Managing Manure to Improve Air and Water Quality

by Marcel Aillery, Noel Gollehon, Robert Johansson, Jonathan Kaplan, Nigel Key, and Marc Ribaudo

Animal waste from confined animal feeding operations is a potential source of air and water quality degradation. Pollution from animal waste poses challenges to farmers and to resource managers because it can affect multiple resources while environmental laws typically focus only on a single resource. This report assesses the economic and environmental tradeoffs between water quality policies and air quality policies that could require the animal sector to take potentially costly measures to abate pollution, based on a farm-level analysis of hog farms, a national analysis including all sectors, and a regional assessment in an area with high animal numbers.

Keywords: Animal waste, nitrogen, ammonia, water quality, air quality, nutrient management plan, manure management costs, price and quantity adjustments, CAFO

In this publication...

• Entire Report
• Report summary
• Abstract, Acknowledgments, Contents, and Summary
• Introduction
• Animal Agriculture and the Environment
• Water-Air Tradeoffs at the Farm Level
• National Effects of Coordinated Manure Management
• Impact of Spatial Factors on the Costs of Manure Management: A Case Study of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed
• Summary and Implications for Policy and Research
• References
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D