By Karmen Sperr
Farmers feed their animals the crops they grow. The animals produce manure that is applied on crop fields to promote plant growth. Farmers harvest those crops and feed them back to their animals, and the cycle repeats over and over again.
Producers have been applying manure on their crop fields as fertilizer for generations. It was a practice developed to utilize a resource many farmers had ample access to — animal manure — and make it a value-added product.
Manure contains three important nutrients that can help promote plant growth: nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. It’s a sustainable product that farmers continue to use and have seen positive returns in the form of increased crop yields.
However, while anecdotal evidence consistently supports the claim of increased yields with the application of swine manure, there is limited data from controlled research trials investigating this topic, especially in a comprehensive study across different agroclimatic regions in the contiguous U.S. at once.
That is, until now.
Source : sdstate.edu