Publication Date:
2020-04-01
Description:
The size and density of concentrated animal feeding operations have grown significantly over the past twenty-five years, raising concern over the ability of the surrounding landscape to sustainably handle the byproducts of animal agriculture. A novel geographic information system program was developed to spatially model the application of manure nutrients to proximal agricultural fields. Nutrient losses during storage and field application were accounted for to determine the amount of manure sourced nitrogen available annually for land application. By-field nitrogen requirements were estimated using six-year crop rotations and commonly used guidelines on fertilizer recommendations for agronomic crops. Three different nitrogen fertilizer recommendation approaches, ranging from economically optimized rates on the low end to yield goal-driven rates on the high end, were modeled to gauge the sensitivity of the analysis approach to varying nitrogen application rates. For each fertilizer N rate, three manure haul distance scenarios were modeled, allowing for manure travel distance to be capped at distances unique to each livestock type. Lastly, commercial nitrogen fertilizer sales data were combined with manure sourced nitrogen estimates to assess statewide agricultural nitrogen application. Results indicated minimal (
Electronic ISSN:
2073-4395
Topics:
Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Fishery, Domestic Science, Nutrition
,
Economics
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