Animal manure utilisation

A new approach to animal manure utilisation
by Marino Perelli & Daniel Franco

From: Proceeding of the third congress of the European Society of Agronomy
Abano-Padova, settembre 1994, p. 828-829

In modern agricultural cropping system, the animal manure has turned from a precious resource into a waste product (van der Meer et al. 1987). To prevent detrimental effects on the environment, most countries have restricted the use of animal manure, introducing limits to the number or to the weight of animals per unit surface, sometimes according to soil characteristics.

Many Authors have drawn maps that describe the quantity of animal manure that may be applied to the different soils, but land utilisation, and the consequent nutrient uptake, change more quickly according to economical and political situations, than with environment and/or soil conditions. Year by year, EU politics may change the importance and extension of different crops.

Therefore we need a system that gives up-to-date information about best quantities of manure, following changes in land utilisation (Perelli e Franco 1992).

Methods
A new approach was developed to know at once optimum quantities of animal manure (differing for kind of stock, feeding technique, etc.) according to (i) crop and agronomic technique, (ii) environmental risk of nutrient leaching, (iii) technique of manure distribution, as shown in the figure.

The system uses a series of fixed and updating data base, a specific software (Dafne® 1) to compute optimum quantities of animal manure (from the agronomic and environmental viewpoint) and a Geographic Information System (GIS) for locating and representing results.

Flow Chart of Dafne(r) 1
Flow Chart of Dafne® 1

Results
This system has been applied to the Venice municipal area, to reduce non-point source pollution of Venice Lagoon (Perelli et al. 1993). Several applications showed great differences in optimum quantities of animal manure, according to change of soils, crops and application techniques.

The table shows an example of the variability of the best liquid manure amount, according to crop and animal type, in a sandy-clay, alkaline soil, with a low content in organic matter.

	Type and amount (m3/ha) of liquid manure
Crop	Dairy	Veal	Swine	Layer	Rabbit
Corn, silage	131.3	112.6	152.7	24.1	35.0
Corn, grain	112.6	96.5	130.9	20.7	30.0
Sugar-beet	50.0	42.9	58.2	9.2	13.3
Soybean	25.0	21.4	19.1	4.6	6.7
Barley	18.8	16.1	21.8	3.4	5.0

References

Perelli M. e D. Franco. 1992. Misuse of land capability in the Venetian plain. p. 286-287 In: Proceeding of the second congress of the European Society of Agronomy. Warwick, agosto 1992.
Perelli M. e D. Franco. 1994. «Dafne 1»: una nuova metodologia per la razionalizzazione dell'impiego dei liquami zootecnici. L'informatore agrario, 50(32):46-53.
Perelli M., D. Franco e D. Barbin. 1993. I reflui delle attività zootecniche nel territorio del Comune di Venezia. Arsenale editrice, Venezia. pp. 72.
van der Meer HG et al. (Ed.) 1987 Animal Manure on grassland and fodder crops. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

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