Evaluation of manure management in dairy cattle farms: The case of İzmir - Tire (Turkey) region

Abstract

The objective of this research is to evaluate the current manure management systems in dairy cattle farms, which are the members of Tire Dairy Cooperative, in Tire-İzmir Region. In this context; characteristics of farms, manure management systems and their statistical interactions were determined. Also, methane emissions through manure management were estimated for two different approaches of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and SWOT analyze for manure management in region was done. According to results of the research, it is noticed that farmers do not care about technical standards and legal regulations on planning the barn placement and storing the manure. It is determined that 74% of the examined farms use mechanization possibilities to collect the manure from paddocks. In 78% of the farms manure is stored as a bulk inside or outside of the farm, in 16% of the farms it is stored on paddocks and in 6% of the farms it is stored in a pit. In 99% of the farms, manure is used as fertilizer on fields without taking precautions for fermentation and also it is burned directly in 1% of the farms. Statistical analyses show that, manure collection and storage practices have significant interactions with farm characteristics while manure usage practices have no significant interactions with farm characteristics. Methane emissions for the region were calculated 0.2 Gg year-1 for the first approach and 0.03 Gg year-1 for the second approach. SWOT analyze shows that, manure management practices and infrastructure are better in big farms and the cooperative may make a significant contribution to usage of modern systems in the region.