A North Carolina State University student spent the summer in Spain researching how composted dairy manure could replace synthetic fertilizer while also storing carbon in soil. The project, based at Universitat Politècnica de València, used R coding to build a model of a semiarid crop rotation and estimate how compost applications affect carbon removal. The work aims to give farmers data they can use to shift toward a more closed-loop nutrient system.\n\nThe research is still at the student project stage, so there are no yield or per-hectare carbon numbers yet. But the model and code were shared with the host farm and lab, meaning other operations can test the assumptions locally. The article highlights a practical angle for sustainable agriculture: turning manure from a waste problem into a measurable input for soil health and emissions reduction.
