Proper Manure Management in Russian Farms to Reduce Threat of Nutrients Leaching to the Baltic Sea

BALTHAZAR Project Pilots in Leningrad region show encouraging results in transforming chicken manure into fresh field fertilizer.

Animal farms pose serious risks to the health of the Baltic Sea if the manure is not properly stored or processed. Nutrient leaching from the livestock farms in North-West Russia was one key focus of HELCOM’s BALTHAZAR Project, which assessed the risks and sought solutions in the most critical sites in Kaliningrad and Leningrad regions.

 

There are 17 poultry farms in the Leningrad region which host more than 20 million chickens. The local poultry production is concentrated to a relatively small territory, and the industry is going to make new investments to reach even larger volume in their production units.

 

“These farms, which produce over 800 000 tons of manure per year, containing approximately 3000 tonnes of phosphorus, often have inadequate manure treatment and storage facilities which may lead to nutrient losses and thereby poses a potentially severe environmental and ecological threat to the Baltic Sea,” says Kaj Forsius, Project Manager of the recently completed BALTHAZAR Project.

The BALTHAZAR project (2009–2012) listed 26 farms in total, of which 12 were poultry farms in the Leningrad region, where environmental measures should be taken as a first priority in order to reduce the eutrophying substances ending up to the Baltic Sea. Proposed mitigation measures included both single farm manure management measures with large scale manure recirculation investments (biogas, manure burning) as well as municipal and district level collaboration for more efficient manure utilization.

 

In order to achieve concrete results and improvements in manure handling, BALTHAZAR has also conducted a pilot project in the region to converse chicken manure into fertilizer products. One pilot case poultry farm has been selected for Russian and EU consultants to investigate and document different manure handling techniques as possible solutions.

 

One technique is tunnel composting, and currently two units are operating at a poultry farm in Gatchina, some 40 km outside the city of St Petersburg. The composting technique can now handle 10-15 % of the total manure produced at the plant. The used technique is fairly simple and cost-effective and the composted material can be used as a fertiliser by different users – in smaller gardens as well as larger fields.

 

As always, there are some challenges in this very potential solution to safer manure handling. In the region, there is much less arable land compared to the amount of manure produced, and the distance grows long from the farms to the fields to be fertilized. Thereby the transportation costs from the composting plant to the consumers are one important limiting factor. In order to tackle this issue, the Vice Governor of Leningrad region Mr. Sergey Yachnuk, has informed that the regional authorities are introducing a subsidy for transport to the amount of 300 roubles per tonne of produced compost. Plans for full scale treatment at the farm with this technique are under investigation.