Survey looks at how farmers make decisions about manure management

Considerable research has been done to show what farmers think and do to manage manure, but not why or how. Can a better understanding of farmers' considerations help lawmakers design better regulations?

Once upon a time, small farmers with diversified farm operations simply recycled the manure from their livestock onto their crop fields. There the wastes were safely dispersed to serve as a natural fertilizer and enhance agricultural productivity. With the advent of inexpensive chemicals that replaced manure as fertilizer and the increase in large livestock operations, the cycle has gone awry. There's a lot more manure to dispose of, and fewer places where it can be applied safely.

A major concern in the debate about large-scale, highly intensive livestock production focuses on the impact that expanding supplies of sometimes poorly managed manure exert on water and air quality. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported in 1992 that one-third of all agricultural nonpoint source pollution in the United States can be traced to livestock operations. Manure management, once strictly a farm management issue, has become a matter of state and societal interest. Manure management plans are now mandated for Iowa farms with a threshold number of animal units in an attempt to balance manure nutrient availability with crop nutrient needs.

Considerable research has been done to show what farmers think and do to manage manure, but not why or how. In what ways do farmers weigh and combine economic, cultural, agronomic and technical considerations in managing manure as they do? Do farmers view manure as a resource or a waste product for their individual system? Can a better understanding of farmers' considerations help lawmakers design better regulations?

These were some of the questions Clare Hinrichs and Tom Richard wanted to answer in their Leopold Center-sponsored project on factors that affect farmers as they make manure management choices for their operations. Richard, an Iowa State University agricultural and biosystems engineer, explains why he thought this was vital: "Technical specialists sometimes see farmers doing the ‘wrong thing,' and fail to appreciate the larger, sometimes complicated context of these decisions and practices."

ISU sociologist Clare Hinrichs has worked on other Leopold Center competitive grant projects in the area of local food systems.

Hinrichs, an Iowa State University sociologist, conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 34 Iowa swine producers farming in the Raccoon River or Iowa River watersheds. The sample group included producers with swine operations of various sizes and orientations, using liquid or solid manure systems common in Iowa (i.e., pit or slurry storage, anaerobic lagoon, open lot, pasture systems or hoop structure). Hinrichs found that the farmers she dealt with were concerned about how economic changes in the swine industry were affecting their individual operations and the overall environmental performance of the industry.  

Flying in the face of research and regulatory assumptions that often classify farms by a single manure management system, 25 of the 34 farmers used more than one manure handling and storage system. Eight of the farmers had strictly solid systems, 11 had liquid-only systems, and 15 used both liquid and solid manure systems. With nearly half the farmers reporting use of a combination of liquid and solid systems, Hinrichs cautions against adopting design or education solutions based on farmers handling only one or the other.

Farmers' attitudes toward manure are multi-faceted and more contradictory than the simple waste vs. resource argument would suggest. Farmers recognize the economic benefits of substituting manure for commercial nitrogen, but many retain negative views about this practice. Their ambivalence toward manure centers on how the odor problems and the labor required to handle manure detract from its value to their farm. However, some farmers viewed manure as an economic resource and option for sales via new manure markets. (These are markets where specialized livestock farmers provide a product—manure—to specialized crop farmers.)

Many factors contributed to the swine producer's decisions about which manure handling systems to employ. Hinrichs notes, ‘The accounts of these farmers show that manure management decisions are actually farming system decisions. Farmers simply do not make these decisions in isolation from other aspects of their enterprise or lives." Things that can affect manure management decisions include historical precedents on the farm, individual and family preferences and values, economic constraints, environmental concern, neighbor relations, integrator policies and a changing state regulatory climate.

When Hinrichs asked farmers about things they did to protect water quality, several common themes emerged. The first three practices were cited, irrespective of whether farmers used liquid or solid manure systems, or both:

1. Attention to place, or where one applies manure,

2. Attention to time, or when one applies manure,

3. Attention to how one applies manure (i.e., solid or liquid, incorporation or not) and

4. Attention to mitigation or monitoring systems (i.e., filter strips, tile sampling, etc.)

ISU agricultural engineer Tom Richard also works with the Leopold Center's hoop group research team.

Overall, swine producers in these two Iowa watersheds do not have homogeneous "mental models" of their watersheds. There were three ways of thinking about watersheds: in engineered or bureaucratic terms, in hydrologic terms (focusing at either the farm or regional level), and in socio-ecological terms. While their comprehension of the watershed concept varied, most farmers remained genuinely concerned about water quality. Many of them expressed frustration at the difficulty of reconciling contradictory environmental and management recommendations for manure handling.

Farmers from all types of operations agreed about the growing importance of water quality protection on their own farms, but they held sharply differing views about the actual environmental impacts of large-scale, intensive livestock agriculture. Most farmers, however, asserted that urban sources of water quality problems are as important, if not more significant, than any agricultural sources. While the distinction between solid and liquid manure is important from a management standpoint, it did not play a role in the level of environmental concern expressed by the farmers.

Hinrichs and Richard found that farmers did seem to be shifting from a waste perspective to a qualified resource perspective regarding the use of manure on their farms. Increased knowledge, new technical applications and manure market expansion were stimulating the transition to a resources viewpoint.

The tension between the needs of environmental protection and enterprise profitability still keep many farmers from pursuing options that they might otherwise prefer. Farmers want solutions that satisfy both of these needs. Richard says the study found that "the ideal management systems must fit both the farm's unique physical characteristics, and the farmer's unique personal preferences and motivations. In many respects, the environmental or economic performance of a technology may be less important than the comfort and satisfaction the farmer feels with it."

Hinrichs adds another caveat to those who are writing environmental regulations for manure handling. "One-size-fits-all solutions provide an attractive, seemingly rational approach for regulators, but are contrary to the realities of livestock production and manure management systems." She and Richard stress the need for a systems perspective on the part of regulators, and encourage certification training beyond land manure applicators to those who manage manure prior to application.

"Manure's just the by-products that they have to deal with from hog production, which theoretically should be a resource, too, and is… But it's also a real pain in the neck, which makes its value as a resource a lot less. Because you have to handle it."

"I think the one thing that we have problems with more than anything is just plain storage. I mean that's probably the big part of any manure system, whatever you have. If you have pits, you have earthen lagoons, or you just, like we do over there, compost it. You still got to have a place to put it. And it's there and you've got to do something with it eventually."

"One of my concerns is that if we don't make money…people end up starting to cut corners. …so we need to make money to be good stewards. I mean, we would love to be good stewards of the land and so on, but sometimes economics drives us to maybe cut corners where we shouldn't."

"In the past, I definitely did not have a handle on what quality of resource I had. All the way back through my parents, you hauled manure on different areas of your farm knowing that you were giving a boost to the crop you would grow."