scholarly journals Farm practices as they affect NH3 emissions from beef cattle

2012 ◽  
Vol 92 (4) ◽  
pp. 525-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. C. Sheppard ◽  
S. Bittman

Sheppard, S. C. and Bittman, S. 2012. Farm practices as they affect NH 3 emissions from beef cattle. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 92: 525–543. Beef cattle farms in Canada are very diverse, both in size and management. Because the total biomass of beef cattle in Canada is larger than any other livestock sector, beef also has the potential for the largest environmental impact. In this study we estimate NH3 emissions associated with beef cattle production across Canada using data on farm practices obtained from a detailed survey answered by 1380 beef farmers in 11 Ecoregions. The farms were various combinations of cow/calf, backgrounding and finishing operations. The proportion of animals on pasture varied markedly among Ecoregions, especially for cows and calves, and this markedly affected the estimated NH3 emissions. The crop components of feed also varied among Ecoregions, but the resulting crude protein concentrations were quite consistent for both backgrounding and finishing cattle. Manure was stored longer in the west than in the east, and fall spreading of manure was notably more common in the west, especially when spread on tilled land. The estimated NH3 emissions per animal were relatively consistent across Ecoregions for confinement production, but because the proportion of animals on pasture varied with Ecoregion, so did the overall estimated NH3 emissions per animal. Temperature is a key factor causing Ecoregion differences, although husbandry and manure management practices are also important. Hypothetical best management practices had little ability to reduce overall emission estimates, and could not be implemented without detailed cost/benefit analysis.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9627
Author(s):  
Xue Qu ◽  
Daizo Kojima ◽  
Laping Wu ◽  
Mitsuyoshi Ando

We review existing studies on rice harvest loss from the aspects of estimation methods, magnitudes, causes, effects, and interventions. The harvest losses examined occurred from the field reaping to storage processes, including threshing, winnowing, and field transportation. We find that existing studies on rice harvest losses have focused on quantitative losses in Asia and Africa. Lack of knowledge, inadequate harvesting techniques, poor infrastructure, and inefficient harvest management practices are considered critical contributors to the losses. The magnitudes and causes of rice harvest losses are now better understood than interventions, which have simply been presented but lack an assessment of the effects and a cost–benefit analysis. Interestingly, reduction in harvest losses may threaten some farmers’ profits, such as rural women who make their living from post-production manual operations. Considering the current status of the literature, future researchers should examine how to balance social and individual welfare since farmers are key stakeholders in intervention implementation. A good understanding of the existing researches can help clarify future efforts for loss reduction, thereby reducing the burden of increasing agricultural production and promoting sustainable development of resources and the environment.


Author(s):  
Stephen G. Zemba ◽  
Michael R. Ames ◽  
Laura C. Green

Most ash generated by waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities in the U.S. is landfilled. Studies undertaken in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s indicated no significant environmental concerns associated with ash landfilling. However, in 2001, policy-makers at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MA DEP) became concerned that the “cumulative” impacts of landfills, including ash landfills, might pose a risk to human health. To address this concern, we performed an in-depth assessment of impacts to air quality, and theoretical risks to health, from fugitive emissions associated with an ash landfill. Nine sources of fugitive ash emissions were modeled using methods that coupled detailed information about the site operations, ash properties, and meteorological conditions on an hour-by-hour basis. The results of these assessments, combined with ambient air data collected by others, demonstrated that the impacts from fugitive emissions of the ash were no more than negligible. Accordingly, in 2006, MA DEP revised its policy, exempting ash disposal landfills from the requirement to demonstrate no significant impact, effectively granting presumptive certainty to ash landfills that employ best management practices. Detailed analyses such as described herein, combined with robust data sets, can form the basis of more efficient regulatory policies.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Zhong ◽  
Zoran Vojinovic Zoran Vojinovic ◽  
Mário Francac

<p>Hydro-meteorological disasters have shown the fastest rate among all natural disasters. This is due to several factors: i) climate change, ii) population growth and land use change, and iii) poor water management practices. Traditional engineering solutions have shown to be ineffective in responding to such challenges and hydro-meteorological risks in general. In this respect, Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) offer the means to respond to such increasing challenges by providing a range of benefits (i.e., hydro-meteorological risk reduction) and co-benefits (i.e., ecosystems restoration and increase socio-economic values). The need to incorporate numerous benefits and co-benefits into the design of NBS calls for a combination of knowledges and practices from water engineering and landscape architecture. These would be necessary to design an NBS site that have multiple functions that can incorporate multiple benefits and co-benefits. At the same time, NBS should be designed in such way to withstand possible changes and pressures. This in turn calls for novel design practices of NBS to support planning and implementation that can achieve multifunctional and robust results. In this work, a framework for multifunctional and robust design of NBS is addressed. This framework will combine the use of hydrodynamic models, GIS tools, topology analysis, adaptive options analysis, adaptive pathway design, multi-criteria analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and robustness evaluation. The framework will be applied to one of the RECONECT cases and the first results will be presented.</p>


1973 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 705-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia F Apps

This is the second of three papers which describe a model of housing demand, using data from the town of Reading, Berkshire. The first paper sets out the theoretical framework for the model. This second paper documents the results for housing price indices and implicit prices for housing services, or characteristics, such as accessibility to employment and to schools, floor space, age, storey height, and number of garages. The third paper contains results for housing demand equations at three levels of aggregation, and for the real annual costs paid for similar housing in different tenure groups. The research is concerned with ways of obtaining information which is directly relevant to cost-benefit analysis in urban planning, information concerning what are urban services, the relative prices for the services, and the types of environments that produce these services. While the empirical work is restricted by the available data to a cross-section study of demand, the approach might be usefully applied to all types of urban analyses which involve evaluation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 2953-2963
Author(s):  
SLAĐANA SAVIĆ ◽  
◽  
BORISZ CZEKUS ◽  
ENIKE GREGORIĆ ◽  
SONJA ĐURIČIN ◽  
...  

The aim of the paper is to test the effect of climatic conditions and management practices on the yield of two quinoa cultivars (Puno and Titicaca) and to analyze the economic benefits of quinoa productivity. The experiments were carried out during the 2017 and 2019 growing seasons in rain-fed conditions on a Serbian farm. The results of the two-year long experiments proved that the growing of the quinoa cultivar Puno and particularly the cultivar Titicaca in the agro-ecological conditions of Serbia would be remarkably successful from the aspect of agronomy (with the obtained average yield of 2.5 t ha-1 ) as well as from the aspect of economy (with the achieved average profit of 9,411 € ha-1 ). The obtained profit values indicate that the quinoa production in the Republic of Serbia would be more cost-effective than the production of the field crops which are already produced, particularly in the increasingly present arid conditions.


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