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The Livestock
and Poultry Environmental Learning Center 
,
a National Facilitation Project of the NIFA National Integrated
Water Quality Program, and The
National Center for Manure & Animal Waste Management ,
funded by the USDA Fund for Rural America, are important projects
helping USDA address this issue.
Treatment, Storage, and Collection of Manure
All
livestock and poultry feeding operations need to treat, store,
and collect animal waste properly to prevent excess nutrients and
pathogens from entering ground and surface water. Research through
NIFA and the Land Grant Systme is being conducted to assess
and improve the treatment, storage, and collection of manure
to protect and improve water quality.
Mechanical, Biological, and Chemical Treatment Technologies
Alternative manure collection, treatment, and storage technologies
are being explored and implemented to prevent water quality degradation.
Accomplishments:
University
of Tennessee researchers (funding from UT Dairy
Experiment Station) developed and tested a standard
performance testing protocol for mechanical manure solids separators
.
Their results illustrate the importance of having performance data
specific to the manure with to be used.
Methods
of in-house pasteurization of broiler litter are
being evaluated through Louisiana State University.
This method reduced pathogen counts of broiler litter that will
allow the litter to be recycled/reused within poultry houses thereby
reducing the amount of poultry waste produced each year.
Researchers
at North Carolina State University are
assessing an alternative
swine waste treatment technology 
to
help manage nutrients. After 12 months,
laboratory-scale reactor studies show that intermittent aeration
reactors can accomplish over 80% removal of nitrogen (N) from swine
wastewater.
The implementation of sampling and analysis of stored manure is necessary to develop proper manure application rates. The goals of a project at the University of Kentucky are to encourage the adoption of advanced animal nutrient management strategies animal producers, and to assess cooperator acceptance of these practices, cost of implementation, and environmental benefits. (Higgins et al., 2008)
Best Management Practices (BMPs)
Researchers are designing, improving, and testing
animal waste best management practices (BMPs) to retain excess
nutrients and
pathogens before it negatively impacts water quality.
Accomplishments:
A
soil infiltration and wetland system (Lorimor
et al., 2003) to treat open beef feedlot runoff was examined at Iowa State
University. This passive treatment system could be an effective
alternative
to total containment and land application for open feedlots
in humid areas with tile-drainable soils.
A
literature synthesis of
the effectiveness
of buffer strips on nutrient movement from land was completed by
Kansas State University Extension personnel (much of the research included
in this synthesis was from Land-Grant Universities). One conclusion drawn from
this synthesis was that vegetative buffers are very effective in removing sediments
and sediment-bound pollutants. Vegetative buffers are less effective
at removing water soluble contaminant; they tend to remove
water soluble contaminants proportional to the infiltration rate of the
water.
Texas
Cooperative Extension served as a lead agency in the Upper
North Bosque River Project .
One of the research results of this project was that filter
strips with a minimum width of 35 feet could dramatically reduce phosphorus
(P) losses in runoff. During the project, buffer strips were
installed at 167 locations on over 140 acres to protect adjacent creeks and
streams.
Researchers
in the Heartland Region found that narrow
grass hedges were
very effective and relatively inexpensive means to significantly reduce the
transport of
P and N in runoff where manure was applied.
Texas A&M is developing a portable On-Farm Manure to Energy Conversion System. The “on-farm bio-digestion and gasification” process is a BMP that combines digestion of liquid manure with thermal conversion to digest and stabilize nutrients, reduce the volume of liquid manure by 80 percent, kill most pathogens and generate fuel for energy production. An additional benefit of this BMP is that the byproducts of this process has the potential to be used as fertilizer.
The objective of research at the University of Nebraska was to determine the effect of setback distance on phosphorus and sediment in runoff. Properly managed setbacks improve water quality by acting as filters for water passing over or through the soil toward a water resource. Implementing No-manure setback application as BMP to reduce phosphorus and sediment loss, is highly associated with time of manure application, rainfall events and characteristics of runoff contributing area.
For more information on the current state
of knowledge in the area of treatment, storage and collection of
manure, refer to the
following white paper summaries:
Manure
Management Strategies/Technologies
Treatment
Lagoons for Animal Agriculture
Both of these summaries were produced by the National
Center for Manure and Animal Waste Management funded through
a USDA NIFA Fund for Rural America Grant.
Indicates
work supported by the USDA-NIFA National
Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program .
The intent of this page is not to catalogue all activities but rather to indicate the types of research activities in the Animal Waste Management theme across the U.S.
