Those of you who have meandered through our websites know that we are strong advocates of organic farming. It’s not because we are granola crunching tree-hugging Mother Earth sandal shufflers, as organic farming supporters are often portrayed by the main stream media. Actually, we don’t fall into either of the major political ‘extremes.’ We’re Wisconsinites (aka Cheeseheads), and as the UW-Madison band always sings in the fifth quarter of every home football game: “When you’ve said Wiiiis-con-sin… you’ve said it all.”
Translated: in America’s Dairyland, we tend to be fiscally conservative, socially progressive, and as ‘pegs’ unlikely to fit into anyone’s square or round holes.
Michael and I support organic farming for a variety of reasons, but we most adamantly also understand that conventional farmers are neither evil, misguided or idiots, as the alternative press is wont to describe the ‘conventional’ sector of farming.
One of the thorny problems constantly facing conventional dairy farmers is manure disposal. As a back-of-the-envelope type calculation, a conventionally fed dairy cow produces about 120 pounds of manure every day. Organic dairy farmers have dairy herds that are small enough that they can usually compost and recycle all the manure that their cows produce and use it to fertilize their acreage. Modern conventional dairy farms, however, have herds which can number in the thousands of animals in a relatively small area.
At 120 pounds of manure a day per cow, that’s a whole heap of manure.
Every day.
Other farm animals - pigs, chickens, ducks, horses, sheep, beef cattle, goats and all the other livestock you’d care to think of - also produce manure.
Lots of manure.
So, why is that of any interest?
Organic farmers aren’t the only farmers interested in preserving the land and the environment. Conventional farmers are equally passionate about the land, and I have yet to meet a farmer of either type that doesn’t want to pass along to the next generation a healthy legacy. No one wants to poison their land or water with dangerous runoff from manure.
And here’s where an important “aHA!” has bloomed within conventional farming that is as “organic” and “green” as green can be: manure is biomass.
With technology that individual farms can and are implementing across the nation, farmers are turning the manure into an important source of renewable energy.
The equation is fairly straightforward: Manure + bacteria inside a biomass ‘digester’ = methane, methane that can be directly converted into electricity. The byproduct left after the digester has done its magic is a fibrous material which is clean, dry, odor-free and can be recycled into animal bedding. Once it is soiled, back it goes into the biomass digester, in an ongoing renewable cycle. As an additional benefit, capturing methane from manure in this fashion eliminates its contribution to greenhouse gases.
How successful are these biomass digesters?
Very. And improving by leaps and bounds as we better understand how to make this technology work. They are also becoming affordable, to the point where individual farming operations can not only afford to own one but can also view it as a potential ‘cash cow,’ so to speak. Farmers can produce enough energy from manure to not only meet the electricity needs of their individual farm, but can also provide electricity back into the power grid.
The farmer makes money, the environment benefits, the community at large reduces its dependence on non-renewal fuels… now that sounds like a winner to me!
