Life Smart Fertirrigation: Integrated Pig Manure Processing for Direct Injection of Organic Liquid Fertilizer into Irrigation Systems

Spain is Europe’s second largest producer of pork with 99.561 pig farms. The excess of manure available in intensive pig breeding areas in combination with lack of land to spread it on, needs addressing. Around 70 million kg of pig manure is produced daily in the country. A variety of methods exists for slurry processing, although few can be considered as nutrient recovering processes or resource-efficient techniques. Currently, the solid fraction is dried or composted but little attention is paid to the liquid fraction which is considered to be “waste water” and can be expensive to treat. The liquid fraction is either applied directly to crops, left in lagoons to evaporate as much as possible or even illegally dumped into lakes or rivers. These processes cause an enormous environmental impact, increasing greenhouse emissions, polluting water reserves and soil.