Marketing Poultry Litter: Alabama Program to Distribute, Clean, Profit

A new poultry-litter removal program aims to clean area streams and bolster the economic strength of the state's biggest industry.

The Alabama Litter Distribution Project essentially reimburses landowners receiving the litter for the cost to haul it to their property. It is part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture effort managed by the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The first objective is to create an incentive to distribute litter to areas of the state that historically have not used litter for fertilizer, the NRCS said. The second objective is to promote a long-term market across the state to maintain better distribution of nutrients.

"The whole idea is to stimulate a free-market demand," said Mike Roden, director of the Tennessee Valley Resource Conservation and Development Council, which initiated the program as a pilot project three years ago for its eight member counties. "We think the demand will increase to the point where it will support itself and the government won't have to be involved."

The program specifically targets poultry growers who don't have pastureland for spreading the manure high in nitrogen.

That applies more to counties like Cullman, which produces the most poultry at 170.7 million. Morgan ranks 11th with 31 million and Lawrence ranks 15th with 25 million.

"If they can't find available land for it, they put it on the same fields over and over and over again," said Jay Grantland, project coordinator of Cotaco Clean and Green who helped implement the pilot program.

The litter is a danger to the environment when its rich nutrients and bacteria leach into ground water or streams after heavy rainfalls. This happens when litter is spread on fields that can't absorb the nutrients fast enough or when the litter is left in mounds until the farmer spreads it on a field.

Chicken litter pollutes both Flint Creek and Cotaco Creek.

The program grew as much out of a need to protect the economic vitality of poultry farming as from a need to keep streams clean, Grantland said.

If poultry farmers can't comply with environmental rules for removing litter, the government will shut them down and damage the state's top agriculture product, he said.

The program gets its money from the USDA's Environmental Quality Incentives Program. It's up to each county to determine the amount of EQIP money it will designate for the poultry distribution. The project counts toward the maximum $450,000 in EQIP funds that a landowner can receive.

A landowner would contract to use the program for a minimum of three years, but the three years do not have to be consecutive.

The NRCS version of the distribution program is essentially the same as the Tennessee Valley RC&D's program, Grantland said, except that the NRCS has a better payment system.

The RC&D charged $1 per mile to transport the litter, whereas NRCS will charge 10 cents a ton per mile.

By subsidizing the cost of shipping, the NRCS aims to bring the cost of poultry litter to a competitive level with commercial fertilizers, Grantland said..

"They'll use it," he said of the litter, "because it's better fertilizer and it's organic."

Roden said last year, the RC&D program saw the transfer of 6,500 tons of litter from outside the eight-county area. Much of it went to Macon County where farmers spread it on cotton fields.

Though the RC&D no longer funds the distribution project, Roden said, it will continue to operate a statewide poultry litter hot line to facilitate the transfer. It also will seek grant monies to launch a statewide campaign informing counties unfamiliar with poultry-litter benefits.

Story courtesy of the Decatur Daily.