March 12, 2007:
"Composting is not the same as stockpiling manure," says Virginia Nelson, a composting researcher at the AgTech Centre in Lethbridge. The primary difference is oxygen. Oxygen, when combined with a good carbon source, nitrogen and moisture, produces the ideal environment for microbes to digest and process the components of manure. This aerobic process ultimately results in compost, a less offensive product that poses less potential harm to the environment.
Stockpiled manure decomposes without oxygen so it still has much of the nutrient quality of raw manure. It also retains much of the volume, odour and bacteria and weed seed issues associated with raw manure.