Assessing the livestock raising and waste treatment of small-scale pig farming households in Binh Dinh Province

Abstract

Small-scale pig farming played a important role and brought effective economic benefits to households. However, it also caused risks to environmental quality, including air, soil and water, that farmers did not understand or paid enough attention. This study aimed to describe environmental parameters, livestock raising activities and waste treatment of small-scale pig farming households in Binh Dinh province. The samples for air, wastewater, groundwater and surface water analysis were surveyed at 05 sites of the project area in June and September of 2023 to evaluate the environmental quality status in study area. For the small-scale pig raising activities, data was investigated at 100 households in 04 Districts/Towns. The results indicated that the wastewater parameters collected at the pig farming households, with of TSS (300 – 1,500 mg/L), BOD5 (742 – 3,465 mg/L), COD (1.808 –10,320 mg/L), T_N (39 – 463 mg/L) and Coliform (3.6x105 – 9,2x105 MPN/100 mL). These findings exceeded from 1.5 – 160 times the allowable concentration for discharge into water sources that could not be used for domestic water supply purposes (QCVN 62:2016/BTNMT). These wastes have polluted surrounding surface water sources, furthermore, there was a risk of contaminating the air quality, soil environment, and groundwater layers. The survey results on pig raising activities showed that most households (69%) desired to keep the current scale, only 6% of farmers hoped to increase the scale. In addition, up to 25% of total farmers wanted to reduce the farming scale because they were afraid of risks in the pig raising process. Nowadays, small-scale pig farming households in Binh Dinh province have been aware of the pollution problem and taken preliminary measures for the waste treatment generated, of which building biogas digesters (without manure separation) accounted for the highest proportion (89% of the total number of households). However, the pollutant content of treated wastewater has been still high and exceeded the allowable discharge concentration. Most pig raising households would like to be guided to invest in building their own wastewater treatment systems, but investment costs were still a significant barrier for households in this production activity. Research results showed that the high application opportunities when popularizing the construction of wastewater treatment models for small-scale pig raising households in Binh Dinh province.