Transregional poopline
United States agriculture currently raises feed crops in the eastern Midwest region, and cattle on feedlots in the western Midwest. This makes economic sense in many respects, but it causes grave ecological problems. Farmers used to keep livestock on their grain farms, where the manure fed the crops that fed the animals, but we have now separated the two parts of this natural cycle. Today grain farmers must import fertility in the form of expensive synthetic fertilizers, and feedlot operators are left with a toxic amount of animal waste that no one has figured out how to dispose of in a responsible way. Greenhouse gases are emitted at both ends of the chain, in the production of synthetic fertilizers and from the anaerobic decomposition of animal waste.
Trucking the animal waste from the feedlots to the fields where it's needed is not a viable option. Because the waste comes mixed with lots of water, it is heavy and cumbersome, and it costs a lot to haul the waste hundreds of miles by truck or train to fertilize distant fields. Farmers nearer to the feedlots have often already saturated their fields with nutrients from the animal waste, and don't want any more.
The Transregional Poopline project proposes a solution to this ecological problem. If the US were to install a pipeline from animal production areas to grain production areas, we could somewhat close the nutrient cycle. Once constructed, the pipeline would use little labor or energy to move nutrient-rich liquid animal waste from feedlot states like Kansas to corn belt states like Illinois. It would operate much like the Alaskan oil pipeline, but over a much shorter distance. The liquid nature of feedlot waste, which prevents its profitable transport in vehicles, would favor transport by such a pipeline.
A pilot pipeline would run from the area of greatest feedlot concentration (around western Kansas) to the area with the highest use of synthetic fertilizers in Iowa or Illinois. Feedlots would be required to hook up to the pipeline and pump their waste away. On the other end, farmers would organize themselves into special fertilizer usage districts. From the main pipeline would branch off smaller, regional pipelines, and from there county, township, and field-level pipelines. Users would take turns applying pipeline fertilizer to their fields, and divide the cost of pipeline maintenance and operation at local, regional, and national levels.
If the pilot pipeline were successful, more lines could be incorporated, linking other livestock-producing regions (like the chicken farms of the South or the hog farms of Iowa) and other crop-producing regions (the Southern cotton belt or Michigan's orchards and vegetable fields). There could also be a line East of the Appalachians to spread North Carolina's hog waste to the farms and gardens of the Eastern seaboard and Florida.
This project would reduce pollution in the cattle feedlot areas, partially replace fossil-fuel-based fertilizers in the Corn Belt, and generally close the cycle of nutrients and organic matter between field and livestock.
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