Sustainable and Holistic Food Chains
for Recycling Livestock Waste to Land

Sustainable and Holistic Food Chains for Recycling Livestock Waste to Land

Funder: RELU

Cost: £430k

Duration: 2005-2008



Latest Updates

Baseline sampling of microbial water quality at ten farms in the Taw catchment was completed in December 2006 along with intensive monitoring of specific farm operational areas (drainage ditches / farmyard / springs / pasture). The next phase of the project is to introduce a series of on-farm mitigation options and to evaluate the environmental benefits and cost-effectiveness of the adopted approaches. The project team is currently devising a draft plan of mitigation options with farmers based on risk output generated by the physically-based field scale risk indexing tool. Experimental plot scale work at IGER addressing seasonal FIO die-off following different methods of slurry application to pasture (broadcast vs injection) will also inform various stages of the project, notably development of the risk indexing tool and evidence presented at public engagement exercises.

In recognizing that it is not only natural processes and farmer approaches to manure management that drive FIO loss from land we have now attempted to gauge the importance and variable contribution of a series of social risk factors (e.g. level of farmer debt, tenure of land, farm area, participation in agri-environmental schemes etc.). A proposed farm-scale risk assessment tool aims to set the parameters of a "whole farm system" assessment of the relationship between agricultural practices and microbial water course pollution. The framework is designed so that different social and natural processes can be factored in, weighted, configured, observed, and ultimately, evaluated. The 'riskiness' of a farm in contributing FIOs to water is conceptualised in our tool through adoption and modification of a dynamic critical source areas (CSA) type approach. This forges an interaction between modelled fluctuations in accumulating E. coli burden to land (as a function of livestock numbers) and a farmer's propensity to take action to minimise microbial pollution risks.

The tool provides farmers and land managers with an indication of the relative risk of FIO loss from land to water attributed to a given farm. Appropriate mitigation, both in terms of physical landscape management and social learning processes can be suggested in accordance with the farms associated risk categorisation. All participating farms will receive advice and feedback as a result of the development of the risk tool.

Embracing a cross-disciplinary approach to farm FIO risk assessment allowed for a more holistic evaluation of both landscape features and FIO sources in relation to landowners capacities, knowledges and responsibilities for protecting watercourses. It identified that inclusion of both physical and socio-economic risk factors increased the range of mitigation strategies at our disposal and reinforced the advantages of coupling both natural and social sciences in farm-scale risk assessments.

In November 2007 the project team will be embarking on a programme of public engagement and debate about the wider implications of research findings. Funding has been secured from Defra to develop a "Citizens' Jury" in which members of the public will be asked to consider the moral and practical complexities that surround the relationship between contemporary livestock farming, water quality and public health. (link to Defra project)

There is also continued development of a catchment scale conceptual tool in an attempt to identify the critical temporal risk windows and spatial locations across the Taw catchment that represent the greatest risk of FIO loss from land to water.

Stakeholder event to be held on the 20th June 2008

Uncertainty Workshop held at the Lancaster Environment Centre, 21 March 2007

Poster presentation to the 4th Joint Agency Bathing Waters Symposium

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