Farm Management of Agricultural manures and Organic Residues through compost or fermentation.

This project addressed soil health and nutrient cycling objectives. The project worked with farmers and their generated organic matter residues to properly treat them to create resources out of unwanted organic matter residues. The project sought to develop methods and procedures that could satisfy "Environmental Quality Board" (EQB) regulations: ‘Regulation for the Control of Fecal Waste from Animals of Livestock Enterprises’ and the ‘Regulation for the Design and Operation of
Composting Facilities’. One regulation sets compost as a novel method and the other asks farmes to obtain a composting permit. This project proposed to publish case studies results from proper degradation and pathogen control of different farm manure and vegetative residues using farmer adapted compost methods or fermentation. These published case studies were to be used by farmers and NRCS as a tool for permit aproval by the EQB. Additional benefits are the nutrient cycle at farms, increasing soil organic matter, therefore increasing-water holding capacity and infiltration rates, among others. Although composting and fermentation are easy methods, these have not been standardized to size the farming operations and will be performed at EQIP eligible producers.