Microbes Help Manage Manure, Bringing Salty Soil Back to Life.

   The salt of the earth is a great thing—unless there’s too much of it in your soil. Excess salts can come from manure or commercial fertilizer applications, or they may be present in the soil naturally. “Too much salt is a killer,” said Dr. Jim Ladlie, founder and CEO of ProfitProAG.
    In these conditions, your crop can suffer from drought-like symptoms, even with plenty of water. “Excess salt limits plant roots’ ability to absorb water, even in wet conditions,” said Dennis Klockenga, CCA, a regenerative Ag crop and livestock consultant with ProfitProAG.
    Klockenga said. Consider potassium chloride (K). “When it’s mined from the earth, salt is naturally part of it,” Klockenga said. “For every 100 pounds of potassium chloride you apply, there’s 40 pounds of chloride salt in the application.”
    Livestock manure can also be a prime source of excess salt. “Dairy manure, for example, is high in salt,” Ladlie said. “There are 50 to 75 pounds of salt per 1,000 gallons of dairy manure.”
    Salt isn’t an inherently bad thing. “Salt isn’t the enemy,” said Chris Chodur, a livestock and manure management consultant with ProfitProAG. “It drives a lot of vital functions in the body and the soil.”
    Too much salt can be detrimental, though. “It can definitely pose health complications to the body and soil health,” Chodur said.
    When high-salt manure is applied to fields year after year, salt in the soil can soar to troublesome levels. A full soil test can tell you if salt levels are too high in your fields, said Klockenga, who recommends conducting a soil test every three years.
    “In many cases, there’s an overload of salts going into the soil,” Chodur said. “Salt is a desiccant, meaning it dries things out.”

    Excessive soluble salts limit roots’ to absorb soil water, even under wet soil conditions. Why? Soil water flows from higher osmotic potential (low salt concentration) to lower osmotic potential (high salt concentration). 

A soil with low osmotic potential, due to the higher concentration of soluble salts compared to the plant cells, will not allow plant roots to extract water from the soil, causing drought-like symptoms in the plants. “This is called the osmotic effect, and it’s harmful to plants,” Klockenga said.

    Excess salt can harm plant health and curb crop yields—unless you put biology back in the soil. This is possible through reduced tillage (which allows beneficial fungi and microbes to thrive), cover crops, and more. “Beneficial soil microbes’ first job is to remove toxins from the environment, including excess salt,” Ladlie said.

Making sense of salts
    To help understand how this works, it’s important to note that different types of salts can affect crops.
    Common soluble salts include sulfates of sodium, calcium, and magnesium, or chlorides of sodium, calcium, and magnesium. Other salts are carbonate-based. “Carbonates and bicarbonates tie up iron in the soil, making this nutrient unavailable to plants,” Klockenga said. “Iron is a major component of chlorophyll.”
    Then there are saline and sodic soils, which are commonly found in eastern North Dakota, as well as parts of South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
    Saline soil describes excessive levels of soluble salts in the soil water. Sodicity in soil is the presence of a high proportion of sodium ions. Soils are often considered sodic when the amount of sodium impacts soil structure, disrupting good soil aggregation.
    This poor physical soil structure leads to compaction and poor water infiltration into the soil—all of which hinder seed germination and restrict plant root growth. Sodic soils are also susceptible to wind and water erosion.
    If that weren’t enough, too much salt in the soil also drives weed pressure, Klockenga noted. Kochia, for example, is a salt-loving weed.
    “With more acres affected each year by salinity and sodicity, the management and alleviation of saline and sodic soils cannot be stressed more,” adds North Dakota State University, which details these issues in the fact sheet “Saline and Sodic Soils.”

Break the bonds, gain free fertilizer, boost soil health
    Since salts are comprised of two compounds—sodium and chloride—it’s possible to break that chemical bond. Beneficial soil microbes can cleave that bond in half.
    “Then they sequester the sodium ions and the chloride ions within their bodies,” Ladlie said. This curbs the undesirable effects of excess salt in the soil.
    To better understand how this works, consider these five key principles related to soil health and effective manure management:

1. Manure has two valuable components: minerals and microbes.
   
2. Minerals exist in numerous forms, including soluble or insoluble forms. Depending on their form, minerals can be available and usable by plants, or they can be unusable. In addition, minerals can be highly leachable, or organically stable and non-leachable, which has direct consequences for water quality.
   
3. Minerals can be nutrients or toxins. Minerals do not have the capacity to act upon themselves. This means they can’t randomly change into various forms. Microorganisms handle this work. The real value of manure rests with the biology of specific microbes that cause biochemical processes in the manure. “Beneficial microbes produce enzymes that act as catalysts,” Chodur said. “These catalysts can impact the bonds that hold salts together.”
   
4. Beneficial microorganisms make fertilizer readily available, plus they help manage excess salt. Beneficial microbes restructure minerals in the manure into a form that’s available to plants. Beneficial microbes retain minerals like N, P, K, carbon, hydrogen, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, iron, zinc, and more inside their bodies. After these minerals are in an organic, non-leachable, stable form, they can be made soluble for plant uptake. “Beneficial microorganisms also produce life-sustaining compounds (metabolites) that incorporate those minerals into nutrients that nourish plants,” Ladlie said.
   
5. Mineral conversion is key. The ability to convert minerals into a form that’s usable by plants is determined by biology. “You can manage manure biology,” Ladlie noted.
   

Put Manure Master to work for you
    Manure Master products from ProfitProAG offer an effective way to manage manure biology and control excess salts. Manure Master Plus – PA digests and liquefies manure, while minimizing odor, reducing top crusting and bottom solids. It also supports soil health and crop performance.
    Any manure pit or lagoon is filled with microorganisms, Chodur noted. This native population of microbes often can’t produce sufficient enzymes, however, to digest the volume of manure and break down toxins fast enough. When there aren’t enough beneficial microbes to handle the amount of manure present, a host of undesirable consequences can result, from crusting to flies to odor.
    When manure is treated with an effective microbial product, however, the added microbes help break down and remove a greater range of organic matter at a faster rate. The right bacterial cultures kick the digestive process into high gear. These aggressive digestive microbes lift the sludge zone on the bottom of a manure lagoon to the top aerobic zone, where the manure is rapidly digested and liquefied.
    During this process, the pit or lagoon is agitated, creating manure consistency from top to bottom. This also leads to improved agronomic value of the manure, since nutrients aren’t left behind in sludge on the bottom of the pit or lagoon.
    Harnessing the power of microbes helps improve the value of manure while reducing handling costs. This can make a big difference in your bottom line and provide a wealth of benefits throughout your farming operation.

Let’s talk
    All this is part of ProfitProAG’s Full-Circle System. This holistic system supports healthy crops that feed healthy livestock that provide healthy food for people. The Full-Circle System also makes farming fun again, thanks to greater sustainability and higher profit potential.
    To learn more about controlling excess salts in manure and soils using microbes, let’s start the conversation about how you can put biology back into the system. Contact us at 507-373-2550.