The 4th International Conference on Recent Advancements in Sustainable Management of Livestock Waste and Rural Environment (LivestockWaste2020) will cover the following topics.

 

     Theme 1 Sustainable management of livestock waste

     Theme 2 Energy and resources recovery from waste and wastewater                                      in rural area

     Theme 3 Control and recycling of nutrients and organic matters in                                          agriculture

     Theme 4 Hazardous materials management in rural area

     Theme 5 Other agricultural activities and sustainable management

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    The world population exceeded 7.63 billion people as of August 2018, which is continuing to grow each day and estimated to reach 9.77 billion by 2050. Along with the population growth, sustainable food supply is essential. In most developed and developing countries, the resultant rapid growth of livestock industry has triggered many environmental issues including water, air and soil pollutions, mainly attributable to the improper or even no treatment of livestock waste. Livestock industry is also regarded as one of the largest agricultural pollution sources, and a major contributor to greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission. In some areas or districts, veterinary medicines and agricultural chemicals are extensively used during animal and crop production, causing the development of antibiotic, metal and biocide resistance in the surrounding environment.

 To address the above issues and find out solutions, the 1st International Conference on Recent Advances in Pollution Control and Resource Recovery for the Livestock Farming Industry was organized by the Yangtze Delta Region Institute of Tsinghua University (China) in October 2013. Moreover, in order to follow up the research findings and breakthroughs, National University of Ireland Galway (Ireland) and Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences (China) organized the 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Pollution Control and Resource Recovery for the Livestock Sector(in August 2016), and the 3rdInternational Conference on Recent Advances in Pollution Control and Resource Recovery for the Livestock Farming Industry(in July 2018), respectively. These three conferences achieved fruitful outcomes regarding the related environmental policies and regulations, waste and wastewater treatment technologies, resource recovery and re-utilization, strategies for GHGs emission reduction and emerging contaminants control.

    In Japan, the annual production of livestock waste was about 79 million tons in 2018. In addition to the efficient and regulatory policies and management, the good practices on manure wastes resulted in a relatively high livestock waste utilization ratio of 87% in 2015. However, the livestock industry, especially cattle and pig production, has still been claimed to associate with water pollution, odor problem, energy gain and resources conservation, GHGs emission, etc. in the surrounding rural area. Thus, more sustainable and advanced technologies for the treatment and utilization of livestock waste such as high-efficacy methane fermentation, carbonization, recovery as organic fertilizer, etc. are demanded, which can ease the burden of environmental management in rural areas as well. Taking all the above aspects into consideration, not only more advanced treatment and utilization technologies of waste and/or wastewater but also more strict policies and regulations are crucially important for the sustainable management of livestock industry and the betterment of rural environment.