Organic Farming

The agricultural sector is becoming more and more concerned with implementing environmentally friendly practices in order to enhance environmental quality and lessen environmental degradation. The paper presented here is an identification of costs and benefits associated with applying ammonium nitrate, layer hen litter at 7 ton/ha, and layer hen litter at 14 ton/ha as fertilizers to greenhouse grown strawberry and lettuce, through the utilization of the Net Present Value (NPV) technique which compares benefits and costs. The results of this technique indicated that, after deducing costs from benefits, layer hen litter at 7 ton/ha or 14 ton/ha was found to be more profitable than ammonium nitrate. However, for environmental safety, the lower rate of layer hen litter (7 ton/ha) is preferred to the higher rate (14 ton/ha) because it is less than the critical 13 ton/ha, considered to cause water contamination by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA).