Animal Manure as Alternatives to Commercial Fertilizers in the Southern High Plains of the United States: How Oklahoma Can Manage Animal Waste

The Southern High Plains (SHP) in the United States is one of the leading livestock producing regions in the US (Wright et al., 2010). More than 7 million fed cattle, which accounts for about 30% of the nation’s production, are currently marketed annually in this region (Biermacher et al., 2005). Most recognize the Oklahoma Panhandle as the epicenter of the 1930’s Dust Bowl in the U.S., but over the past two decades swine production in the Oklahoma Panhandle has increased 164 fold as illustrated in Figure 1 (Lowitt, 2006). Today the Panhandle is one of the more important swine producing regions in the U.S (Park et al., 2010). As elsewhere in the U.S., e.g. Iowa and North Carolina, the exponential rise in swine numbers was from the intensification of swine production, i.e. including concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and other large scale feeding operations (Williams, 2006). The Oklahoma Senate Bill 518 was passed in 1991, which eased restrictions on large concentrated animal feeding operations (Carreira et al., 2006). A similar story has taken place in Eastern Oklahoma, which experienced a similar exponential growth of poultry production in the 1990’s (Fochta, 2002). Approximately 48.2 million birds were produced in Oklahoma during 2007 (NASS, 2007). Over the past two decades, the continuous application of poultry litter, a mixture of bedding material and manure, on some poultry farm’s soils has led to a build-up of phosphorus (M3-P), at times exceeding 150 and 200 mg kg-1 (Penn et al., 2011). Because of current environmental regulations that prevent further P application once thresholds are met, there now exists a need to move the poultry litter off-farm (Van Horn, et al., 1996; Collins and Basden, 2006). The large-scale animal feeding operations in beef cattle, swine, and poultry production have played a major role in the economy of the southern high plains region (Carreira et al., 2007). The introduction of the animal production industries has provided a more profitable alternative to traditional agricultural enterprises in the region, such as wheat and stocker cattle, which have struggled to remain competitive with producers in the more profitable Corn Belt. For instance, the swine industry’s economic importance in the Oklahoma