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ARS Home » Plains Area » Fort Collins, Colorado » Center for Agricultural Resources Research » Soil Management and Sugarbeet Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #395608
Research Project: Agricultural Management for Long-Term Sustainability and Soil Health

Location: Soil Management and Sugarbeet Research

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

Author
item Kleinman, Peter
item Spiegal, Sheri
item SILVIERA, MARIA - University Of Florida
item Baker, John
item Dell, Curtis
item BITTMAN, SHABTAI - Agriculture And Agri-Food Canada
item CIBIN, RAJ - Pennsylvania State University
item Vadas, Peter
item Buser, Michael
item Tsegaye, Teferi

Submitted to: Journal of Environmental Quality
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/6/2022
Publication Date: 6/24/2022
Citation: Kleinman, P.J., Spiegal, S.A., Silviera, M., Baker, J.M., Dell, C.J., Bittman, S., Cibin, R., Vadas, P.A., Buser, M.D., Tsegaye, T.D. 2022. Envisioning the manureshed: Towards comprehensive integration of modern crop and animal production. Journal of Environmental Quality. 51(4):481-493. https://doi.org/10.1002/jeq2.20382.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jeq2.20382

Interpretive Summary: The sustainable management of manure remains one of the greatest resource and production challenges facing agriculture. Cycling manure nutrients between areas of livestock production and crop production requires adjustments to management throughout the agroecosystem. Enter the "manureshed", a paradigm for sustainable management of manure that addresses barriers and creates opportunities for improved manure management. Scientists from the United States and Canada document the systemic and management changes required for manureshed management to be implemented in modern agroecosystems.

Technical Abstract: The specialization and intensification of agriculture has produced incredible gains in productivity, quality and availability of agricultural commodities, but has resulted in the separation of crop and animal production. A by-product of this separation has been the accumulation of manure regions where animal production is concentrated. Enter the “manureshed,” an organizing framework for integrating animal and crop production where budgeting of manure nutrients is used to strategically guide their recycling and reuse in agricultural production systems where manure resources are of highest value. To move beyond regional nutrient balance analyses into the transformational realm required to mitigate "wicked" manure problems, manureshed management requires recognition of the challenges to systematically reorganizing resource flows. In better integrating crop and livestock systems, manureshed management must account for the unique nature of managing manure nutrients within individual livestock industries, anticipate trade-offs in substituting manure for commercial fertilizer, promote technologies to refine manure, and engage extensive social networks across scales that range from the farmgate to nation and beyond.