A Manure Yard Manager Arrives in the Village

Manure Yard Manager

My hometown is in Ili, Xinjiang, where the county town has both crop farming and livestock keeping, but the two are separated. When I went home for the winter holiday in my first year of university, I noticed that many large cattle farmers could not handle their cattle manure. They had to pay a great deal of money to have it scraped up and dumped somewhere; some even dumped it directly by the riverbank, causing serious pollution. Yet farmers need organic fertiliser but do not know where to get it. Some farm households do haul cattle manure, but because it has not gone through composting, there are problems such as seedling burn.

I studied plant nutrition for my undergraduate degree at China Agricultural University, and I saw this as both pollution and a waste of resources. In my third year, I took part in a biology competition with Teacher Feng Gu. He said that in Xinjiang a lot of slaughterhouse hides and blood are wasted, and that they would be good raw materials for making organic fertiliser. Then I developed the idea of going back to my hometown later to make organic fertiliser.

This is why I came to China Agricultural University’s Science and Technology Courtyard in Quzhou to study for a master’s degree. The Science and Technology Courtyard is a model that integrates agricultural research, science and technology services, and talent cultivation. In the Science and Technology Courtyard, students put down roots on the production front line, eating, living, and working with farmers.

I specialise in organic fertiliser. Unlike chemical fertiliser, which directly replenishes mineral nutrients such as NPK, the core value of organic fertiliser lies in systematically improving soil quality and ecological functions.

Healthy soil can help farmers solve many problems. For example, during last year’s autumn harvest, North China experienced unusually heavy rain; Quzhou rained for a month on end. Maize moulded in the fields, and wheat sowing was delayed. To ensure emergence, farm households sowed several jin of extra seed per mu. If the basic condition of the soil is good, there is no need to sow so much seed. When extreme weather such as drought or waterlogging occurs, because the soil’s water- and nutrient-retaining capacity is enhanced, crops can survive better than in conventional chemical-fertiliser-based cropping. In short, organic fertiliser can help farm households cut costs and increase efficiency in several ways; this is a benefit that is hard to calculate in the short term.

It is precisely because I study and live in the Science and Technology Courtyard that I met the neighbour I now run a business with, whom I call Uncle. It was a morning in March last year when I went out for a run. Uncle drove past and asked if I wanted a lift. I was already tired as soon as I reached the village entrance, so I got into Uncle’s car.

Uncle asked what I studied. I said I work in organic fertiliser. His eyes lit up, and he said he would also like to make organic fertiliser. His main job is landscaping; over the past two years, business has not been very good. Although Uncle does not have a high level of education, he is especially good at learning. After learning about organic fertiliser, he kept asking me about the technology.

Uncle and I hit it off at once. We said we would do it and immediately set about it, first surveying nearby chicken farms, manure drying yards, and organic fertiliser plants. Last year, we started running experiments, feeling our way with the technology and also exploring a business model.

Initially we used membrane composting technology. With the help of Teacher Li Yangyang at China Agricultural University, we purchased ePTFE (expanded polytetrafluoroethylene) selectively permeable cover membrane (also known as a molecular membrane/nanomembrane). The advantage of this membrane is that it can selectively allow water vapour and carbon dioxide to pass through and be released into the air, while “retaining” odorous substances such as ammonia and hydrogen sulphide. The drawback is that the equipment is too expensive: one square metre of membrane costs 50 yuan, and a set of equipment for processing 200 cubic metres costs 70,000 yuan. The theoretical service life of the membrane is eight years, but, from my observation, after a year of being battered by solar radiation, oxidation, and so on, the membrane is no longer very effective, and I estimate it will not last many years.

So we switched to windrow composting. In windrow composting, raw materials such as chicken manure and cattle manure are mixed with auxiliary materials such as straw, the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio and moisture content are adjusted, and the mixture is piled into open long windrows. By regularly turning the piles to supply oxygen, aerobic microorganisms break down organic matter and convert it into humus. The biggest difference from membrane-covered composting is precisely the absence of that ePTFE membrane, and therefore the loss of a semi-closed system for temperature control, moisture retention, nitrogen retention, and odour blocking. During the composting process, the windrow heap may smell of shit, which is not very friendly for producers, but investment and operating costs can be significantly reduced.

We tested different proportions of chicken manure and cattle manure, as well as locally common agricultural waste such as straw, maize cob, and spent mushroom substrate. From summer through winter, we composted 800 tonnes of organic fertiliser, so we have largely worked out the technical details, such as the proportions and composting methods.

Why “Carving Flowers on Shit”?

The organic fertiliser industry is quite chaotic. When Uncle and I went to survey the industry, we found that it is not just in Quzhou: the organic fertiliser industry nationwide is a mixed bag, and it is very common for bad products to drive out the good ones. Many factories add all sorts of dubious things to cut costs—for example, they add industrial fly ash to make the product weigh more, but it contains a lot of heavy metals. It is not necessarily obvious when you buy it; people even think it is quite good, saying that it is ground quite fine and quite black. But once it is applied to the fields, problems arise, and some seedlings die.

When it comes to organic fertiliser, farmers all know that it is a good thing, and they know that we students are involved in making it, so the quality is guaranteed. They find it hard to buy organic fertiliser with guaranteed quality, and they do not know how to use it. But the biggest deterrent is still the feeling that organic fertiliser is too expensive.

Nowadays, many organic fertiliser plants are moving in the direction of “carving flowers on shit”: they add humic acid, amino acids, functional microbial inoculants, biostimulants such as alginic acid/chitosan, secondary and trace elements, and new materials such as biochar to basic manure fertiliser, upgrading the product into a biological organic fertiliser or soil conditioner with combined functions such as improving the soil, promoting growth, increasing stress tolerance, and boosting efficiency. But with so many additives, it has to be sold for over 500 yuan a tonne.

We want to simplify the process, avoid gimmicks, and keep prices as low as possible. It is as if they sell premium products, while we sell everyday essentials. Of course, the premise is that quality must be guaranteed: there must be no heavy metals or antibiotics.

In fact, in the past, smallholders could achieve a crop-livestock cycle within a single farm household. In my hometown, a small county town, one farmer grows quinoa. He composts some cattle manure himself and then hauls it onto his own fields. The quinoa he produces has both a good yield and good quality.

However, with the spread of chemical fertiliser and the scale-up of livestock farming, the crop-livestock cycle has been broken. Quzhou itself is a major county for laying hen farming. Yet there are not many organic fertiliser plants here, and they cannot process all the chicken manure in the county. Some farmers still dump it at will, causing pollution such as foul odours and wastewater.

In recent years, national policy has encouraged the use of agricultural waste for composting, essentially to re-establish a crop-livestock cycle over a larger area.

But only after I set one foot in the industry did I realise that the organic fertiliser industry has not taken off and that this is not a question of technology. The technical barrier for organic fertiliser is not high. If we want to rebuild the crop-livestock cycle, the difficulty does not lie in fermenting manure and straw well, but in “one in and one out”—the input is raw material, and the output is sales.

Rebuilding the Crop-Livestock Cycle

In March this year, we rented a site and started large-scale production. The pressure hit us all at once.

First was the site. We rented an abandoned chicken farm for 120,000 yuan a year. We process manure from 400,000 chickens every day. We can now haul the chicken manure for free. We bought a vehicle and hired a person to go to nearby chicken farms every day to haul manure. We also hired workers to turn the piles and repair the site. On top of that, with all the miscellaneous costs, such as water, electricity, and microbial agents, we watch the money pour out every day.

Manure has a high moisture content, and straw is bulky, so transporting the two is like hauling water and air. In addition, collecting straw from the fields is troublesome; it also has to be crushed. Nowadays we prefer to use maize cobs and mushroom residue. Even if people let us haul these raw materials for free, the transport and labour costs are themselves a heavy burden.

In fact, to rebuild the crop-livestock cycle, we certainly cannot rely solely on organic fertiliser plants like ours. Last year I attended an organic fertiliser conference, and my peers said that organic fertiliser plants cannot really be called profit-making organisations. In fact, they function more like a government environmental protection project, because what they process is waste from the whole of society.

If there were a macro-level policy that would allow organic fertiliser plants to function as agricultural waste processing points, with everyone bringing their waste to us for processing and part of the transport costs borne by the livestock farms or the government, we could keep the operation running.

We want to explore a county-level circular model, which is still rare nationwide. The organic fertiliser plants I have seen generally make bagged granular organic fertiliser to extend their transport radius, and transport across provinces is not a problem. But I want to operate as a satellite station, serving livestock farms and fields within a 20-kilometre radius. Any farther, and the transport costs become too high.

But the issue is whether we can obtain raw materials and a market within 20 kilometres—whether the livestock farmers are willing to give us their manure, and whether the farmers are willing to use it. Each farm has its own considerations.

Make Organic Fertiliser Affordable for Grain

We are still worried about sales.

The wheat is about to be harvested. Lately, we have been busy promoting organic fertiliser to large-scale farmers. For just a little over 100 yuan, a farmer can buy a tonne of organic fertiliser. The price even includes fertiliser spreading—it is almost as if we were giving it away. But still, not many people are willing to buy.

Last year, a batch of fertiliser we produced had a cost of about 260 yuan per tonne. To open up the market, we promoted it to farmers at a price of 250 yuan per tonne. Zhang Weifeng from China Agricultural University also provided a subsidy of 150 yuan per tonne of fertiliser. This meant that farmers only had to pay 100 yuan for a tonne, and we also provided a service of spreading the fertiliser in the fields.

This year, our price for farmers growing field crops is 240–260 yuan per tonne (charged according to distance), and Zhang will still subsidise half the cost for the farmers, so that farmers only need to pay a little over 100 yuan. The price includes a fertiliser application service: not only do we help farmers spread the fertiliser in the fields, but we also provide a consulting service, for example telling farmers what the soil conditions are like this year, how much fertiliser to apply, and, within their financial means, how much organic fertiliser is appropriate.

But we cannot keep relying on Zhang’s subsidy. I hope that, once operations are stable, at a rate of 1 tonne of organic fertiliser per acre, the cost of getting the fertiliser to the fields can be reduced to 200 yuan.

In fact, for farmers, especially grain growers, it is still a bit expensive. Organic fertiliser is usually sold to growers of vegetables and cash crops, because these crops have a high output value and require good soil fertility, so farmers are willing to spend money.

Very few organic fertiliser plants target grain growers as customers. Using organic fertiliser in grain production adds another farming step and raises production costs accordingly, but the extra income from grain growing is limited. Organic fertiliser does not produce immediate results. In the first year, the net return for farmers is very low, or even negative; profits only rise as the soil improves.

I applied the organic fertiliser we produced ourselves in an experimental field of nearly 400 acres. In early March, when the wheat began to green up, the wheat treated with organic fertiliser was growing very well. Diagnosis during the green-up stage showed that the wheat had mostly reached the standard of first-class seedlings, with healthy tillering, dark green leaves, and vigorous root systems. The farmers who bought the fertiliser also carried out their own comparison trials. They said that when they went into the field and dug into the soil, they could see that the soil compaction had eased somewhat and the soil had become looser.

But farmers, especially some smallholders, often do not want to spend money and time on organic fertiliser; if they can avoid the trouble, they will. Even smaller-scale farmers go off to work once they finish farming, and farming is not their sole source of income. For those who treat farming as a profession, organic fertiliser is a better choice.

Make Soil Building Pay Off

Farmers know that organic fertiliser is good for the crops and the soil; it is probably just that their financial means are limited.

We have grown accustomed to taking from the earth recklessly. Now that land transfer is taking place, some people treat the land as disposable, farming it for just one year; whoever wants to farm it can do so next year. Their awareness of soil protection is poor. In the end, the land is left depleted, which is unhealthy.

In Northeast China, policies have now been introduced to protect black soil and ban the resale of black soil. I think that in the future, caring for the land will become a profitable business, and one that must be done.

But for now, our goal this year is to stay afloat and establish the operating model and order for the plant.

The plant has only been running for two months, and capacity is still not very high—about 400 tonnes a month. So far we have piled up nearly 800 tonnes of fertiliser. We plan to sell it to large-scale grain farmers after the wheat has been harvested, when the follow-on maize crop is planted.

As the grain planting season approaches, we produce fertiliser for field crops in large quantities. The compost is a bit coarser, because we have to move volume. As long as the quality is assured, it is good enough for field crops.

For different customer groups, I still plan to differentiate the products. For the rest of the season, we will make some fertiliser for vegetables, with more additives, such as humic acid, to improve the quality and allow the price to be raised.

Now that the organic fertiliser plant is up and running, several of us are under a lot of pressure. Soon we will also need to harden the site and complete the ground hardening, waterproofing and leak-proofing before the rainy season arrives. That will cost nearly 400,000 yuan more. I am even considering a student entrepreneurship loan; at least the interest is low.

No matter how difficult things are, we pull together and move forward. Uncle sends a lot of voice messages in the group every day, discussing and exchanging ideas, and forwards a lot of the technical information he has come across to me.

I am also uncertain about the future. I do not know whether this venture will work. In reality, I could ignore everything, wait until I graduate, and walk away. But having already joined in, I cannot leave Uncle in the lurch and walk away clean—that would be too disloyal.

– This is Foodthink’s original article No. 813  –

Unless otherwise stated, all images are provided by the author.

Oral account by Xianzi

Compiled by Ling Yu

Edited by Xiaodan

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