Preparation of agriculture film from cow manure for silage maize planting: Experimental study and life cycle assessment

Abstract

With the development of modern breeding technology, the scale of dairy farming is becoming increasingly large, which leading to decoupling of planting and breeding. Hence, massive amounts of manure could not handled by traditional method in time, which caused serious environmental problems. Therefor, there is a urgent needs for industrialized treatment methods to treat cow manure for dairy farm industry. In order to expand the types of industrial treatment methods of cow manure, two types of industrialized cow manure based agriculture films were introduced in this research, manure slurry film (MSF) and manure paper film (MPF). Taking silage corn cultivation as an example, their feasibility were testified: the usage performances of the films were expanded by crop yield and soil physicochemical properties, and environmental impacts of the films was conducted by life cycle assessment (LCA). The results showed: (1) both MSF and MPF would decomposed in one growth period of silage maize, with MPF having better performance in temperature retention; (2) both MSF and MPF improved soil nutrients and agglomerate structures; (3) the yield of maize with MSF and MPF was increased from 62.6 t to 88.4 t and 84.6 t per hectare compared to control group; and (4) according to LCA, MPF had 39 % and 50 % lower average environment impact than PE film and MSF. In conclusion, manure based films could effectively promotes crop growth with lower environment impact compared with traditional methods, which thus might provide effective linkage strategies for coupling of planting and breeding.