Modelling of manure production by pigs. Effect of feeding, storage and treatment on manure characteristics and emissions of ammonia and greenhouse gazes

A model was developed from literature data to predict ammonia and greenhouse gazes emissions (CH4, N2O), and the characteristics of the effluent (volume, dry and organic matter, N, K, P, Cu and Zn) produced by pigs in contrasted situations of manure collection, storage and treatment. The model was constructed in three parts. Part (1) predicts nutrient excretion according to animal performance and feeding strategy. Part (2) predicts changes in manure composition and air emissions according to storage practices (liquid or solid) and climatic conditions. Part. (3) predicts the evolution of manure during biological treatment, anaerobic digestion or composting. Original equations as well as published relationships were used to build the model. Part (1) was validated using 19 experimental studies, whereas internal and expert validation was performed for part (2) and (3), and the comprehensive model. The effects of different feeding strategies and mitigation techniques during storage were tested, and advantages and weak points could be identified for each alternative of manure management. Such a model can be an efficient tool to quantify and limit harmful emissions, while obtaining manure better adapted to each farming situation. This is illustrated through different examples. (Résumé d'auteur

MELODIE: A whole-farm model to study the dynamics of nutrients in dairy and pig farms with crops

In regions of intensive pig and dairy farming, nutrient losses to the environment at farm level are a source of concern for water and air quality. Dynamic models are useful tools to evaluate the effects of production strategies on nutrient flows and losses to the environment. This paper presents the development of a new whole-farm model upscaling dynamic models developed at the field or animal scale. The model, called MELODIE, is based on an original structure with interacting biotechnical and decisional modules. Indeed, it is supported by an ontology of production systems and the associated programming platform DIESE. The biotechnical module simulates the nutrient flows in the different animal, soil and crops and manure sub-models. The decision module relies on an annual optimization of cropping and spreading allocation plans, and on the flexible execution of activity plans for each simulated year. These plans are examined every day by an operational management sub-model and their application is context dependent. As a result, MELODIE dynamically simulates the flows of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, copper, zinc and water within the whole farm over the short and long-term considering both the farming system and its adaptation to climatic conditions. Therefore, it is possible to study both the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the environmental risks, and to test changes of practices and innovative scenarios. This is illustrated with one example of simulation plan on dairy farms to interpret the Nitrogen farm-gate budget indicator. It shows that this indicator is able to reflect small differences in Nitrogen losses between different systems, but it can only be interpreted using a mobile average, not on a yearly basis. This example illustrates how MELODIE could be used to study the dynamic behaviour of the system and the dynamic of nutrient flows. Finally, MELODIE can also be used for comprehensive multi-criterion assessments, and it also constitutes a generic and evolving framework for virtual experimentation on animal farming systems. (Résumé d'auteur

Análisis retrospectivo y prospectivo de la desnutrición en Argentina

Los primeros años de vida son fundacionales para el desarrollo físico, emocional y cognitivo de una persona. Todo lo que suceda o no, tendrá un impacto a lo largo del ciclo de vida. Los modelos que estiman costos en desnutrición parten de la premisa de que un niño con desnutrición infantil posee una probabilidad adicional de padecer determinados eventos en comparación con un niño sano. Los consecuencias serán de corto, mediano y largo plazo siendo posible estimar efectos en salud - enfermedad y mortalidad - educación - repitencia y abandono - y productividad - pérdida de oferta laboral y menores ingresos por menor acumulación de capital humano. El análisis económico permite expresar en dinero cada uno de los efectos mencionados con el fin de estimar cuál es el costo de oportunidad asociado a la desnutrición infantil. En decir, si la prevalencia de desnutrición fuera cero, habría una suma de dinero que podría ser destinada a otros fines. El presente estudio estimó que los costos de la desnutrición en Argentina para el año 2010 ascendieron a U$S 2360 millones de dólares expresados a paridad de poder de compra que equivalen al 30% de la inversión nacional en primera infancia de dicho año

Reference procedures for the measurement of gaseous emissions from livestock houses and stores of animal manure.

In the ten years before the EMILI 2012 symposium, gaseous losses from animal farms became increasingly important in the m edia. The paradox of this tendency was the great number of publications, scientific or not, even though the emissions of most animal farms had never been measured. Therefor e, the development of reference tools to measure greenhouse gas and ammonia emissio ns was important. Such tools allow recognition and remuneration of the best pract ices and equipment. Accordingly, ADEME funded an international project associating several research and development organizations involved with the animal production chain. The project proposed an initial set of 18 procedures to measure ammonia and greenho use gas emissions from animal houses and manure stores. These were adapted to the diversity of animal farms found throughout the world. Some methods were compared duri ng a ?building? and a ?liquid manure? experiment. Results showed a high difference among methods (ca. 80%), much higher than the estimated uncertainty. Associat ing independent emission measurements, together with a mass balance of the system, is necessary for the reliability of further results. However, previously published references lack uncertainty estimates of measurements that conform to GUM 2008. In the coming years, this is one of the major concerns for measuring emission factor s. Uncertainty estimates should depend on the measurand (temporal: hourly, per batch, yearly; spatial: animal, house, national) and include the uncertainties associated with system representativity and temporal interpolation.Edited by Mélynda Hassouna and Nadine Guingand

Life Cycle Assessment of Iberian Traditional Pig Production System in Spain

Traditional Iberian pig production is characterized by outdoor systems that produce animals fed with natural resources. The aim of this study was to assess the environmental impacts of such systems through Life Cycle Assessment. Environmental impacts were analysed per kilogram of live weight at farm gate. Iberian pig production in montanera had the lowest impacts for climate change (CC), acidification (AC), eutrophication (EU) and cumulative energy demand (CED), being 3.4 kg CO2 eq, 0.091 molc H+ eq, 0.046 kg PO43− eq, and 20.7 MJ, respectively, due to the strict use of natural resources (acorns and grass) during the fattening period. As Iberian farms had a greater dependence on compound feed in cebo campo, environmental impacts on CC, AC, EU and CED were 22, 17, 95 and 28% higher, respectively, than with montanera. For land occupation (LO), however, cebo campo had a lower impact (31.6 m2·year) than montanera (43.0 m2·year) system. Traditional Iberian pig production systems have environmental impacts higher than conventional systems studied in literature but are similar to other traditional systems. Based on the present assessment, it is necessary to account for the contribution of emissions resulting from the consumption of natural resources to avoid the underestimation of environmental impacts.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Ecoconception des aliments destinés aux porcs : analyse d’incertitude

Reducing environmental impacts of the livestock sector remains a priority. Formulating eco-feeds with lower impacts can be used as one mechanism. Doing so requires knowledge about feedstuff impacts, such as those contained in the ECOALIM database. As this database provides average values at a national scale, it can have high uncertainty due to the large variability in production techniques and soil/climate contexts for crops. Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess the relevance of eco-designing feed based on average national values. Uncertainty analysis was performed considering the variability in impact of the main crops used for pig feeds: wheat, maize, barley, rapeseed and sunflower and their processed co-products. This was applied to formulate eco-feeds within various economic contexts and conditions of feedstuff availability. A random sample (n = 500-1000) was created by drawing environmental impact values from a normal distribution truncated by minimum and maximum values. Each dataset was used to compare impacts of the eco-feed with those of an average standard feed. The effect of incorporation rates of feedstuffs was also analysed. For the impacts “energy consumption” and “climate change”, and for many feedstuffs, the use of national average data of environmental impacts appeared suitable for an eco-design implementation by feed manufacturers. Nonetheless, the ECOALIM dataset needs to be enriched with more detailed data for certain feedstuffs, such as maize and wheat, and also for certain impacts, such as “phosphorus use” and “land use”.Réduire les impacts environnementaux des productions animales reste une priorité. Formuler des éco-aliments générant de moindres impacts environnementaux peut constituer un levier d’action. Cette formulation nécessite la connaissance des impacts des intrants alimentaires, ce que rassemble la base de données ECOALIM. Ces données d’impacts sont des valeurs moyennes à l’échelle de la France et, de ce fait, ne rendent pas compte de la grande diversité des itinéraires techniques et des contextes pédoclimatiques. Ainsi, ces valeurs moyennes nationales sont-elles suffisantes pour mettre en oeuvre une écoconception des aliments du bétail ? Cette étude ambitionne d’y répondre en se basant sur une analyse d’incertitude des impacts des principales matières premières utilisées en alimentation animale (blé, maïs, orge, colza, tournesol, et leurs coproduits transformés), et des impacts des éco-aliments formulés soit à partir de données moyennes, soit à partir de données spécifiques, pour différents contextes économiques et de disponibilité en matières premières. Un échantillonnage aléatoire (N entre 500 et 1000) a été réalisé en tirant les valeurs d’impacts des matières premières dans une loi normale bornée par des valeurs minimales et maximales. Chaque jeu de données est utilisé pour comparer les impacts environnementaux et les taux d’incorporation des matières premières entre les aliments formulés à moindre coût et les éco-aliments. Pour les impacts changement climatique et consommation d’énergie, les moyennes nationales d’impacts environnementaux des matières premières s’avèrent suffisantes pour l’écoconception en permettant de réduire effectivement les impacts par rapport à la formulation à moindre coût. Les résultats sont plus variables pour les impacts consommation de phosphore et occupation des sols. De même, certaines matières premières comme le blé et le maïs requièrent des itinéraires plus précis qu’une simple situation moyenne nationale

Valorization of Tomato Seed By-Products as a Source of Fatty Acids and Bioactive Compounds by Using Advanced Extraction Techniques

In this work, lipids and bioactive compounds from tomato seed by-products were extracted and compared by using advanced extraction techniques, such as microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE). The influence of different extraction parameters, including extraction temperature (T), time (t) and solvent volume (V) for MAE as well as extraction temperature (T), pressure (P) and flow rate (F) for SFE-CO2, was evaluated on tomato seed oil (TSO) yield and fatty acids composition using response surface methodology (RSM). Optimum extraction conditions for MAE were 56.2 °C, 29.0 min, and 67.6 mL, whereas conditions of 60.2 °C, 400.0 bar, and 64.6 g min−1 were found for SFE-CO2. Under these conditions, higher TSO extraction yields were obtained by MAE compared to SFE-CO2 (25.3 wt% and 16.9 wt%, respectively), while similar fatty acids profiles were found by GC in terms of FAMEs composition: methyl palmitate, methyl stearate, methyl oleate, and methyl linoleate, accounting for around 80 wt% of unsaturated fatty acids. TSO MAE extracts showed high DPPH• radical scavenging activity which was related to the presence of tocopherols; in particular γ-tocopherol, which was found as the dominant homologue (260.3 ± 0.6 mg kgTS−1) followed by a lower amount of α-tocopherol (6.53 ± 0.12 mg kgTS−1) by HPLC-DAD. The obtained results suggested that tomato seeds are an interesting source of bioactive compounds with potential use in a wide range of nutritional and food applications, increasing the added value of this by-product, which is currently underexploited.This research was funded by the Bio-Based Industries Joint Undertaking under the European Union Horizon 2020 research program (BBI-H2020), ECOFUNCO project, grant number G.A 837863

ELFE, a database to determine greenhouse gases and ammonia emissions factors from livestock

ELFE, a database to determine greenhouse gases and ammonia emissions factors from livestock. 20. Nitrogen Workshop. Coupling C-N-P-S cycle

AGRIBALYSE: from database to ecodesign. Learnings from France to promote ecodesign in the food sector

French agricultural stakeholders promote LCA approach through AGRIBALYSE program, providing a national food LCI database and methodology. Through the years, the program has evolved deeply, priorities shifting from an “eco-labelling”/Environmental declaration program scheme to ecodesign. This raises new challenges. Indeed providing a national LCI Database is not enough to support the application of eco-design in the agrifood sector. Ecodesign approach raises different challenges depending on the project leader: farmer organization, food processing SME or multinational, retailers or catering firms. Ecodesign requires the ability to assess innovative agricultural practices: data is required as well as emission models accurate enough to capture fluxes variations associated to practice change. This leads to move away from mostly used IPCC Tier 1 models and to include more diverse soil occupation ( crop rotation, mixed crop, agroforestry etc. ) . Also LCA indicators are still not enough to encompass main sustainability challenges of food system and must be completed by complementary indicators such as biodiversity, and animal welfare, and possibly more social indicators in the future. Through about 30 food eco-design pilots projects supported in France from 2016-2020, we should be able to draw some common “success keys” from those experiences and support faster evolution of the food sector towards more sustainability