Farm groups insist litter needed as fertilizer

Washington-The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assn. (NCBA) are speaking out in support of the use of poultry litter as fertilizer, which has been branded in a suit brought by the attorney general of Oklahoma as a practice polluting a valuable watershed. In a friend-of-the-court legal brief filed in Oklahoma Federal District Court, the two groups declared that spreading such manure on farm fields provides farmers an important source of natural fertilizer for their crops. At the same time, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) cautioned that Oklahoma’s federal lawsuit against Arkansas poultry producers has statewide and national importance that could result in changes to federal law. If a federal judge rules that applying chicken litter as fertilizer is subject to federal regulation or regulation across state lines, Pryor was reported as saying in a press interview at a recent event in Rogers, Ark., “that would be a huge wake-up call to every farm-state member of Congress.” A decision in favor of Oklahoma would set a precedent for regulation of all forms of animal wastes from farms, and could also be used to make a case for regulation of runoff from all sorts of farming activity, Pryor said. “This isn’t just chickens or northwest Arkansas involved here,” Pryor insisted. “It’s all of Arkansas and agriculture all over the country.” AFBF General Counsel Julie Ann Potts declared that the spreading of manure and chicken litter is already highly regulated under the Clean Water Act and state laws. “Adding regulations on the use of fertilizer is unnecessary and does not help improve the environment,” Potts insisted. She said the Oklahoma attorney general wants the federal court to issue an emergency injunction to ban the spreading of chicken litter under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act as part of his broader strategy to gain damages under Superfund laws for alleged watershed pollution from chicken litter. The AFBF and NCBA filed the joint brief because an adverse ruling could spark attempts in other states to ban the use of manure as fertilizer. Farm bureaus in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma have filed separate friend-of-the-court briefs.