Does India use Dung Beetles to wipe out excess manure?

Question

I heard that dung beetles feed on manure for nutrients and this in turn wipes out flies and other insects that can act as carriers of disease and also cause social havoc.

If India doesn't, why can't we?

Answer 1

We do not have too much manure to start with.

If all the  manure produced by animals fed from a given area of land were returned to that area of land, we would still need more manure to keep the land properly fed.

What happens in America is that animal food is transported long distances, fed in barns and feedlots, and it is too costly to ship the manure back where the food came from.

The solution to that problem is to have the feedlots small, and close to the land that provides the food for the animals, so that returning the manure to the land remains feasible.

Manure should not be a waste product but a precious resource for growing more crops.

Answer 2

No, they don't. Dung beetles are a part of solution, however, in India they are not in numbers and sizes as they are in Africa. Dung beetle serve by taking dung deep underground, food for deep rooted plants and grasses as well as for grabs of dung beetle.

Flies and mosquitoes out number dung beetle by a very great margin.

Answer 3

In an agricultural system of livestock production which is considered extensive especially in comparison to natural systems there is no way that there could be enough dung beetles to deal with the excesses in animal manure. The land would be so over run with beetles (well before ever getting remotely close to equilibrium) and the resulting imbalance in the environment and animal populations would be so severe that the damage would be worse than the problem. It's enough that much of the manure goes gratefully back into the land in a sustainable system of soil replenishment. The dung beetle could never reach such huge populations anyway even if they had all the manure they needed. Natures fine balance is not generally that flexible and any human intervention at that level will, as it always has in the past, be a catastrophy more immense than we have ever seen.