Use of spent litter for producing organic fertilizers

The BroilerNet project involves a bottom-up approach to identify challenges and innovation needs for broiler farmers in Europe, and to collect promising and already successfully implemented Good Practices to meet the challenges in questions. The top Good Practices selected by experts within the three thematic areas (animal health management, animal welfare and sustainability) have been summarized in factsheets. This good practice aims to improve carbon neutrality and reduce the environmental footprint of broiler farming. To this end, a group of farmers formed a cooperative company (https://www.agrofertil.it) to collectively process spent litter and produce commercial fertilizers according to regulation (EU) 2019/1009. The plant can process up to 30.000 t/year of litter and enables to: avoid storage of spent litter on the farm or in the field; sanitising the material by pasteurisation with the elimination of pathogenic bacteria, while maintaining the presence of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria; transformating spent litter, rich in quick-release nitrogen in the soil, into a commercial slow-releasing nitrogen rich fertiliser (humus); reduce GHG emissions from synthetic fertiliser production; reduce the carbon footprint in CO2-eq per kg of meat produced.