In the context of the PAS (Programmatic Approach to Nitrogen), Flemish livestock farming will have to make major efforts in the coming years to reduce its ammonia emissions. For traditional livestock farming, lists of recognized emission-reducing techniques and measures are available that livestock farmers can apply. It is currently not clear enough which of these housing techniques and measures could be legally and technically applicable within organic livestock farming, let alone that it is known to what extent they are equally effective in organic agriculture.

If the currently proposed Flemish environmental policy is continued, the lack of legally recognized techniques and measures that can be applied in organic livestock farming will pose a threat to the survival of this sector. Meanwhile, Europe has the clear ambition that organic agriculture should grow.

In this project, measures will be sought that are in line with organic legislation, preferably those that are source-oriented and fit into a system approach. These can be measures aimed at animal management, litter materials, layout of the range, ... The intended result of the project is to discover a number of measures that are applicable and effective in organic agriculture and to look for scientific knowledge that is already available about these measures. We will focus on the poultry, pig and goat sectors, because the highest need is situated there.

We will search for ammonia-reducing measures that are still unknown in Flanders with the aid of international scientific literature, contacts with foreign researchers, experiences from current ILVO PAS research and discussions with organic farmers. We also evaluate the applicability of the legally recognized ammonia reduction measures from conventional livestock farming (AEA and PAS list) for the organic sector. The most promising measures are selected from both exercises and then further explored. We describe the selected measures in detail, collect the available knowledge about: (1) the operating principle of the measure, (2) the results of existing emission measurements (3) the conditions for application that guarantee effectiveness. The possibility of assurance of the measures and techniques is also being considered. In case of knowledge absence, proposals for further actions will be formulated.