Manure Standards is involved in a cooperation platform called SuMaNu (Sustainable Manure and Nutrient Management for Reduction of Nutrient Loss in the Baltic Sea Region). SuMaNu brings together four EU-funded projects which all concentrate on sustainable manure and nutrient management from different perspectives. The ultimate goal of platform cooperation is to utilise nutrients more efficiently and to reduce nutrient inflow to the Baltic Sea.
Project platforms are a new initiative of the Interreg Baltic Sea Region programme to increase the impact of existing projects and their results. “SuMaNu is a great extension to the work done in Manure Standards: the high quality data of manure quantity and composition is a prerequisite for implementation of sustainable manure management on farms and in policies”, states Manure Standards coordinator Sari Luostarinen from Natural Resources Institute Finland, Luke.
Four paths to better nutrient management
The other three projects involved in SuMaNu are dealing with reducing ammonia emissions and thus nitrogen losses via acidification of slurry (Baltic Slurry Acidification project), with more sustainable use of organic fertilisers on farms (GreenAgri project) and with safe fertiliser use of manure and manure-based digestates (BONUS PROMISE project). “Via collaboration between the projects we can achieve more impact than by working alone. We analyse and summarise the knowledge and results of the four projects and produce joint recommendations for best practices on farms. The recommendations are also important in policy making”, tells SuMaNu coordinator Minna Sarvi, also from Luke.
SuMaNu was officially kicked off on 23-24 October, 2018, in Helsinki when the consortium gathered to plan ahead the 2.5 years of project implementation.
