Multi-regional Solution to improve the environmental and Economic Sustainability of PIG manure management in the Regional of the Po and Veneto basin
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(maximum 1 page) To comply with the requirements of the Nitrates Directive (91/676/EEC) pig farmers must reduce the environmental impact of their production systems; unfortunately, this comes at a time when the profitability of the sector is very low. Limits on the amounts of nitrogen derived from livestock manure that can be applied to land in vulnerable (170 kg·ha-1) and non-vulnerable (340 kg·ha-1) zones are also increasing the demand for land on which to apply manure. In areas where pig production is prominent, a shortage of land for receiving pig manure has pushed some pig farmers to rent land from other farmers in order to safely relocate the effluent they produce. This has led to an additional production cost.
Although compliance with the Nitrates Directive is considered a priority, any solutions to promote compliance must also take into account other forms of direct and indirect environmental impacts, such as ammonia releases and energy consumption (some of which are also subject to specific regulations).
Regrettably, pig farmers have to face these problems with only limited “tools”, and even where potential approaches exist, guidance on the technical soundness and economic viability of these possible interventions is inadequate. Moreover, farmers are making individual choices about the alternatives they pursue in absence of proper planning and management of interventions at regional scales. From an environmental perspective, this ad hoc, individual approach is extremely inefficient.
Significant gaps in knowledge and practice exist in three key areas: i) technologies for sustainable animal manure management; ii) decision aids to assist farmers and administrators in identifying possible manure management solutions at farm and regional scales, and estimating the benefits and the costs of each; and iii) validation of solutions to demonstrate their effectiveness, viability and costs. This project will address these needs using an innovative approach designed to integrate regional environmental planning with the assessment of technological alternatives.
In order to validate knowledge of different technologies, while collecting the existing information of the known processes, new information will be obtained through an array of specific research projects. The aspects of manure management that will be investigated include: (1) improvement of solid-liquid separation efficiency (to support the transport of the solid fraction outside surplus areas, typically after composting); (2) evaluating the sustainability of algae production (to remove nitrogen from waste slurries and obtain a value-added biomass suitable for further use, such as energy production); (3) design and operation of biogas plants (including optimization of biomass utilization, and recycling into the digestor of a fraction of the solids separated from the digestate); (4) improvement of constructed wetlands systems performances with innovative design; (5) pilot plant assessment of low input biological nitrogen removal technologies based on the Anammox process; and (6) enhancement of nitrogen use efficiency by plants through improved knowledge of nitrogen behavior in the soil. All of these are potentially useful in the pig production chain.
The new and existing knowledge of technologies and management solutions will be collected and organized in a directly transferable form (e.g. fact sheets) understandable by non-technical audiences (e.g., farmers). This knowledge base also will be used as input for developing a Decision Support System (DSS), which will identify and verify the technical and economic viability of management solutions taking into account the
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