The closest thing I can find to a directory on getting local manure is CraigsList. I am sure if you look hard enough you can find a location or farmer in your area that will happily supply you with enough manure to use for home organic gardening
“It has taken us about 100 years to reduce soil organic matter to dangerously low levels from about 5 percent, on average, to below 2 percent.”
That blog article was adapted from the book, Holy Shit: Managing Manure to Save Mankind”
So they are running out of chemical fertilizer. Go Figure. And how fast could our commercial farming industry make the move to organic farming? How long until the obvious takes hold. Our soil is depleted. And for the most part, the experts agree that it will take at least half that long to rebuild. I don’t personally agree with that. If I can make enough compost for my small family garden to improve the soil within one growing season, why should it take that long? I suppose because the Titanic doesn’t turn on a dime. And by the industry ‘gets it’, it will be that long. Guess that is realistic.
Is the symbiotic relationship of the cost of chemicals, the price for grain, and the proliferation of manure from animal agriculture going to finally turn the tide? 2009 saw the beginning of a manure brokers.
But in 2004, in a review of Act 49 Governor Rendell (Penn State) signed into law the Commercial Manure Hauler and Broker Certification Act, or Act 49. The act calls for all who transport or apply manure on a commercial basis to be certified. So, I suppose that once a system can be put in place to regulate it and tax it, THEN an official value can be placed on it? Geez.
I loved this line…
It gladdens my heart to think that organic matter in the soil is so priceless that not even science can put a dollar value on it.
"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease" ~ Thomas Jefferson
