Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/1175/en

In today's customary litter-free indoor housing of pigs and cattle, flushed manure — slurry — arises. This mixture of water, liquid manure and dung ferments, if left untreated, into a foul-smelling, fast-acting fertilizer. The mineralization of the substances is far advanced. In biodynamic farming, the preparation of solid manure should be aimed for instead of slurry production — as far as possible. In purely grassland areas, lack of bedding frequently leaves no other choice. All the more important it then becomes to take all measures for the refinement of the slurry, just as they apply to liquid manure. As a rule, raw slurry from factory farming operations is applied to the fields untreated. Apart from its so-called nutrient contents, it is regarded as a waste product that must be disposed of — with all the consequences of odour nuisance, nitrous oxide off-gassing (laughing gas, N₂O), nitrate loading of groundwater, sealing of soil pores by mucous substances, impoverishment of the soil flora and fauna, and the reduction of the nutritive value of fodder through predominantly low-molecular protein compounds. The high esteem once accorded to animal manure has fallen victim to nutrient-based thinking. With careful refinement — above all through the biodynamic preparations — and sufficiently long storage, it can succeed by degrees to produce from slurry, too, a sustainably effective manure that works in a building way into the soil processes.