Organic fertilizer

Organic fertilizers are fertilizers derived from animal matter, animal excreta (manure), human excreta, and vegetable matter. (e.g. compost and crop residues). Naturally occurring organic fertilizers include animal wastes from meat processing, peat, manure, slurry, and guano.

In contrast, the majority of fertilizers used in commercial farming are extracted from minerals (e.g., phosphate rock) or produced industrially (e.g., ammonia). Organic agriculture, a system of farming, allows for certain fertilizers and amendments and disallows others; that is also distinct from this topic.

The main organic fertilizers are, peat, animal wastes (often from slaughter houses), plant wastes from agriculture, and treated sewage sludge.

By some definitions, minerals are distinctly separate from organic materials. However, certain organic fertilizers and amendments are mined, specifically guano and peat, and other mined minerals are fossil products of animal activity, such as greensand (anaerobic marine deposits), some limestones (fossil shell deposits) and some rock phosphates, (fossil guano). Peat, a precursor to coal, offers no nutritional value to the plants, but improves the soil by aeration and absorbing water; it is sometimes credited as being the most widely used organic fertilizer and by volume is the top organic amendment.

These materials include the products of the slaughter of animals. Bloodmeal, bone meal, hides, hoofs, and horns are typical precursors.fish meal, and feather meal are other sources.

Chicken litter, which consists of chicken manure mixed with sawdust, is an organic fertilizer that has been shown to better condition soil for harvest than synthesized fertilizer. Researchers at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) studied the effects of using chicken litter, an organic fertilizer, versus synthetic fertilizers on cotton fields, and found that fields fertilized with chicken litter had a 12% increase in cotton yields over fields fertilized with synthetic fertilizer. In addition to higher yields, researchers valued commercially sold chicken litter at a $17/ton premium (to a total valuation of $78/ton) over the traditional valuations of $61/ton due to value added as a soil conditioner.

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