Baltic COMPASS is strategic project in the Baltic Sea Region, meaning that it has an important role to coordinate and liaise with related projects and activities in the region.
Agro Business Park was in autumn 2009, upon start of the Baltic COMPASS project, undertaking an assignment for the Swedish private foundation, Baltic Sea 2020. The objective of the assignment was to identify and prioritise innovative technologies for livestock manure treatment for pig slurry, which in the most cost-efficient way reduces the environmental impact, focusing on reduced leaching of nutrients to water. Loss of plant nutrients is highly correlated with manure management practices. The project focused on manure treatment technologies, as technologies for storage and spreading already are regulated via EU legislation, and already enforced in most EU Member States around the Baltic Sea.
The following technologies were identified:
- Biogas production / anaerobic digestion of pig manure because this has proven to be a method to increase plant-availability of the nitrogen in manure.
- Separation of pig slurry, which enable fertilising in a balanced way according to the crops’ need for nitrogen and phosphorus in case of high livestock densities.
- Use of phosphorus-indices, in combination with flat-rate phosphorus norms (a method requiring existing manure standards).
Training/licensing of persons engaged with transport and spreading of livestock manure was also recommended in the study.
Generally the recommendations serve the purpose of a higher re-circulation of plant nutrients in the agricultural production, thus reducing loss to the environment.
Phosphorus rich fibre fraction from separation of anaerobic digested livestock slurry. Photo: Henning L. Foged
Agro Business Park intends via its leadership of work package 4 in Baltic COMPASS to follow up on the recommendations made for Baltic Sea 2020. During the next weeks, Agro Business Park will together with work package and other project partners carry out sector studies to identify barriers and enablers for a more widespread use of the mentioned technologies in all countries around the Baltic Sea, and present the analyses to policy makers in the Region.
