Ammonia emissions are one of the important causes of regional haze especially in China. Manure management from livestock production is an important source of ammonia emissions while dairy production is an important part of animal husbandry production in China. It is estimated that the contribution of ammonia emissions from dairy production to total ammonia emissions in China will increase from 9% in 2009 to 15% in 2030. In view of this, the research on ammonia reduction from dairy production is of great significance to atmospheric environmental management in China.

Prof. Ma’s group of the Agricultural Resources Research Center of the Institute of Genetics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed the ammonia abatement potential of China's dairy production system after the implementation of different measures in the manure management chain and the associated cost and benefits. Considering the health damage cost from ammonia in the atmosphere, reducing the dietary protein can significantly reduce ammonia emissions while bringing about an economic benefit of about 13 billion yuan. Furthermore, if considering health damage cost at Europe level, the reduction of dietary protein, the acidification of manure surface under the floor in dairy buildings, and the use of vermiculite to cover the manure during storage will greatly reduce ammonia emissions and bring an economic benefit of 2.8-308 billion yuan to the society.

Reference:

Nannan Zhang, Zhaohai Bai, Wilfried Winiwarter, Stewart Ledgard, Jiafa Luo, Juan Liu, Yongqing Guo, Lin Ma. Reducing ammonia emissions from dairy cattle production via cost-effective manure management techniques in China[J]. Environmental Science & Technology, 2019.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.9b04284