31 January 2025

Focus on slurry management

Edgar Garcia Manzanilla, Head of Teagasc Pig Department, writes about some of the ongoing slurry management research taking place at Teagasc, aiming to test new strategies to ensure a sustainable future.

One of the biggest issues for Irish pig farms in the last two years has been slurry management. Teagasc needs to produce as much information as possible in this area to help farmers make the best decisions for the near future. In the last year, Teagasc has developed project LE-FARM to test some strategies to reduce ammonia emissions and to refine the methods to measure it. Being able to assess new good practices so that they can be accepted by policy makers and adopted by farmers as soon as possible has become a key development for the next year.

Last year, Teagasc also joined a EU project, Nutritive, where 22 partners from 9 EU countries and China will be sharing and testing good practice to manage manure and reduce emissions. Project Nutritive is creating an inventory of best practices for slurry management to help farmers decide what is the most suitable solution for them and to guide policy with a more evidence based approach. A key part of this project is farmer involvement, with visits to other farms and sites to learn about the technologies in detail. Another project starting in 2025, project TAILWARDS, also has an important component of testing manure management systems in commercial farms (solid/liquid separation, liquid fraction purification, shallow tanks, scrapers).