The Influence of Oil: Even Chicken S**T is getting expensive

[n2doc]

Rising oil prices make for premium on Oregon chicken manure
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CRESWELL, Ore. -- Once, they could hardly give it away, but these days Bruce and Robin Breslaw are scratching to keep up with the demand -- even charging $7.50 a cubic yard for their prized Willamette Valley chicken manure.

The petroleum used for synthetic fertilizer is more costly, so farmers of all sorts are looking for something less expensive to spread.

Trendy organic farmers are growing in size and number, all demanding more natural fertilizer.

And there are fewer folks like the Breslaws raising poultry in the south Willamette Valley.

"The birds are already all pooped out," says Numan Haffner of Harrisburg, who charges $3 a cubic yard to haul dung to farmers.

At Lane Forest Products, it now costs about $35 to spread synthetic fertilizer on an acre, said President Susan Posner. Chicken manure, which the Eugene company also sells, costs about $15 per acre, although it costs more to spread.

more:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/317447_chickenmanure28.html

[amandabeech]

1. The nitrogen part of chemical or artificial fertilizer is made from natural gas, not oil

Actually, it can be made with any energy source. One needs hydrogen, and electricy can separate the hydrogen from oxygen in water. The air supplies the nitrogen.

Natural gas in the U.S. is so expensive that almost all the U.S. nitrogen fertilizer plants are closed. We import from such places as Trinidad, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Confined feeding operations for cattle do not fix nitrogen like the old-fashioned operations used to. In the old days, the cattle excreted wastes onto straw or saw dust placed in a trench behind the cow. The nitrogen in the urine or solid waste stabilized on the high-carbon material and did not evaporate.

Now, the cattle eliminate wastes onto a grate and is washed into a pit under the barn with water. There is little high-carbon material to stabilize the nitrogen and much of it evaporates. The resulting slurry requires expensive equipment in order to use it as fertilizer. The machinery knifes or squirts the watery slurry into the soil. The slurry is also heavy and thus expensive to transport with expensive diesel.

Maybe older is better sometimes.

[Javaman]

2. "The birds are already all pooped out"...I smell a cottage industry here...

chicken exlax.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Are you sure you want to SMELL it?

Poop. It's What's For Sale.

--p!