Site-specific Manure Management for Improving Soil Quality

Site-specific Manure Management for Improving Soil Quality

Summary

As outlined in the proposal, our start date for the project was October 1, 2006. Since then we have accomplished a few things and they are listed below:

Objectives/Performance Targets

1. Demonstrate and compare five manure management strategies applied across site-specific management zones delineated on farmer’s fields to assess its impact on productivity and soil quality.

2. Demonstrate and compare the improvement in soil quality parameters (as measured by pH, bulk density, aggregate stability, water retention, organic matter content, electrical conductivity, and sodium adsorption ratio).

3. Demonstrate and make economic comparisons of site-specific management zone based manure management strategies to estimate differences in economic returns among the strategies.

4. Evaluate the impact of manure management strategy on water quality risk, through the use of P Index and the N Leaching Index.

5. Develop a network of farmers to conduct on-farm trials, provide hands-on training via field days, farm tours, and extension workshops in the design, implementation, and analysis of field-scale farm trials using innovative site-specific management zone techniques.

Accomplishments/Milestones

We have the formed the project management team and have met with the team a few times and discussed the plan for next spring when we will start the field experimentation and demonstration.

We are also in contact with the cooperating growers. Because of three snow storms in Colorado within a period of 3 weeks (that accumulated over 3 feet of snow) we have not been able to sit down and talk with cooperating grower’s face to face (one on one) however, they are very willing and are prepared to cooperate with us on this project. It is anticipated that the project team will meet the growers in the month of February and will finalize the project implementation details.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

It is too early (3 months) to report any impact. However, the PI of the project is organizing two hands-on workshops in cooperation with the grower organization (Colorado Conservation Tillage Association) in the end of January and will have an opportunity to speak to a number of growers in our region and get their input on project design and implementation.

Collaborators: