Industrial Animal Farming in the Russian Part of the Baltic Sea Catchment Area

on example of Leningrad Region

Vera Ovcharenko, Green World Warsaw, 6 December 2013

The Russian Part of the Baltic Sea Catchment Area

• embraces the City of St. Petersburg, the Leningrad, Kaliningrad, Novgorod and Pskov Regions, part of the Vologda Region and of the Republic of Karelia;

• total area amounts to 325.4 thousand km2;

• more than 600 major agricultural enterprises;

• about 1160 thousand hectares of agricultural lands (data for 2010).

Leningrad Region

• The territory – 8390,8 ha • 1704.7 ha agricultural

areas which belong all categories of enterprises.

• There are 232 industrial, middle and small farms.

• Specialization of agriculture is cattle breeding (68.8% of total gross output).

• The main branch of agriculture is dairy farming.

Cattle farming

2012 • 70 big cattle farms • 178.9 thousand heads in all categories of farms • 166.5 thousand of them kept on the big industrial

farms with livestock population from 309 to 1455 heads

• 67 dairy farms with 73.8 thousand of dairy heads

• Beef cattle are engaged in 3 big farms: "Sputnik", "Kotelskoye" and "Urozhajnoe“ with livestock 2,172 thousand animals including breeding stock 796 heads.

Pig farming

2012 • 12 large-scale pig farms: “Novy Svet’,

“Rusbelgo’, “Bor”, “Rjurik Agro’, “Pulkovskiy”, “Plamia”, “Ruch’i”, “Rapti”, “Petrodvor” and new pig complexes “Psofida”, “Svinka”, “Rastsvet plus”

• Livestock is 185.6 thousand heads • The breeding stock of sows-12463 . • The total number of pigs in all categories of

farms - 198.0 thousand heads.

Poultry farming one a stable, well-developing and leading branch of agriculture which takes the 1st place among the regions of Russia for the production of eggs and the

2nd in the production of meat.

2012 • 13 industrial poultry farms

• 28.2 million heads

• 7 poultry farms for the production of chicken eggs with more than 11 million heads of birds

• 3 broiler poultry farms with a total heads over 12 million

• ZAO "PF Roskar" has egg and broiler production - about 4 million heads

• 2 breading farms: OAO "Breeding PF Lebyazhe" and ZAO "Breeding PF Voiskovitsy"

• OOO "Perepelochka" produces quail eggs and had 88000 heads of birds in 2011.

Animal farms in the Leningrad region. Map of BALTHAZAR project.

Load intensity of livestock from industrial farming in Leningrad Region

Delineation of districts into high (red), medium (yellow) and low (green) intensities of

animal industry. Map by Eco Center/ECAT (2009)

The manure output in Leningrad Region Location of the 20 animal farms producing the largest

amounts of manure phosphorus in the Leningrad Region.

• cattle - 2.4 million tons, • chickens - 1.6 million tons, • pig - 0.7 million tons which totally

contain about: • 40 tons of nitrogen • 22 tons of phosphorus. More than 10% of the available phosphorus in manure gets into water sources*. *The data 2012 based on the results of a joint project NEFCO and the Administration of Leningrad Region "Sustainable Manure Management in Animal Farms in Leningrad Oblast, Russia”. Map of BALTHAZAR project

The manure utilization

• there are 1600 big industrial animal farms in Russia.

• In sum they produce every day more than 450 thousand manure and litter almost half of it not used at all.

Efficiency of manure and litter in Russian Federation, North-West Federal District and Leningrad Region

Year Produced,

million tonne Used

million tonne %

RUSSIAN FEDERATION

2006 300,0 47,8 15,9

2010 325,0 55,0 17,0

NORTH-WEST FEDERAL DISTRICT

2006 10,5 3,57 34,0

2010 11,5 3,50 30,4

LENINGRAD REGION

2006 2,85 1,17 41,1

2010 3.50 1,25 37,1

Environmental regulations in the field of manure/litter application

Federal Law of 10 January 2002 N7-FZ "About Environmental Protection" and RF Government Resolution of June 12, 2003 № 344 "On rates of charges for emissions of air pollutants from stationary and mobile sources, discharges of pollutants into surface and ground water bodies, waste production and consumption" assign of payments for negative impact on the environment. Some GOSTs (State standards) regulate manure and litter utilization: • GOST P 53117-2008: Organic fertilizers from animal waste. • GOST P 53765-2009: Bird litter. Raw materials for the production of organic fertilizers. Specifications. • GOST Р 54001-2010: Organic fertilizers. Helminthological analysis methods. • GOST 26713-85: Organic fertilizers. Method for determination of moisture and dryness. • GOST 26074-84: Liquid manure. Veterinary and sanitary requirements for treatment, storage, transport

and utilization. The existing legislation of the Russian Federation regulates and enables environmentally safe manure management. However, the enforcement of law is poor due to a lack of an independent environmental authority and adequate environmental monitoring and control. Sanctions for violations are weak. State support to agriculture does not include environmental goals and there is no environmental subsidy system, comparable to that of the European Union. Current policies focus on reviving of livestock production, while environmentally safe and sustainable management of manure is not being addressed.

Legal ways of manure utilization

permitted by law and applied in practice • direct transportation and using as an organic fertilizer on fields;

• clamping and composting with using adsorbents (peat, sawdust, straw, etc.);

• manure separation technology into solid and liquid fractions, with

following composting the solid fraction and long retention of liquid fraction

with further use it as organic fertilizer. It is a strong requirement for farms

with pig livestock 12 thousand heads and cattle farms with livestock 2500

goals and more.

• Acceleration bio thermal reproducing-composting methods;

• composting into special fermenters. This technology was applied in ZAO

“Agrocomplex Oredezh” in 2011;

• Thermal drying and vacuum dehydration with getting friable and granular

organic fertilizer;

• Manure incineration an producing biogas are used in few farms as a pilot

projects. The fist industrial plant was constructed in Kaluga Region in 2009.

Real situation with manure management

The study that was carried out on about 300 livestock farms of Leningrad Region (within BALTAZAR and NEFCO projects) shows:

• most of manure/litter facilities do not meet the ecological requirements;

• the amount of manure produced during housing season is 1,5-2 times higher than storage facilities’ capacity;

• a number of farms and enterprises do not have specialized manure storage facilities at all;

• some of the farms practice all year round transportation of the liquid manure/slurry to the fields and use of natural landscape folds and fields as a manure/litter storage place; They do not have any protection facilities to retain waste and runoff waters.

• Most of the studied farms have old material and technical basis, poor technological control means, violation of technical provisions for manure/litter storage, transportation and use.

• On poultries most of the manure is disposed off in two ways: spread on fields, often in such large quantities that the fields cannot absorb all the nutrients but are washed off by the surface water and eventually reach the Gulf of Finland.

• The rest of the manure is dumped in large lagoons located close to factories. The lagoons are normally not properly built and do not have non-permeable bottom layers and walls.

Implementation of Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP)

• Russian Federation developed “The Concept of National Plan” (NP) which was considered at the HELCOM Ministerial meeting, Moscow, May 18-20, 2010, but it is not adopted yet by the Russian Federation Government.

• The NP will be implemented in the Russian

part of the Baltic Sea catchment area.

The Concept of National Plan

• The goal: to reduce annual nutrients input from the Russian part of the catchment basin into the Baltic Sea as compared to the average annual inputs by national monitoring data for the period of 1997-2003:

phosphorus by 2500 tonne/y

nitrogen by 6970 tonne/y

The Concept of National Plan

• Total financing of the “Eutrophication” section is 106599.71 million roubles, including Federal budget, Funds of consolidated budgets of the subjects of the RF and Extra-budgetary resources.

• The State Customer/Programme Coordinator is the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation responsible for management of the Programme and coordination of interaction between the State Customers and Developers within the frames of its authority.

Measures proposed for the agricultural sector of NP

Leningrad Region: • Construction of manure recovery-plants by fermentation

method on 10 big poultries. • Construction of biogas complexes on manure utilisation by

incineration method on Siniavinskaia poultry (power 12 megawatt) and pig farm “Plemzavod Ruchji” (power 700 kilowatt)

• Construction of manure recovery-plants by method of division manure into fractions by separators, fermentation of solid fraction and season of manure in lagoons on 5 pig farms and 3 cattle farms.

All measures are planed to implement in 2012-2013. However, most of them are not implemented by the end of 2013.

Provision 1238,58 millions rubles are not enough for realization of all plans and estimated timeframes not stand up at all.

Measures proposed for the agricultural

sector of NP Kaliningrad and Pskov Regions:

• Construction of 3 new cattle/animal manure storage facilities and refurbishment of 2 old one are planed. Implementation of those measures is planed in 2012-2016.

• Construction of new cattle/animal manure storage facilities, refurbishment and repairing are planed in 24 farms in 2013-2020 in Pskov Region.

These plans look unrealistic because of luck of enough financing. Budget - about 27,5 million rubles.

It is not enough for realization of so dimensioned plans.

Measures proposed for the agricultural sector of NP

In Republic of Karelia:

• Construction of lagoons for manure fermentation for 5 farms and purchase of technical equipment for manure scattering in 5 farms are provided.

• Timeframe for implementation is 20012-2014.

• Budget only 55 million rubles and time-frame unrealistic.

There is not any plan for Novgorod Region at all.

Recommendations

• The existing legislation in the field of manure/litter application needs to be brought in correspondence with current international environmental requirements.

• To strengthen environmental performance, it is necessary to determinate the legal framework of state support and economic stimulation for conscientious companies producing animal products on the basis of non-waste technology, performing all the necessary environmental measures.

• To develop targeted Federal and Regional Programmes to support agricultural producers when introducing manure/litter management technologies.

• To develop standards, certification systems, and financial support measures environmentally friendly products to stimulate organic farming.

• To develop technologies of organic fertilizer production.

• Carry out the construction and reconstruction of manure storages on the basis of the best available biotechnologies of sterilization and manure application in agribusinesses.

Thank you for your attention!