Fibrophos v Sewage sludge

Renaultman

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Darlington
Tigerfert is no longer available.

P-Grow is the best and most concentrated form of phosphate fertiliser. It’s incinerated bone meal rather than incinerated poultry manure like Fibrophos.

There is no smell or pathogen risk at all and it’s quite strictly regulated so you know what you’re getting.

Compared to the steeply rising costs of TSP it’s also very well priced.
Is P grow similar to Kalfos? I'm sure that is just burnt bones?
 
Is P grow similar to Kalfos? I'm sure that is just burnt bones?

Similar yes, but from what I’ve seen of Kalfos it’s dusty like cement so difficult to spread, whereas P-Grow is more gritty with a slight moisture to it.

Yes, I’m biased towards Fibrophos and P-grow, but I’m being honest too, just telling you my experience.
 

Renaultman

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Darlington
Similar yes, but from what I’ve seen of Kalfos it’s dusty like cement so difficult to spread, whereas P-Grow is more gritty with a slight moisture to it.

Yes, I’m biased towards Fibrophos and P-grow, but I’m being honest too, just telling you my experience.
Must be honest, I am not that confident in the quality of spread and if the price has doubled I may look at other alternatives.
 

Mounty

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
Many soils are excessively high in Calcium. Farmers buy a product like Kalfos because they want the phosphate but don't consider the problem of adding more calcium to their soil. I believe the real problem is that high calcium causes lockup of Mg as Renaultman just eluded to. Fine if you understand your soils but many won't/don't.
Yep, agreed. But there is a lot of soils that are short of Ca too. I see plenty of soil tests results to support this.
Fibrophos is typically 18% Ca and P Grow 40%, so applied at say 500kg/ha, you're talking of 90 to 200kg/ha of Ca being applied, it's not a huge amount, but very beneficial if required.
 

Luke Cropwalker

Member
Arable Farmer
We have used quite a bit of Kalfos previously but given the physical limitations of the product I think it is too expensive after the recent price rise. If the EA continue their current mindset regarding sewage sludge then very little sludge will be spread to land going forward.
 

Luke Cropwalker

Member
Arable Farmer
I think we should all boycott Kalfos until the price drops back to a reasonable level. It is not an easy product to manage or use, let's not forget if it doesn't get spread on land it will have to be disposed in land fill which will cost the producer.
 
It does make you wonder, if poultry litter can be burnt for power, why can't sewage? You would destroy all the solids and microplastics doing this, and the stuff would be lighter to cart and smell less when spread? Maybe it is too dense or wet to make it economic?

Always rated P grow and fibrophos products. Kinder on the soil than dumping TSP on it, too.
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
I assumed that sewage farm along by Earls Barton was where the organic veg boxes that get delivered by van came from?
Tbh, when the landfill was operating next to us, when I was a kid, the best tomatoes ever used to grow where they emptied the sewage tanker in emergencies, if local works had a problem. Seed burden in raw shite must have been huge....

Used to see that here when they spread unprocessed liquid. Long ceased :)
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
It does make you wonder, if poultry litter can be burnt for power, why can't sewage? You would destroy all the solids and microplastics doing this, and the stuff would be lighter to cart and smell less when spread? Maybe it is too dense or wet to make it economic?

Always rated P grow and fibrophos products. Kinder on the soil than dumping TSP on it, too.

Sewage cake is 20% dry matter, so needs a large energy input to dry it out sufficiently. Fibrophos etc is ash from a power station. There is the question of what you do with the heavy metals in sewage too.
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
Sewage cake is 20% dry matter, so needs a large energy input to dry it out sufficiently. Fibrophos etc is ash from a power station. There is the question of what you do with the heavy metals in sewage too.

Funnily, we did have dried sewage cake many years ago from a plant that was trialling the process, using slef generated methane I believe, to dry the product. Clean and non smelly. I am pretty sure it would burned in an incinerator initially, however, it soaked water like a sponge when left for a few days by accident.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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