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Hog effluent is showing promise as a fertilizer replacement for corn

The lead commercial agronomist with Precision Planting says soaring fertilizer costs have corn farmers searching for alternatives.

Jason Webster says growers with hog farms in the area might have a solution.

“What if we could actually go and grab some of that hog effluent under these hog buildings?”  He says, “And if you can separate it, you get rid of the solids, and really there’s no nutritional content in the solids, so I don’t want it.  I just want what I call the ‘black gold,’ and I want to take it to the planter.”

He tells Brownfield that the initial research is promising.

“It’s some of the best responses we saw on the farm this year.”  He says, “We even started side dressing some of this effluent.  We even went to our drones and used the swine effluent as a carrier for the fungicide.  We quickly found $50 gains, and we’re doing this with a total replacement of a dry program.”

Webster says the effluent also appears to bring benefits to soil biology.

“If hog farmers have been in the hog business for a long time, they’ve been putting manure on for a long time, maybe their phosphorus levels are through the roof because they’ve put so much on and maybe they’re looking for a way to get more of that affluent somewhere else.”  He says, “Could it be a commodity that a farmer could sell to another grower for them to use as a fertilizer?”

He says the research is ongoing at the company’s PTI Farm near Pontiac, Illinois.

Brownfield spoke with Webster at the PTx Winter Conference near Tremont.

AUDIO: Jason Webster – Precision Planting