Contest Challenges Scientists To Recycle Manure Into Marketable Fertilizer

Farmers have long spread manure on fields. But with today’s livestock operations that produce huge amounts of waste and precision farming that carefully controls fertilizer inputs, that isn’t the most optimal practice. Now, federal agencies, pork and dairy producers, environmental groups, and academics are sponsoring a competition to improve the recycling of nutrients in livestock waste. The effort is aimed at development of cost-effective technologies that extract nitrogen, phosphorus, or both from cow or hog manure and turn them into potentially marketable products. “Scientists and engineers are already building technologies that can recover nutrients, but further development is needed to make them more effective and affordable,” says Gina McCarthy, administrator of EPA, which is one of partners in the Nutrient Recycling Challenge competition. The challenge calls for concept papers by Jan. 16, 2016, and will split $20,000 among four semifinalists who will be invited to meet with investors and enter into further phases of the competition. The final award will be given in January 2017, and demonstration pilots at livestock operations will follow.