Mobilization of Essential Plant Nutrients After Various Applications of Swine Effluent through A Subsurface Drip Irrigation.

Mobilization of Essential Plant Nutrients After Various Applications of Swine Effluent Through A Subsurface Drip Irrigation

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the numbers of confined animal feeding operations (CAFO) has increased within the United States and currently produce approximately 40% of all US livestock. The National Agricultural Statistical Service  (NASS) estimates in 2007 that 2,350,000 ‘pigs and hogs’ were located in the Oklahoma panhandle which includes three counties: Beaver, Texas, and Cimmarron. These three countines are also known to be situated in a semi-arid environment, in the geographic cover of the Southern Great Plains, or Ogallala Aquifer which is the prime water resource. The Ogallala Aquifer, a non-renewable water source, supplies over 90 % of the water used to irrigate approximately one fifth of U.S. cropland (Guru and Horne, 2000).  The lack of adequate water supply requires farmers and producers to utilize alternatives to supplement current water sources.  With the influx of additional animal waste increments from swine production facilities, numerous farmers and producers apply effluent to adjoining property as either a solid fertilizer or the liquid effluent produced by anerobic lagoons for irrigation.  Nevertheless, continuous applications have lead to the buildup of macro and micro-nutrients in the soil which then in turn makes them more vulnerable to leaching into the ground or surface waters.  Also, countless times it becomes hard to dispose of nutrient rich swine effluent because of the risk of excessive application. For water or soil issues subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) provides several advantages including water use efficiency by reducing soil evaporation, surface runoff, or deep percolation while improving infiltration and water storage. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the nutrient distributions that occur after various seasonal applications of swine effluent through a subsurface drip irrigations system.