Nutritional strategies for minimizing phosphorus pollution from the livestock industry.

Abstract

Abstract Livestock manure traditionally has been considered and used as a valuable resource by farmers to improve crop production. Livestock manure is rich in nutrients (nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P)) and thus has been land applied to enrich soils. But land application of manure nutrients in excess of crop requirements can lead to saturated soil and loss of nutrients to surface water via runoff. Environmental concerns with P from animal agriculture are significant because livestock manure has always been land applied to meet crops' N requirement, resulting in P application in excess of crops' P requirement. The problem is aggravated with the intensification of livestock production, and now animal agriculture has been identified as a primary source of water quality impairment in many regions. But intensification and continuous advancement of livestock production is required to meet the increasing demand of food supply to feed a growing global population. Therefore, management strategies are needed that will improve livestock production while supporting the environmental and social pillars of sustainability. Nutritional strategies are economically and environ mentally efficient tools to reduce P excretion by livestock. This chapter discusses nutritional strategies including precision feeding, phase feeding and approaches to improve feed P availability.