Nitrogen use efficiency in industrial livestock of Ukraine

Abstract

The current state of nitrogen flows in the process of industrial production of livestock products at the level of the administrative regions of Ukraine has been investigated, namely input of nitrogen with animal feeds, nitrogen deposition in milk, meat and eggs, nitrogen release from manure and nitrogen emission with ammonia. It was found that in 2016, the largest amount of N animal feeds — 45% came on feeding of cattle, 29% on feeding poultry and 26% on feeding pigs from total consumption of nitrogen from animal feeds in livestock. In 2016, 45.73 thousand tonnes of N/year were deposited as a part of livestock production, including poultry products — 22.51 thousand tonnes N /year, cattle breeding — 15.38 and swine breeding — 7.84 thousand tonnes N/year. It is estimated that 43.3 thousand tonnes of N/year has been output from the poultry litter in Ukraine, which is 41.8% of the nitrogen from animal feeds. It is established that 67.0 thousand tonnes of N/year (or 41.6% of nitrogen from animal feeds) was released from cattle manure and 27.4 thousand tonnes of N per year — from pig manure (or 30.0% of nitrogen from animal feeds). Taking into account the widespread in Ukraine systems of storage and use of manure in livestock enterprises of different specialization, it is established that the largest amount of ammonia is allocated per unit live weight gain of cattle — 150.1 kg NH3/t/year, per unit live weight gain of pigs — 26.0 kg NH3/t /year and for egg production — 55.8 kg NH3/t/year, and the least amount of ammonia is allocated from cattle milk production — 8.6 kg NH3/t /year and per unit live weight gain of poultry — 18.9 kg NH3/t/year. In Ukraine, in animal husbandry enterprises (2016), manure is the source of emissions of 63.1 thousand tons of ammonia or losses of 52.1 thousand tons of nitrogen, including in poultry farming — 39.2%, in animal husbandry — 36.9 and pig production — 23.9%. Depending on the species of farm animals, only 8.6–21.7% of the nitrogen of animal feeds is deposited in foods products, and the rest of the nitrogen is released as by-products into the environment. According to the literature, for comparison, the efficiency of nitrogen use in EU livestock is 21–27%. In recent years, there has been a trend in Ukraine of an intensive increase in the number of poultry, which has a higher rate of nutrient absorption from feeds in comparing with cattle or pigs