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Manure from animal agriculture

#null

https://www.nfuonline.com/updates-and-information/manure-versus-fertiliser-get-the-facts/

Animals provide fertilisers

In Europe, the share of manure in total nitrogen inputs was estimated at 38% and as much as 61% in the Netherlands (European Commission, 2012)

Animal waste/manure management causes 9.5% of all GHG emissions from global livestock production.

It may not be scalable

It is relatively expensive to extract high quality, easily transportable fertiliser from a wet organic mess. In any case, there wouldn’t be enough to enable us to feed the populations we have now, let alone the population we’ll have in thirty years’ time.

CAFOs produce too much manure to be used effectively

#factory_farming
[A previous study of CAFOs in Michigan](Spatiotemporal land use change and environmental degradation surrounding CAFOs in Michigan and North Carolina) found that operators were primarily applying manure within regulatory limits, yet were often applying amounts above crop nutrient needs, indicating that manure is treated as a waste product they need to dispose of, rather than as a valuable fertilizer for crops (Long et al., 2018). Most states regulate CAFO manure applications based on environmental risk or nutrient limits based on crop needs, but these inefficient applications likely occur due to high costs associated with manure hauling (Sims et al., 2005; Centner, 2012), lack of markets due to nutrient ratio variability, as well as presence of pathogens, metals, antibiotics and other undesirable qualities (Ribaudo et al., 2003; Keplinger and Hauck, 2006; Liu et al., 2015; Pepper et al., 2019; Sonne et al., 2019).

In the UK, in 2021 it was found many operators pay manure brokerage companies to remove the waste as local farms cannot keep up. Every region in the UK now has more nitrogen than it can absorb; regions of England with high concentrations of industrialised indoor-reared livestock have the biggest nitrogen surplus. 40% of total nitrogen comes from livestock manure

There's far too much phosphorus (P) from UK livestock waste on agricultural land. Total manure P production alone exceeds the requirement for P by cropland and grassland in the catchment by 45%.

Artificial fertiliser is often better

The Grey water footprint

UK fertiliser demand

from UK governmental food security review, 2024:

The UK demand for nitrogen is approximately 2 million tonnes and for phosphorus is 250,000 tonnes per annum. Approximately 50% of nitrogen is imported as inorganic fertilisers (or raw materials), and 50% of this is domestically produced via livestock manures. For phosphorus approximately 20% is imported inorganic fertiliser and 70% comes from livestock manures (Defra, 2022)

Misc