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AGRITECH-VI-2021 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 981 (2022) 022009 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/981/2/022009

The problem of agricultural waste and ways to solve it

A M Agapkin1, I A Makhotina1, N A Ibragimova1, O B Goryunova1,

A K Izembayeva2 and S L Kalachev1
1
Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, 36, Stremyanny lane, Moscow,
117997, Russia
2
Almaty Technological University, 100, Tole bi, Almaty, Kazakhstan

E-mail: irina_mahotina@mail.ru

Abstract. Billions of tons of agricultural waste are generated worldwide every year. In Russia
the total amount of agricultural waste reaches 630-650 million tons annually. The situation
with agricultural waste will only get worse, because on the one hand, this waste is a valuable
raw material that can be used in agriculture (more than half of that is manure), and on the other
hand, for the same reason, this waste creates great environmental and sanitary problems. The
most promising way to solve the problem is to use manure for the production of organic
fertilizers, which can be used in organic farming. The organic market is one of the most
dynamically developing in the world, which is estimated at 198.1 billion US dollars in 2020, is
projected to reach 495.9 billion US dollars by 2027. The solution of the problem of agricultural
waste must be complex and includes legislative, economic and technological components. The
article describes the need to support cooperation between producers of organic fertilizers,
organic products and sellers of organic products. Variants of modification of the existing
equipment for manure processing in order to obtain biologically active organic fertilizers are
proposed.

1. Introduction
The production of agricultural products is associated with the generation of a large amount of waste.
In the world the amount of agricultural waste reaches billions of tons (including losses of already
produced food) [1,2].
In Russia, it is still more profitable to throw away agricultural waste, rather than recycle it. Of the
300 million tons of waste in livestock and poultry farming only a few percent are recycled per year.
Sectors of agriculture (crop farming, livestock industry, poultry production, fur farming) and
related other sectors of the agro-industrial complex (post-harvest processing and storage of crop
products, processing of agricultural products, food industry) annually produce hundreds of million
tons of organic waste in Russia [3,4]. The total amount of agricultural waste reaches 630-650 million
tons. According to other data, the amount of waste reaches 770 million tons [5]. The largest part of the
waste falls on the livestock industry (56%), the second place is occupied by crop waste (35.6%). The
share of processing industries accounts for 4.7% of waste. For poultry farming - 3.7%.
Russian livestock and poultry farms receive 286 million tons of manure including: cattle manure -
217 million tons, pork - 46 million, poultry - 17 million tons, manure of other animal species - 6
million tons per year [6].

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AGRITECH-VI-2021 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 981 (2022) 022009 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/981/2/022009

Manure is used to being considered a good organic fertilizer, but like all other products, it is good
in the right proportion. Moreover, it is often only suitable as fertilizer after processing. Usually,
manure disposal is carried out near farms, which leads to soil acidification, alienation of agricultural
land, pollution of groundwater and emissions of the greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere,
which negatively affects the environment.
Animal manure is an excellent source of nutrients to support the growth of agricultural crops, but it
may also carry a variety of human pathogens. Safe utilizations of animal manure and other agricultural
wastes must not result in new routes of pathogen and disease transmission between animals, humans,
and the environment. The main contaminants can be bacteria, viruses, intestinal parasites, and more
recently transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. In addition, the manure contains a large amount
of weed seeds, which cause significant economic damage in the production of crop products.
The process of decomposition of organic waste in anaerobic conditions leads to the formation of
biogas, which significantly affects the «greenhouse effect». It is believed that the ability of methane to
cause a greenhouse effect is about 30 times higher than that of carbon dioxide. Depending on the
external conditions, from 250 to 600 m³ of biogas can be formed from one ton of organic waste during
its decomposition under anaerobic conditions [5,7,8].
The area of fields that are located near settlements and contaminated with organic waste in Russia
exceeds 2.5 million hectares. The annual environmental damage caused by violation of the regulations
for the use of manure is estimated at 6.2 billion US dollars (excluding damage from diseases of the
population and animals) [9].
On the other hand, this waste is a valuable raw material for the production of useful products,
primarily organic fertilizers for use in organic farming. Manure contains a large amount of nutrients
(table 1), which define it as a valuable organic fertilizer. For example, a laying hen produces about 0.8
kg of nitrogen and 0.2 kg of phosphorus per year.
Table 1. Chemical composition of pig and cattle manure, % on dry weight [10].
Animal species Dry matter Organic matter Ash Nitrogen (N) Phosphorus Potassium
(P2O5) (K2O)
Litter manure
Pigs 28 86 14 1.7 0.7 2.1
Cattle 25 84 16 2.0 1.0 2.4
Semi-liquid manure
Pigs 15 80 20 2.5 1.8 0.8
Cattle 15 87 13 2.0 0.8 2.2
Liquid manure
Pigs 5 80 20 2.8 1.0 1.2
Cattle 5 80 20 2.0 1.2 2.2

The use of poultry manure after drying as an organic fertilizer increased the yield of potatoes more
than 10 times, barley and oats - by 3-10 centners/ha, annual grasses - by 6-10 centners/ha, beets and
carrots - up to 600 centners/ha [11].
Thus, on the one hand, manure is a valuable organic fertilizer, and on the other its direct use
without preliminary preparation poses a serious hazard to the environment, animals and people.

2. Materials and methods

The research materials were regulatory documents of the Russian Federation, patents for equipment
and technologies for processing agricultural organic waste, literary and Internet sources, statistical
data. General logical methods and techniques of research are applied: analysis, synthesis,
generalization, induction.

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AGRITECH-VI-2021 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 981 (2022) 022009 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/981/2/022009

3. Results and discussion

The solution that will eliminate the environmental harm of agricultural waste, and at the same time
involve this waste in commercial circulation as a valuable raw material for the production of organic
fertilizers should be complex and must include:

1. The regulatory component of the solution - state support for organic farming and careful
attitude to environment, first of all through the legislative consolidation of the «rules of the
game» in this area;
2. The economic component of the solution - to ensure the creation of economic conditions that
stimulate enterprises to fully process agricultural waste, as well as to ensure the economic
efficiency of organic fertilizers using;
3. The technological component of the solution - using equipment and technologies that make it
possible to obtain from agricultural waste a product with high functional properties and an
acceptable price.

The decision of the problem includes using organic waste as a raw material for the production of
organic fertilizers and leave out the processing of waste into biogas, as well as using of waste to
generate heat or to destroy. Authors believe that organic waste should be returned to the crop
production system as much as possible in the form of organic fertilizers in order to preserve the natural
cycle of biomass movement to maintain soil fertility due to its organic component.
The profitability of processing manure into biogas in today's Russian conditions does not
correspond to reality. Processing manure into biogas requires either a very high price for the gas
obtained in this way or government support. Investments in the construction of biogas plants at an
agricultural enterprise can amount to more than 800 thousand US dollars. If we take a medium-sized
livestock farm, a biogas plant will pay off in 15 years, and even if the price of electricity is twice as
high as it is now.
The regulatory component should consist of two elements. The first already exists and has been
introduced into action - this is government regulation and stimulation of waste recycling. The key
document in this issue today, in Russia, is the Federal Law «On Environmental Protection» which
provides the harmonization of domestic environmental legislation with international legislation on the
basis of the introduction of the best available technologies (BAT).
In order to stimulate the use of BAT by enterprises, the State applies the following incentive
measures - exemption from payments for negative environmental impact, subsidizing interest
payments on loans, tax incentives, etc. For those enterprises that refuse to implement BAT, the State
applies the opposite measures, for example an increase in the rates of payments and taxes.
In Russia, a classification of waste from various industries by hazard classes has been introduced.
According to this classification, poultry droppings are considered as toxic industrial waste of hazard
class three. Cattle manure can be attributed to the fifth class of hazard to the environment, if it has
been stored for at least six months, and to the fourth if it is fresh cattle manure. Fresh manure from
pigs is hazard class three, rotted manure from pigs (storage for at least one year) is hazard class four
[5].
In cases where the owner of the generated waste does not recycle and does not use manure as
secondary resource, it is envisaged to charge a fee for the negative impact on the environment. In
2021, the fee for the negative impact on the environment is about 20 US dollars/ton per year for waste
of the third class and about 9.6 US dollars/ton per year for waste of the fourth hazard class and slightly
more than 0.4 US dollars/ton for waste of the fifth class [12].
Thus, the State regulates the processing of agricultural waste with the help of BAT and economic
instruments such as fines, subsidies, preferences.
The second important element of the regulatory component is the regulation of organic farming.
Implementation the policy regarding the regulation and support of organic farming as the main

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AGRITECH-VI-2021 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 981 (2022) 022009 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/981/2/022009

consumer of waste products (organic fertilizers). At the moment, this issue is very poorly developed in
Russia.
Without this element waste processors will face a difficult to overcome a barrier of lack of demand
for organic fertilizers, which can only partially be resolved by increasing fines for non-compliance
with waste disposal requirements or their improper disposal.
Today, there are the following normative and legislative acts that provide normative regulation of
organic farming. First of all it is Federal Law No. 280 of August 3, 2018 «On organic products», came
into force on January 1, 2020. Then National and Interstate standards: GOST R 56104-2014 «Organic
food products. Terms and definitions», GOST R 57022–2016 «Organic products. The procedure for
conducting voluntary certification of organic production», Interstate standard GOST 33980-2016
«Organic products, rules of production, processing, labeling and sale». It is planned to prepare and
adopt the following standards: GOST R «Organic products from wild-growing raw materials. Rules of
harvesting, collection, storage and processing», GOST R «Organic products. Biological products for
plant protection. General specifications», GOST R «Soils. Assessment of the quality of soils for the
production of organic products in plant growing, fruit growing and fodder cultivation», GOST R
«Organic products. Marking: inscriptions. Graphic representation (sign), form and order of their use»
[13].
The cost of organic products is a serious problem for the development of the market of such
products. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the purchasing power of the population all over the world
has significantly decreased. A similar negative trend is observed in Russia.
High price of organic products in Russia due to the fact that there is no cooperation in the sector:
between producers and processors, producers and retailers, producers and the scientific community,
etc., each producer is closed in his production. Cooperation and specialization will lead to the fact that
in some empty segments (for example, processing, production of bio-preparations, fertilizers and
seeds), new participants will appear. And then all processes will not be closed to the producer of a
final product. New technologies will start coming to the sector. All this will affect the price of organic
products [14]. The organic market is one of the most dynamically developing in the world, the global
market for organic foods and beverages estimated at 198.1 billion US dollars in 2020, is projected to
reach a revised size of 495.9 billion US dollars by 2027 [15]. It is planned that by 2025 the volume of
the market for organic products may be from 3 to 5% of the world market of agricultural products
[16]. In 2019, there were 3.1 million registered organic producers worldwide. India continues to be the
country with the largest number of producers (1,366,000), followed by Uganda (210,000) and Ethiopia
(204,000). A total of 72.3 million hectares in organic farming at the end of 2019, representing an
increase of 1.6 percent or 1.1 million hectares over 2018. The number of people constantly consuming
organic products in the world has also grown at least five times over 15 years, and amounted to
approximately 700 million people.
Until 2014, the Russian market showed quite intensive growth: on average since 2010,
approximately 10% per year, but the crisis and a number of indirect factors led to the fact that in 2015-
2016 the growth was approximately 4%. In 2017-2019, the situation with the development of the
organic market recovered, and now there is a steady growth of 8-10% per year. The organic market in
Russia is 120 million US dollars, including imported organic products [14,17,18].
The most popular in Russia, as in the world are mineral fertilizers (table 2). The share of organic
fertilizers is extremely small.
Table 2. The share of mineral and organic fertilizers in the total production in the Russian Federation
in 2017-2019 [19].
Fertilizers 2017 2018 2019
thousand % to the thousand % to the thousand % to the
tons total tons total tons total
mineral and
49060 99.6 49350 98.1 51564 98.0
chemical

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AGRITECH-VI-2021 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 981 (2022) 022009 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/981/2/022009

animal or
214 0.4 966 1.9 1048 2.0
vegetable origin

According to the data of 2019, the commercial production of organic fertilizers in Russia exceeded
1 million tons. However, most of these products are still created and consumed by the farmers
themselves and do not enter the market. Domestic companies export only 0.5% of marketable
products. The average prices for supplies outside the country indicate that the market for organic
fertilizers in Russia is still in its infancy. Over the past five years since 2015, prices have fluctuated in
a very wide range from 503 to 1220 US dollars per tonne. Such volatility suggests that export
deliveries are one-time, and the range of organic fertilizers is just being formed [20].
As the new market is not fully developed, it will be useful to form and temporary support from
regional and federal state institutions of end-to-end chains from organic stores to producers of such
organic products and further to producers of organic fertilizers on the basis of long-term cooperation
agreements in production and sale. These agreements will reduce marketing risks and the influence of
seasonality in the consumption of organic fertilizers, harmonize economic interests and create a basis
for investing in projects to create production facilities at each link of the chain [21].
At the initial stage measures to stimulate the demand for organic fertilizers are required and as the
market grows the demand and competitiveness of such fertilizers will develop at a level that does not
require the initially applied support measures. The intensive development of online trade in Russia in
recent years [22] can also stimulate the growth of the organic fertilizer market.
The globalization of the world economy is a serious challenge to all sectors of the economy [23],
including agriculture and the processing of agricultural waste, which indicates the need for
cooperation between these industries. The world organic fertilizers market is expected to grow by
12.08% from 2017 and reach 11.16 billion US dollars by 2022 [24]. Russian producers of organic
fertilizers need to take advantage of the growing demand for this product on the world market.
Domestic organic fertilizers have an export potential, the implementation of which can also reduce the
influence of seasonality in the sale of manufactured fertilizers.
To ensure complete processing of poultry and livestock waste without intermediate storage to
minimize the loss of their useful components, as well as a negative impact on the environment, and at
the same time to obtain organic fertilizer, high-performance processing complexes are required.
Today, all technologies, which are used for the processing of organic agricultural waste, have a
number of disadvantages, for example low productivity of drum biofermenters, chamber fermenters
have a working area capacity more than 100 tons of compost mixture, but they are installations of
periodic operation with a processing period of 7-8 days, etc.
To process the entire volume of waste at each enterprise, it will be necessary to install a large
number of biofermenters, which will require significant areas and investments in their construction
and maintenance. For example, to process the annual waste of one poultry farm it will be required
about fifteen biofermenters. Or it will be necessary to build storage facilities for manure, because the
periodic operation of installations lasting 7-8 days will not provide an opportunity for continuous
processing of the manure.
A high-performance plant with a continuous operation with a duration of one cycle of no more than
two-three days, with the ability to load processed raw materials of at least 100 tons, can be considered
effective for manure processing.
In addition to the above features, it is important to note what kind of final product will be obtained
after processing. Chamber composters produce compost, and drum fermenters produce biologically
active organic fertilizer (microbial fertilizer).
In our opinion, the most optimal is to use chamber compost installations, since at the moment in
Russia they are more widespread, but to finalize the design of these installations so that the process
becomes continuous, and in the entire volume of the fermenter it would be easy and guaranteed to
maintain the specified conditions for the vital activity of bacterial populations and their most efficient
work on the biotransformation of organic material into biologically active fertilizer.

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AGRITECH-VI-2021 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 981 (2022) 022009 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/981/2/022009

It is necessary at all points of the material processed in the reactor to ensure the constant movement
of oxygen-containing air with a flow rate of 0.6 m³/kg of the processed mass, as well as to ensure the
initial temperature of the material loaded into the reactor is not lower than 10°C; humidity not more
than 60-65%, acidity in the pH range 6.0 - 8.0, the ratio of carbon to nitrogen in the range 20: 1 - 30: 1
[6]. These parameters are need to be clarified on the basis of additional microbiological studies in
relation to the features of the material planned for processing based on the requirements for
commercial biological organic fertilizer.
Using modeling methods, a problem of effective control of the blowing of organic material, its
temperature, humidity and oxygen content at all points of the reactor volume can be solved, and then
we will be able to create conditions for bacterias to produce high-quality biologically active organic
fertilizer, and not ordinary compost in a period of no more than 2-3 days.
For a newly created high-performance fermenter of layer-by-layer fermentation, vertical cylindrical
bioreactor based on the solutions proposed in [25] is most preferable.
Another option is to use a biotrench as an aeration bioreactor, providing for the cover of the trench
with a vault made of a light structure with a gas fraction sampling system, air supply from the base and
side walls of the trench, organizing the unloading of the finished material at the base of the trench with
screw devices, changing the geometry of the side walls to facilitate material sliding and elimination of
stagnant zones during the movement of material from top to bottom to the screw device.
In both models of a large high-performance biofermenter, a layer-by-layer biofermentation process
is organized, in which the raw material loaded from above is going down during the biotransformation
period (2-3 days) and is unloaded from the bottom after the end of the process in the form of
biofertilizer (microbial fertilizer).

4. Conclusion
The problem of processing of agricultural waste can only be solved in an integrated way in linking the
legislative, economic and technological components. The key direction of solving the problem is to
produce organic fertilizers. It is necessary to provide legal and economic support to enterprises
producing organic fertilizers and to organic farming. Solving the issue of the seasonality of the organic
fertilizers market will increase the attractiveness of this sector to investments. To obtain high-quality
organic fertilizers, it is necessary to improve the existing installations and technologies in order to
obtain a highly productive, continuous process that takes place within 2-3 days.

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