Strategies to reduce nutrient pollution from manure management in China

Abstract

As the demand for livestock products continues to increase in China, so too does the challenge of managing increasing quantities of manure. Urgent action is needed to control point source (housing, storage and processing) and diffuse (field application) pollution and improve the utilization of manure nutrients and organic matter. Here, we review strategies to improve management at each stage of the manure management chain and at different scales. Many strategies require infrastructure investment, e.g., for containment of all manure fractions. Engineering solutions are needed to develop advanced composting systems with lower environmental footprints and design more efficient nutrient stripping technologies. At the field-scale, there is an urgent need to develop a manure nutrient recommendation system that accounts for the range of manure types, cropping systems, soils and climates throughout China. At the regional scale, coordinated planning is necessary to promote recoupling of livestock and cropping systems, and reduce nutrient accumulation in regions with little available landbank, while minimizing the risk of pollution swapping from one region to another. A range of stakeholders are needed to support the step change and innovation required to improve manure management, reduce reliance on inorganic fertilizers, and generate new business opportunities.

Keywords

cropping farms / livestock production / manure management chain / recoupling / nutrient loss

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge support from the Academy for Agricultural Green Development, the UK-China Virtual Joint Centres on Nitrogen, N-Circle and CINAg, funded by the Newton Fund via UK BBSRC/NERC (BB/N013484/1 and BB/N013468/1, respectively), and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Sustainable Agriculture Innovation Network (SAIN). We also acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31772393) for supporting Yong Hou.

Author Contributions Statement

DRC instigated this paper, drafting the structure and intended content. All authors contributed equally to the writing of this paper.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

David R. Chadwick, John R. Williams, Yuelai Lu, Lin Ma, Zhaohai Bai, Yong Hou, Xinping Chen, and Thomas H. Misselbrook declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2019. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)