PIG FARMS
Pig farming is a difficult business with many environmental factors causing issues with pig health, growth, mortality and feed consumption. One of the biggest challenges that can be faced is neighbours complaining about the smell coming from the sheds and the wastewater leading to farms being shut down. Our low cost, at scale solution is a step by step process to help you fix the ecology within your pig sheds. This non-chemical approach reduces ammonia levels within the shed and fixates nitrogen inside of the manure. This has significant impacts on pig health, growth and morality. Once we fix these problems we can then show you a way to produce a highly valuable product from your pig manure that also captures carbon and returns it to the soil. This process is similar to what you would recognise as composting but draws carbon from the atmosphere and biologically generates water. It also experiences no loss in mass throughout the fermentation process so you end up with more of the good stuff. The end product is like nature's own topsoil - we call it Humisoil.
A Local Circular Approach
A project was undertakenproject in Shandong, China where 15,000 pigs were kept across 8 pig houses measuring 1,260 square metres per house. Odour issues caused by ammonia inside the sheds was causing complaints by local residents with the threat of the farm being closed down. Untreated water from the sewage tank had a Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) of 1-1.4M and was causing damage to the local environment. Alongside this, the health of the pigs was suffering with higher mortality rates, redeye and a high Feed Conversation Ratio (FCR).
Wastewater Treatment
Once the challenges inside the shed were overcome the wastewater treatment could begin. The reduction in the COD dropped from 1.4 million to less than 400. This enabled the sludge from the pond to be used on nearby farmland for irrigation as it contained lots of nutrients inside.
The Groundswell® Process
Once the manure had been treated we were able to being the Groundswell process to turn the manure from the pigs into Humisoil. The Groundswell® Continuous Fermentation Process is a simple and effective method for processing organic materials into a humic rich top-soil enhancer, HumiSoil®. This stable, predictable and consistent process is cost effective way to recycle any organic matter, building organic carbon, CEC, nitrogen, available phosphorus and water in soil.
