco-based firm, SynGest, plans to start a production plant in Iowa that will make ammonia from corncobs, stalks and leaves. To make ammonia, SynGest says the stover is fed into a pressurized oxygen-blown gasifier and converted into a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. It goes through several other steps to eventually become ammonia. The company says its production cost is about 150 dollars per ton.

Fertilizer that contains phosphorus could be banned from Wisconsin lawns, golf courses and other grassy areas by next year. Advocates of the ban hope that limiting its use will reduce algae blooms on lakes and other waterways. Farm use would not be affected.

With the dramatic shift in fertilizer prices for nitrogen and phosphorus, the value of manure has never been higher and more economical to use as fertilizer. With overall input costs soaring, livestock producers will be ahead to utilize their manure effectively in their cropping operations and/or merchandise the manure as a potential revenue stream.