Udarnik poultry farm

In 2011, the Foundation began investigating the possibilities of reducing discharges from livestock farms in the Leningrad region. Four high-risk poultry farms, identified by the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission HELCOM as the largest potential sources of discharges for the Baltic Sea, were chosen as targets.

In the end, the location selected for the project was the Udarnik poultry farm in the village of Pobeda, close to Vyborg: nutrient discharges from this facility to the rivers and the lakes of the area had been identified to be extremely large. According to the estimates of the Finnish Environment Institute, as much as 10 to 20 tonnes of phosphorus were discharged annually from the poultry farm to the surrounding waterways. Chicken manure had been stored on the poultry farm’s grounds ever since the 1970s, when the poultry farm began operations.

A study on how to improve manure handling was begun in June 2012. In addition to the support from the John Nurminen Foundation, the Udarnik poultry farm project received additional funding in the spring of 2012 from the Baltic Sea Action Plan Trust Fund, established by the states of Sweden and Finland.

During 2013, the Foundation and the owners of the Udarnik poultry farm joined forces to investigate the options for minimising the risk of runoff to the environment from the manure pools and the fields used for spreading manure. In 2014, the decision was made to manage the runoff waters with a filtering system, based on a mineral-based filtering material that is used in wastewater treatment in sparsely populated areas in Sweden. After use, the filtering material and the phosphorus that has precipitated therein can be used as fertilizer in cultivated fields, so that the nutrients can be recycled back to use in agriculture.

In 2014, a filter was constructed at the farm for phosphorus and solids runoff coming from cultivated fields by way of ditches. The filtering system for the manure pools was completed in 2017.