Organic milk seems to be increasing in our grocery stores, and new findings suggest that these organic dairy cows also produce top-grade manure.

According to recent findings by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists, this manure potentially will help replenish soil nutrients and reduce the amount of pollutants that makes it way into water sources close by.

These cows live and thrive among manure and compost rather than manufactured fertilizers; this, then, might affect how the nutrients are converted into soil for crops.

The team used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), an especially effective tool to pinpoint minuscule differences between the two. In comparing the two manures, they discovered that commercial dairy farms had a different concentration in nutrients, metals, and minerals.

Organic dairy had higher levels of phosphorus, calcium, potassium, manganese, zinc and magnesium. It also contained more types of phosphorus, found in association with calcium and magnesium. These types of phosphorus are slower to release nutrients, and are less apt to be washed away from water.

Read the full story from the Agricultural Research Service

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