Development of Guidelines for Animal Waste Land Application to Minimize Water Quality Impacts

Land application of manure compost is considered one of the widely-used animal waste management practices. Many livestock farms adopt composting for their animal waste disposal and apply the compost to crop fields. While standard rates have been established based on researches with respect to land application of manure compost recently, there have been few discussions on water quality impact of the application. Water quality impact should be taken into account in land applications of manure compost. In this study, management practices were proposed based on the investigation of water quality of leachate from manure compost under rainfall simulation, field studies, and monitoring runoff water quality from farm fields after land application of animal waste. The concentrations of major water quality parameters of the leachate were significantly high, whereas those of runoff from soils after tillage for soil incorporation, were not affected by the application based on a series of experiments. Runoff water from farm fields after land application also showed high concentrations of pollutants. Appropriate management practices should be employed to minimize pollutant loading from manure applied fields. Proposed major management practices include 1) application of recommended amounts, 2) proper tillage for complete soil and manure incorporation, 3) field management to prevent excessive soil erosion, 4) complete diversion of inflow into the field from outside, 5) implementation of vegetative buffer strips near boundaries, and 6) prevention of direct discharge of runoff water front fields Into streams.

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