Agricultural Waste Management PROBLEMS, PROCESSES, AND APPROACHES

Abstract

Enhancement of environmental quality is an accepted national goal. Historically, the major efforts to maintain and enhance environmental quality have focused upon problems caused by urban centers. This emphasis has been due to pressing problems in controlling industrial pollution, in treating domestic liquid wastes, in disposing of municipal solid wastes, and perhaps to an instinctive feeling that agriculturally related environmental quality problems were uncontrollable and/or minor. Only recently has attention been given to the waste problems of agriculture. The specific role of agriculture as it affects the environmental quality of the nation is unclear. The contribution of agriculture to water, air, and nuisance problems compared to contributions from industrial and domestic sources is difficult to assess. The available information suggests that the contribution from agriculture may be significant at the regional or local level. Data on fish kills from feedlot runoff, nutrient problems due to runoff from cultivated lands, the quantities of animal and food-processing wastes produced nationally, the pollutional strength of these wastes, the possible contamination of groundwaters from crop production and land disposal of wastes, and the increasing size of agricultural production operations indicate that considerable attention must be given to the development of a number of alternative methods to handle, treat, and dispose of agricultural wastes with minimum contamination of the environment. The past decade has seen increasing monies and manpower devoted to finding solutions to the management of agricultural wastes. While considerable knowledge of the magnitude of the problem and of possible technical solutions to specific problems exists, detailed management methods to prevent contamination of the environment have only recently become available. Agriculture is being faced with a number of constraints as the nation attempts to improve the quality of the environment. Since the concept of a xi