Poultry manureshed management: Opportunities and challenges for a vertically integrated industry

Abstract

Manureshed management seeks to address systemic imbalances in nutrient distributions at scales beyond the farmgate and potentially across county and state boundaries. The U.S. poultry industry, which includes broilers, layers, pullets, and turkeys, has many characteristics that are compatible with achieving a vision of manureshed management, including a history of engaging in local and regional programs to better distribute manure resources. Despite widespread vertical integration that supports large‐scale strategic decision making and dry manures that favor off‐farm transport, there are still many challenges to poultry manureshed management that require engaging stakeholders other than just the poultry industry. Analysis of county‐level nutrient budgets highlights the industry's “mega‐manureshed,” extending from the Mid‐Atlantic, across the southeast, and into northwest Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. The analysis also identifies areas with legacy nutrient build‐up that are still present today. Implementing manureshed management in the U.S. poultry industry requires comprehensive consideration of manure treatment technologies, alternative uses such as bioenergy production, market development for treated manure products, transport of manure nutrients from source to sink areas, and manure brokering programs that promote manure nutrient distribution. Fortunately, past and present evolution and innovation within the industry places it as a likely leader of the manureshed vision.

The social networks of manureshed management

“…In addition to extension and regulatory agents who help to interpret and implement these policies, advisors (e.g., nutrient consultants), NGOs, and local extension agents may serve as important actors. Further, manure may be processed (e.g., solid separation, de‐caking, composting), including as recycled bedding in the dairy and poultry industries (Bryant et al., 2021; Church et al., 2020), affecting its availability and characteristics related to off‐site transport (e.g., water content, pathogen content, odor). Contractors (e.g., manure application), custom haulers, regulatory/action agencies, retailers, and even specialized consultants (e.g., certified crop advisors) all contribute to manure processing.…”

Envisioning the manureshed: Toward comprehensive integration of modern crop and animal production

“…In addition, the physiology of animals (monogastric, ruminant), their diets (protein content, phytase supplementation), and chemical manure manipulation (alum, gypsum, sodium bisulfate) all affect the fertilizer value of manure and its transport potential (Kleinman et al., 2019b). Despite this variation, dry manure is often exported from poultry, dairy, and beef production systems for use elsewhere (Bryant et al., 2022; Dell et al., 2022; Spiegal et al., 2020b).…”

“…As a strategic tool for reintegrating animal and production across scales, early visions of manureshed management focused on confined animal production systems where specialized technologies, practices, and strategies are already commonplace and are more readily envisioned (Saha et al, 2018;Spiegal et al, 2020b). Surveying manureshed management in vertically integrated U.S. poultry and hog industries, respectively, Bryant et al (2022) and Meinen et al (2022) document opportunities for implementing manuresheds in systems where grazing is absent. Through standardization, coordination, and contracts, poultry and hog industries offer predictability and scalability that has great potential for deliberate, strategic management needed to maintain manuresheds.…”

“…Surveying manureshed management in vertically integrated U.S. poultry and hog industries, respectively, Bryant et al. (2022) and Meinen et al. (2022) document opportunities for implementing manuresheds in systems where grazing is absent.…”

Recycling nutrients in the beef supply chain through circular manuresheds: Data to assess tradeoffs

“…The conceptual framework of the “manureshed” (i.e., the lands where surplus manure nutrients from concentrated animal feeding sites can be recycled to meet production, environmental, and socioeconomic goals) provides spatially explicit information and knowledge about where and how nutrient circularity via manure redistribution would actually work (Saha et al., 2018; Spiegal, Kleinman et al., 2020). To date, manuresheds have been designed as spatially contiguous land units: a manure hotspot is identified, and the adjacent productive agricultural lands needed to assimilate the hotspot's surplus nutrients are delineated (Figure 1a) (e.g., Bryant et al., 2021; Saha et al., 2018; Spiegal, Kleinman, et al., 2020). Here we modify the approach by defining a “circular manureshed” as the feed‐producing lands where surplus manure nutrients from animals ingesting feed from those lands can be recycled to meet production, environmental, and socioeconomic goals, where feed‐producing lands are not necessarily contiguous with the manure source (Figure 1b).…”