Special Session on Ammonia and GHG Emission from Livestock Housing
by COST Action CA16106, LivAGE
The global livestock sector, particularly ruminants, contributes approximately 18% of total anthropogenic GHG emissions. In the EU, the livestock sector accounts for about 13% of total GHG emissions. Environmental impacts of ammonia (NH3) and greenhouse gases (GHG) as well as odour emissions from livestock buildings have been identified as important issues in recent decades and an increasing number of countries have now introduced legislation that aims to reduce the emission of pollutants like ammonia.
LivAGE (Ammonia and Greenhouse Gases Emissions from Animal Production Buildings) is a COST action (www.cost-livage.eu) aimed to is to enhance international discipline cooperation for exchanging ideas and knowledge, sharing good practices, assess technologies that could result in reducing the emissions of GHGs and ammonia from livestock buildings and thus to lead to a more environmental friendly and sustainable livestock production. LivAGE has three main pillars:
• Monitoring indoor climate and gaseous emissions from animal production buildings
• Modelling ammonia and GHG emissions from animal production buildings
• Environmental assessment of housing systems (dairy, swine and poultry) and emission reduction technologies
This special session will provide a forum for discussing the state-of-the-art and on-going research projects of ammonia and GHG emission measurements as well as measuring methods, modelling and reduction techniques. The session will also provide an opportunity to share research experiences and to promote networking among those attendees.
Abstracts can be submitted through the abstract submission system of the AgEng2021 conference. Please add the word ‘LivAGE’ in the list of key words.
Chair: Sabine Schrade
Co-Chair: Thomas Bartzanas
Scientific committee: Guoqiang Zhang, Andre Aarnink, Melynda Hassouna, Koci Kamila, Salvador Calvet, Peter Demeyer
Online Workshop
7 July , 14-17 h (CET)
Integrated Multi-Trophic systems for sustainable fish and crops production
Results from the pilots and experiments of the PRIMA project “SIMTAP”
Organized by the PRIMA project “Self-sufficient Integrated Multi-Trophic AquaPonic systems for improving food production sustainability and brackish water use and recycling – SIMTAP”
Date: 7 July , 14-17 h (CET)
The participation in the Online Workshop is open and free for everybody (even if not registered to the EurAgEng Conference).
The SIMTAP project, funded by the PRIMA program (Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area), started in June 2019, and is aimed at designing, developing and testing a water-recirculating closed-cycle multitrophic system for the production of marine fish and crops for fresh consumption or the extraction of active ingredients for nutraceuticals, functional foods or medicinal use. The project aims at boosting the sustainability of marine aquaculture, further developing and challenging the aquaponics concept: the integrated multitrophic chain auto-produces fish feed ingredients (filter/feeders organisms) achieving also a fish waste bioremediation, thus reducing pressure on wild fish stocks and environment. Moreover, SIMTAP systems can exploit the effluents from greenhouse soilless cropping systems to enhance the production of filter/feeders organisms.
The project is the result of the joint work of several academic, public and private partners from the Mediterranean region: University of Pisa (project coordination), University of Bologna, University of Milan, INRAE - UMR SAS Sol Agro et hydrosystème Spatialisation, Lycée de la Mer et du Littoral, Malta Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries, Food And Animal Rights, Turkish Mediterranean Fisheries Research Production and Training Institute, Korolev GmbH.
The keynotes and the presentations of the project partners will highlight the main challenges and opportunities for sustainable aquaculture and aquaponics, and will present the results of the ongoing project and the experiments which are being carried out in the pilot plants realized in Italy, France and Turkey.
Attendees are welcome to listen to the presentation and participate actively in the Q&A and discussion sessions.
Register here: https://forms.office.com/r/sYUHTSEH7x
The webinar will be held online on the Microsoft Teams platform. You will receive the link to attend the webinar via email.
For more information, please feel free to reach us:
Prof. Daniele Torreggiani, University of Bologna: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Prof. Alberto Pardossi, University of Pisa: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The SIMTAP project at a glance
This project moves from the IMTA approach towards an innovative self-sufficient integrated multi-trophic aquaponic system (SIMTAP) for small scale, labour-intensive and environmentally-friendly marine fish and halophytic plants production adapted to the typical socio-economic and climatic condition of Mediterranean areas. The main goal of SIMTAP is to define, design, set up and test an innovative food production system that drastically reduce, on one side, the required fish feed inputs (e.g., fishmeal, fish oil, soybean, etc.) and the consumption of resources (water, energy), and, on the other side, the production of waste and pollution, decreasing the Life Cycle impact on the environment of this segment of the food industry. Moreover, SIMTAP can be coupled with the re-use of the effluents from greenhouse soilless cropping systems, in a cascade effect acting both as a bioremediation of wastewater (run-off) from greenhouse cultivations, and as a recycling of the nutrients still contained in the same wastewater, thus helping the SIMTAP cycle. Besides, the water source can be either brackish or marine. Moreover, the project aims to evaluate the effectiveness and performance of SIMTAP systems in terms of food production and use of energy, water and other resources. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), analysis of energy consumption and emergy assessment of SIMTAP will be performed to quantify and compare the potential environmental impacts with the conventional hydroponic and aquaculture systems. Another crucial issue of this project is the economic assessment: the identification of possible payment streams (e.g. emission certificate, etc.) to realize projects in a bankable form. This action and Life Cycle Cost (LCC) studies will be specifically linked to the technical proposal for achieving reasonable prized solutions for low-medium technological level countries.
Visit the project website: www.simtap.eu
SIMTAP is part of the PRIMA Programme supported by the European Union.
The Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area will devise new R&I approaches to improve water availability and sustainable agriculture production in a region heavily distressed by climate change, urbanisation and population growth
Participation: to participate you should download the Teams app (click here to download Teams) and then click the link to access the virtual room: click here to access the virtual room and join the webinar. You can also directly access the virtual room without installing the Teams app, using the Chrome browser.
SFARM Workshop
Erasmus+ KA2 project “SFARM” - The development of MSc programmes in the field of Sustainable Agriculture in Asian Countries
Date: 7 July
The SFAM project is an Erasmus+ project, started in October 2017 with the participation of 3 Program Countries (Greece, Portugal and Italy) and 4 Partner Countries (Vietnam, Lao, China and Indonesia). SFARM aims in advancing the skills of academic staff, students and agricultural extension staff in Higher Education Institutes (HEI) of Laos, Vietnam, China and Indonesia, through the development of new curricula and a MSc programme that integrate in a practical way the latest developments in agricultural applied research.
Moreover, in the SFARM project the communication gap between experts, researchers and agricultural workers was bridged with the development of a virtual environment where all stakeholders meet and exchange opinions.
The specific objectives of the SFARM project include:
1. To develop new specialized curricula and an innovative MSc programme on sustainable agricultural thus helping build the capacity of the partner countries’ (PC) HEIs, improve the level of competences and skills offered, and address the existing absence of a similar programme.
2. Promote cooperation, exchange of know-how and good practices in the subject area between EU and PC HEIs.
3. Establish viable synergies and links with the regional agricultural industry in order to address their needs in specialized personnel in sustainable agriculture, training needs and enhance the employability of SFARM graduates.
Attendees are welcome to listen the results of the project and to participate actively in the Q&A and discussion sessions.
For more information, please feel free to reach us:
Prog. George Papadakis, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Prof. Fatima Baptista, University of Evora, Portugal: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Publishing Workshop from the Editors of Biosystems Engineering
The editors of the official journal of EurAgEng considered it important to engage with the scientists working in our research area to help them improve the effectiveness of manuscripts submitted to peer-reviewed journals in our discipline and remain up to date with the publishing process and the ethical background to scientific publishing.
This workshop will be led by Dr Steve Parkin, Editor-in-Chief and will consist of 30 mins allocated to a presentation on the what editors are looking for in quality submissions followed by 30 mins allocated to a question and answer session.
Dr Steve Parkin
Editor-in-Chief
Biosystems Engineering
Journal available at www.sciencedirect.com
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/biosystems-engineering
Tel: +44 (0) 1908 542683
Mob: +44 (0) 7889 408506
