Algoritmo per la gestione dei reflui zootecnici nel Sud Italia
Author(s)
Pindozzi, Stefania
Date Issued
May 28, 2013
Type
Doctoral Thesis
Abstract
Buffalo husbandry plays an important role in Campania region's economy with over than 260,000 buffalo heads reared, the industry contributes an annual turnover of 500 million Euros.
Agricultural lands suitable for livestock production, in Campania region, are limited to both Caserta and Salerno provinces' plains. Consequently the number of head per hectare is very high. Therefore there is a big challenge in terms of manure management, as in all the European country where there are intensive livestock farms.
Recent studies have shown a discrepancy between the NPS pollution in the monitoring wells and the actual number of buffalo in Caserta province. Results showed presence of nitrate pollution in shallow groundwater, but the values were not comparable to the nitrate concentrations characteristic of other strongly agricultural systems in Europe.
Starting from these results, new studies have characterized the composition of buffalo manure quantifying the actual nitrogen and phosphorous content, its agronomic value and consequently the real propensity of farmers to use it.
Basing on this background, the present work concerns about buffalo manure management in Campania region (South Italy), analyzing the possibility to manage the farms according to the regulations, the agronomic requirements, evaluating also the possible treatment techniques. Legislation and management techniques are discussed in detail, with reference to specific farm near Salerno. Moreover a management software, developed with Visual Basic®, is introduced. The software provides all the calculations required in the "communication form for the manure utilization", which is the regional instrument for manure management monitoring.
The first part of the thesis show that the cost for spreading activities are expensive (1,4 - 2,3 €/m ³ of manure) compared to the actual nitrogen content that is about 2 kg/m³. This difference between the cost for manure application to the land and the low agronomic value, is the reason why the many farmers don't apply manure management in a correct way.
Therefore the research is aimed at evaluating management strategies to improve the possibilities for agronomic use. The main thesis is that optimizing the use of the scraper in the
farmyard, limiting it to certain times of the year, it is possible to increase natural manure evaporation and therefore significantly reduce the volumes to be handled.
With this aim, this study compares the output of two empirical models for buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) manure evaporation, with measured data, in order to evaluate models performance. The two models were developed by adapting the potential evapotranspiration of Tombesi-Lauciani and Hargreaves. The data used for assessing the real manure evaporation in situ, were derived from the manure weights recorded by an experimental platform, equipped with load cells, installed within the farmyard. The experiments were carried out in Serre (SA), in the South of Italy in the period from 23 of June to 24 of September. The more efficient model, in terms of closeness between estimates and measures, was implemented over a period of 5 years, allowing annualized calculation of evaporation.
On this basis, an optimal management strategy was established, which corresponds to maximizing the manure evaporation, minimizing the use of the scraper from the 100th day of the year (DOY) to the 250th DOY.
This leads to a potential reduction in weight of the manure by 650 kg/m2 of farmyard/year, which corresponds to management cost reduction of about 30%.
It is necessary to underline that this management strategy could increase the ammonia losses for volatilization. On the other hand, it has to be considered that in the study area, the spreading activities are concentrated in the central hours of the days, with high temperature.
With this thesis it is introduced a new vision for the manure management in the Mediterranean climate, where there are more problems related to greenhouse gas emissions than to acid rain.
Additional information
Dottorato di ricerca in Scienze e tecnologie per la gestione forestale e ambientale
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