Surplus manure and barren croplands: strategies for recycling livestock manure to rebuild crop-livestock linkages beyond the farm level

Purpose With the development of specialized high-input agriculture, traditional crop-livestock integration is currently inefficient in livestock manure recycling (LMR), leading to a significant mismatch between surplus manure and barren croplands, which requires rebuilding crop-livestock linkages beyond the farm (CLBF) level. The key is to align breeders’ demand for LMR with the cropland supply of adjacent growers. Design/methodology/approach The authors constructed a policy program to investigate demand/supply preferences for LMR among breeders and/or growers via choice experiments. Using the experiment data, the marginal willingness to pay (mWTP)/marginal willingness to accept (mWTA) of swine breeders and/or grain crop growers for LMR was determined based on the beneficiary-pays principle. Subsequently, the market-oriented strategies of CLBF were simulated across various LMR markets. Findings First, a higher LMR price incentivizes the growers’ willingness but reduces breeders’ willingness to participate in showing a significant heterogeneity between the two groups. Second, both growers and breeders prefer services at the source and final stages of LMR. In this context, a voluntary market for LMR can spontaneously form because pig breeders’ WTP exceeds grain crop growers’ WTA. Third, market simulation based on the samples suggests an equilibrium LMR price between 29 and 76 yuan per ton, with its market share constituting 2.28–2.15% of Jiangsu Province’s total LMR market. Originality/value This study provides a comprehensive analysis to ascertain whether the LMR demand of breeders and the cropland supply of neighboring growers can be effectively matched, potentially facilitating the emergence of LMR markets. Our findings imply that it is essential to accommodate the preferences of both growers and breeders and to advance the development of LMR social services when designing LMR policies.