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Environmental policy and swine manure management Waste not or want not?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2009

Dana L. Hoag
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, CO 80523;
Fritz M. Roka
Affiliation:
Research Associate, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695.
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Abstract

Livestock production and manure handling decisions often have been treated in the literature as separate enterprises. Policymakers, too, have ignored the interactive nature of manure management by focusing on land application for nutrient disposal. This study outlines a systems approach to describe the interrelated decisions producers face, using examples from North Carolina and Iowa that show how producers' attitudes toward manure management lead them to handle manure differently in different regions. In North Carolina, nutrients in manure are “not wanted.” There are economic incentives to treat manure, thus reducing its nutrient content, and to apply it on as little land as possible. In Iowa, nutrients are “not wasted.” Producers conserve the nutrients in manure and use them more fully, applying manure to higher value crops such as corn. Policies that influence manure management can be made more effective by accounting for the differences in producers' incentives to waste or want the nutrients.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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