An information tool for the management of aminal waste at farm and regional level

Italian legislation, as in most of the European countries, concerning animal waste managements is every time more strict. Pig farmers producing slurry as waste are considered responsible for the pollution of soil and water on large areas of Italy. For economical reasons these farms are getting bigger, concentrated in specific areas and spread the slurry on the soil. So the menace really exists. In order to reduce the risk of pollution pig farms have to respect or fulfil some parameters decided on regional basis. They concern a list of aspects with reference to the whole farm. For example the number of pigs and its "weight" for farm surface, related with the physical characteristics of the soil and the distance of the farm centre where the slurry is spread, the existence and the type of treatment plants for slurry, the average nutrient and pollutant content of the slurry, and the planning restrictions. All these aspects have to be declared by farmers by official documents and analysis to the public authority in charge for the control. In general a pig farm association prepare and look after all these papers. By the years a big database on paper of all these characteristics have been set up. Any query on this database is quite difficult because information is spread on different documents. In cooperation with the pig producer association has been launched a project to integrate the existing data with thematic georeferenced cartography of the area where farms are installed, making available all the information in a GIS database. Queries on the GIS database should be possible directly from maps or from an archive of the farms.