Waste Management of Intensive Livestock Production: CHINA - THAILAND

State of the work

The projects in China and Thailand began in February 2000. In Thailand, the project is strongly supported by the Department of Livestock Development (DLD), where a Livestock Environment Control Section (LECS) has been created especially to tackle the environmental impact of livestock production.

Regarding implementation of the project, the main steps of phase one have been achieved. An economic assessment of the use of wastewater on cropping lands is still required together with the identification of policy options for the implementation of the AWI concept. The project will finish on September 2001, with the preparation of a final report by DLD.

In Jiangsu Province, China, the project was finished in March 2001. The Research Centre for Rural Economy (RCRE) is already preparing the final report.

Main primary outputs

Manure management and nutrient flux model

In both projects, the technical assessment of the manure and wastewater handling, the analysis of the present nutrient management and it's environmental impact, the identification of technical options and designs for waste collection, storage and treatment have been undertaken. The main conclusions are:

• An improved manure management (especially focussing on liquid manure and slurry) with full utilisation of the manure as fertiliser is a precondition for sustainable livestock growth;
• traditional system with in-house separation of solid and liquid manure is to be conserved. Besides, greate care should be given to reduce the dilution of their liquid manure by using less water in the animal houses;
• appropriate technologies and economics for non-leaking of liquid manure, transport and spreading of liquid manure should be studied;
• the values calculated for individual farms indicate that on some farms there still is a considerable potential of reducing excretions by content of the feed to the recommended values.

A beta version of a Nutrient Flux Model, was demonstrated to the national teams. The final version including modifications according to suggestions it is now available. Updates based on the sampling results from the projects will be provided.

Spatial analysis for environmental impact assessment and zoning

The calculation of nutrient balances, the study of livestock activities geographical pattern, and the assessment of environmental resilience showed that:

• There is a general overload of nutrient over the studied territories, which must already be responsible for nutrient building up in soils, and water pollution. This situation could be disastrous if livestock production continues its strong growth without improving the manure management;
• there is a need for land use planning, defining a regional equilibrium of the nutrient balance, taking into account environmental resilience and rural development;
• the distribution pattern of industrial livestock activities is clearly defined by transport costs optimisation, and can therefore be modelised;
• in the Thai case study, there is segregation between cropping (east), and livestock activities (north-west), implying nutrient surpluses in the latter, and need for mineral fertilisers in the former.

Policy options

An inventory of available policy instruments has been carried out with the following results:

• awareness - Code of Good Agricultural Practice;
• land-livestock balance; for example in Jiangsu, the land/livestock could be formulated as a maximum of 1,7 livestock units per hectare (one livestock unit could be defined as 30 fattening pigs or four sows including piglets up to 20 kg live weight per year);
• development of contractual arrangements;
• environmental authorisation of livestock farms;
• zoning or regional planning;
• economic instruments;
• basic Environmental Regulation for Agriculture and Livestock Production.

The national workshops

The national workshops gave the opportunity to present the project to a wider audience: National administrations (various ministries) and local stakeholders (local administrations and government officials, universities, pig producers), and thus to:

• provide an overview on environmental problems of pig production in the regions;
• present the project's conclusions and recommendations;
• discuss and validate technology and policy options for AWI.

The national workshop confirmed the interest on the AWI approach and the relevance of the project in terms of timing and location. The importance of the projects is manifest since the environmental impact of industrial livestock systems is demonstrated, and has been acknowledged by the different stakeholders and, the industrial sector activities are expected to continue increasing in the project's areas.

Further developments

In both projects, the implementation of a second phase is proposed, in order to:

• implement field experiments in some demonstration farms; test and demonstrate the technical options for manure handling, and the feasibility of the AWI concept;
• formulate and test policies at farm and regional level;
• develop furthermore the spatial analisys and planning activities (modelling livestock production activities, analysis of the environmental impact and environment resilience);
• carry out capacity building, and the build of task forces to promote and implement the AWI concept.