| Fruit and animal husbandry are an important agricultural production activity in Zhejiang province in general and in Haining County in particular. Due to the large population of Pigs in the County, the potential for serious ecological and environmental damage exists. To address concerns wrought by the high density of livestock in the County, agroecological measures have been introduced to find alternative means of producing livestock and crops without severe impacts on the environment and disrupting supply of products to the market. The Center for New Energy Technology in Haining embarked on a project to link the sectors of Fruit Production and Livestock Rearing through a model which would recycle material from one production system component to another by collecting manure and waste water from Livestock farms as an input into the crop production unit and in the process produce Biogas for use by Farmers and Local Residents. This was done with the view to: (a) reduce the quantity of chemical fertilizer application to the orchard soil - the reduction in chemical fertilizers was 52% in Urea N per Ha, 660% in Triple Supper Phosphate (TSP) P per Ha and 77% in Potassium Chloride K per Ha between the 2000 and 2001 cropping seasons; further reductions were also noted between the chemical fertilizers inputs for the year 2002 and these, in comparison to the 2001 cropping season, were 25%, 43% and 50% for N, P and K per Ha, respectively; (b) resolve the proper disposal of an enormous amount of manure and waste water generated daily by a pigsty using environmentally friendly and economically viable means ?the digester system handled three tonnes of dry manure and waste water per day from the Hog sty; (c) encourage an on-farm recycling of resources and at the same time bring forth useful by-products - once stabilized by the reactor anaerobic process, the waste water and dry manure had biogas and effluent sludge as by-products which were used for cooking and as fertilizer, respectively; and (d) make a dynamically linked production system in which outputs from one component serves as an input in the next component ?the output from the Sty (manure and waste water) was an input in the biogas facility whose outputs (biogas and effluent) were inputs for domestic use and as organic fertilizer in the orchard, respectively.The purpose of this study was to establish the ecological and economic sustainability of thisFruit-Biogas-Pig production system through use of a simulation model. To achieve this, data was collected between December 2001 and February 2003. Background production details of the Pear and Swine Farm were compiled from the farm records and other materials available at the Centre. Interviews were also conducted with staff from the Center itself and the Pig Farm Manager and this gave us information on the specific conditions in which the animals are kept. Information on fruit and biogas yields, revenues and costs since the production model was adopted was compiled and analysed.We sort also to determine the chemical characteristics of the orchard soil, pear leaves and fruits. These samples provided us widi data on the ability of the soil to adequately supply the crop with needed nutrients for normal plant growth and the nutritional status of the peai trees themselves. Sampling was also done on the effluent (organic fertili2er) itself, which was the main fertilizer used for fruit production.The collected data was reorganized and prepared for analysis using Microsoft's Excel and statistical software such as SPSS and SAS. Soil Samples were collected on two occasions ?the first collection was done at the beginning of the active growing season in March 2002. The second soil sampling was done at fruit ripening stage at the end of July. Leaf and Organic fertilizer samples were also collected at the end of the reproductive season of the orchard trees - in late July. All the samples were promptly brought to the Laboratory for preparation and final analysis. The soil samples gave us the status of the nutrients...
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