Manure is a gift and a curse for dairy farmers. It becomes the dark cloud for dairy operations, being the source of time constraints, nutrient runoff and financial strains. Finding methods and approaches that bring consistency and flexibility to applications is often hard to find. That was, until conservation agriculture.

The way nutrients are applied to cropland has changed significantly over time, with adoption of various precision agricultural practices such as nutrient management planning, grid soil sampling and variable rate application technology. However, the way we handle manure nutrients has undergone little change.