Environmental impacts of using new manure tools

The project carried out farm and regional studies to assess the environmental impacts of the new manure data produced by the project. Not only for the environment, but also for the use of non-renewable resources and the farm economy, it is important that fertiliser nutrients are utilised as effectively as possible in agriculture. No matter how good the manure information is, it is of no use if there are no suitable application sites for manure, or if the fertilisation recommendations do not emphasize the importance of crop and farming condition specific fertilisation recommendations. A good knowledge base is a prerequisite for good decisions. This project showed that better manure information may be of great importance to the environmental impacts of manure utilisation. The project also showed that obtaining better manure information can be challenging, especially for dry manure because of its heterogeneity which makes it difficult to take representative manure samples. On the other hand, estimating the properties of manure using mass balance calculations is also difficult, since gaseous losses are very case- and circumstance-specific. It is also possible to use different methods in parallel. One option at the farm level would be to use national manure data (table values) at the same time with the farm's own manure analysis results. Using the average of these two sources as the basis for fertilisation could reduce the risk of incorrect application rates of manure nutrients, for example due to failed manure sampling. Here we present the possible environmental impacts e.g. leaching risk, carbon sequestration, N mineralisation if different nutrient values are taken into account when planning and executing fertilisation.