Economic Potential of Compost Amendment as an Alternative to Irrigation in Maine Potato Production Systems.docVIP

American Journal of Plant Sciences, 2013, 4, 237-244 /10.4236/ajps.2013.42031 Published Online February 2013 (/journal/ajps) Economic Potential of Compost Amendment as an Alternative to Irrigation in Maine Potato Production Systems* John M. Halloran , Robert P. Larkin , Sherri L. DeFauw , O. Modesto Olanya , Zhongqi He 1 1 2 1 1 1 USDA Agricultural Research Service, New England Plant, Soil, and Water Laboratory, Orono, ME, USA; Department of Agricul- 2 tural Economics and Rural Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA Email: john.halloran@ Received September 29 , 2012; revised November 3 , 2012; accepted November 10 , 2012 th rd th ABSTRACT Potato productivity in the northeastern US has been relatively constant for over 50 years, raising questions about what factors are limiting productivity. Research was initiated in 2004 to identify key constraints to potato productivity by evaluating Status Quo (SQ), Soil Conserving (SC), and Soil Improving (SI) cropping systems under both rainfed and irrigated management, and it was found that addition of compost or irrigation substantially increased yield. In this study, we employed partial budgeting to determine cost differences and their impact on net revenue for these cropping systems. Differences in systems were primarily associated with rotation length, tillage operations, compost and application ex- penses, and water management practices. When compost (as composted dairy manure) was annually applied at 19 Mg·ha ?1 and evaluated over the entire 3-year crop rotation cycle, the compost-amended rainfed SI system was more expen