Isolated Agroecosystems as a Way to Solve the Problems of Feed, Ecology and Energy Supply of Livestock Farming

Abstract

Livestock farming is one of the main energy consumers in agriculture. It consumes about 20% of all energy consumption. The half of these consumption (50%) is consumed by cattle farms. The energy consumption of the livestock production is about 16%. More than 75% of the energy is consumed to produce feed and is subsequently concentrated in animal waste. Improving the energy efficiency of livestock farming is an important scientific and economic issue. The improvement of food production results in the development of monocultures. This rule refers to all spheres of husbandry human activity. In order to solve a contradiction between agricultural production and the nature laws there has been paid a great attention to the organization of agro-ecosystems. The maintenance of permanent functioning of agroecosystems requires significant energy consumption. The study of energy consumption in agroecosystems is one of the main research methods in ecology, therefore, the current paper has considered the energy-environmental problems of livestock farming from these points of view. The current study carried out on the basis of the energy balance of the livestock complex has shown that the energy efficiency of livestock production was not more than 16%. This factor promotes a great raise of environmental issues. There has been proposed to reduce “energy capacity” of animal waste to increase environmental safety and energy independence of livestock farming.