Turning Farm Waste into Fertility

Debbie adding microorganisms (EM*) to promote fermentation.

We’ve started a new project looking at better ways to manage livestock waste on farm while improving soil health and reducing pollution.

Manure and slurry are valuable sources of nutrients, but how they are stored and spread can lead to losses of nitrogen and carbon into the air and water. Our aim is to develop a simple circular system that keeps more of those nutrients on the farm and puts them back into the soil where they are needed.

The project will test two approaches. First, we will trial a Bokashi-style fermented composting system, using farmyard manure, slurry solids, straw and yard scrapings to produce a stable, nutrient-rich fertiliser. Second, we will experiment with Biochar filtration, using biochar to capture nutrients from the liquid fraction of slurry that might otherwise be lost through runoff or leaching.

Over the coming years we will monitor how these systems affect soil health, crop and grass growth, greenhouse gas emissions and water quality. There are three dairy farms involved, plus RAU and Reading university doing the testing, and two companies one specialising in biochar the other bokashi.  This project started with Debbie's idea to improve soil health by making slurry into a better product.At Norton Court Farm, we are making bokashi compost from solid part of the slurry and also starting to build test filters to see how the biochar works capturing the nutrients from liquid.