Manure Brokers Help Manage Waste At Ohio CAFO Farms

Ohio's concentrated animal farms, or CAFOs, house millions of chickens, turkeys, pigs and cows that produce meat, milk, and eggs for the table. The livestock also produces millions of tons of manure annually. Much of it is spread on farm fields to grow crops. But, manure and chemical fertilizer runoff was partially blamed for last summer's toxic algae bloom on Lake Erie. When the manure piles up too high, some big farms turn to a manure broker. To help tell this story a visit to Fort Recovery on the Ohio Indiana border is instructive. It's a farm town where church bells mark hours as semi -trucks maneuver main street intersections. Fort Recovery is home to Cooper Farms. The company employs 130 workers. It also houses tens of thousands of young turkeys, chickens, hogs and sows in non-descript, rectangular barns it either operates or hires a contractor to operate. The hog barns have sealed concrete manure pits underneath slatted floors to hold manure. Bill Knapke is Cooper's environmental manager. As a permitted livestock operation that means its regulated and must keep track of the tons of manure produced and how it is disposed. "We have manure storage built on all of our hog farms that give us storage for twelve months or more so we can store from one year to the next," says Knapke. Knapke explains that much of the manure from the concentrated animal operations is sold to nearby farmers. Its spread on fields to help grow corn, soybeans, and wheat. Some manure though has to be stored during months when fields are frozen to prevent run-off to nearby streams or rivers. Sometimes there's just too much manure, so Knapke turns to a specialist, a manure broker. "We've brokered a fair bit of our manure. There was a period when there was a greater demand outside of our immediate area. And so we could fill that demand with some of the manure that we were producing that way," says Knapke. Q) Now, manure is not necessarily traded on an exchange on the Chicago Board of Trade, or is it? "No, for the most part guys are out making their own contracts or arrangements on price and how things are handled. The only thing I'd say is that most of the people base the cost of the manure off the price of fertilizer," adds Knapke. Knapke says a ton of manure currently sells for $50 to $60 or about half the price of chemical fertilizer. In western Ohio livestock manure is plentiful. The Ohio Department of Agriculture reports that six counties in western and northwest Ohio each produce more than 300-thousand tons of livestock manure annually. Consultant Thomas Menke of Greenville says manure brokering became a specialty business as concentrated animal farms multipled across Ohio and other Midwest states. "There are brokers, people who actually advertise in different magazines that they have poultry litter or different types of manure for sale," says Menke. Manure brokers brought other advantages for the CAFO's. Knapke says brokering manure allows Cooper Farms and others to sell manure at a higher price and move it much further away from its source. "I think we've got customers that are 60 miles away for sure and at times it's traveled further than that when commodity prices were really high, fertilizer prices were going up dramatically and we were moving manure over to Indianapolis, so a couple hour truck drive was not uncommon," says Knapke. Knapke says the recent downward trend of commodity prices has lowered the value of manure. The lower prices come at a time when state and federal agencies are also considering stricter rules to reduce manure and fertilizer runoff from farm fields to help prevent future toxic algae blooms on Lake Erie and on Ohio's manmade lakes and reservoirs.