City looks for new farm faces as biosolids customers

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BY ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

Lancaster County farmers struggling to afford the high cost of commercial fertilizer might want to come to the Lancaster County Extension Education Center today to consider an option that results in a small payment, rather than a big financial headache.

The city of Lincoln is looking to pay a few new farm faces to accept for thousands of tons of biosolids generated through its sewage treatment system each year and distributed through a land application program begun in 1992.

The cost-conscious and the curious might want to get to 444 Cherrycreek Road early for a 3:30 p.m. event.

“We’re always looking for new people,” said Barb Ogg of the extension office, but “we have more demand for it than supply, so it’s pretty popular.”

The average Lincoln resident’s awareness of what happens to the city’s treated waste likely hasn’t changed much since 1992.

“It’s flush it and forget it,” Ogg said.

But awareness on the agricultural end is up for sewage treatment leftovers that had been taking up landfill space.

Assisted by the extension office, the city is having an easier time finding customers for a potent fertilizer option from an annual stockpile that reached 40,000 tons last year.

The bids farmers make to accept a certain amount at a certain price have gotten lower as word has spread about the boost biosolids give to corn, wheat, grain sorghum, alfalfa and other crops.

“It’s a good program,” Ogg said. “Basically, what you’re doing is allowing nutrients to go back into the soil where they came from.”

 Omaha, Denver and Milwaukee are examples of bigger cities with similar agricultural connections in place. And smaller area towns, including Denton and Waverly, are among more recent additions.

The father-son team of Wayne and Dave Nielsen are among the few biosolids customers who go all the way back to the beginning of the Lincoln program.

“It’s especially helpful on what I guess you would call poor-quality land,” Wayne Nielsen said, “glacial land that’s low in phosphorous.”

In a way, biosolids bring the recent history of fertilizer full circle — from livestock manure many farmers once used, through anhydrous ammonia and other commercial preparations, and back to a natural nutrient choice.

“It’s more helpful on certain crops than others,” Nielsen said. “It’s good on grain sorghum, good on wheat. In fact, I would classify it as excellent on those two crops.”

For corn, “it’s certainly not negative, but you don’t see as great a response on corn as you do on other crops.”

Some farmers decide it’s too much work to load a manure spreader from the pile typically left at the edge of a field.

Since 1992, “we’ve probably worked with about 55-60 farmers total,” Ogg said. “But in any one year we probably work with 15-18 on average.”

Grant money that allowed the city to buy and lease out manure spreaders to farmers attracted more customers.

So far, the city has not had to look beyond the county to find more acres.

“This is a resource we’d like to keep in Lancaster County as long as we can,” Ogg said.

Reach Art Hovey at (402) 523-4949 or ahovey@alltel.net.