Is the recession good for agriculture?
Is the recession good for agriculture?
A simple fact of life in agriculture today, from the small family farm to the largest commercial operation is that farmers face, and will continue to face, more and more environmental protection laws. These new laws are being put in place for good reasons, but unfortunately nutrient management, manure storage, watercourse protection, conservation tillage and so on, don't really seem to help the bottom line for already struggling farmers.
Recently I stumbled upon a project in Alberta, Canada, using anaerobic digesters to produce Biogas, natural fertiliser, and water using beef feedlot waste.
Integrated Manure Utilization System pdf
Highmark claims that using 15% of the manure from a 36 000 head feedlot, they can produce 24 000 kwh of power each day. If I'm correct, that means 10 kwh per steer on feed each day! That's huge. In a conventional feedlot all that energy is lost.
I'd rather read the headline beef feedlots powering the city than beef feedlots contributing to global warming or beef feedlots polluting our waterways. If energy costs continue to rise, maybe the actual beef will become the by-product. Beef cattle: producing green energy, and there's meat too! What could be better than a greener planet, responsibly produced food for the consumer, and a better bottom line for producers.
As the technology in the area of anaerobic digesters continues to advance, it is conceivable that in the future we will see one at every municipal waste treatment plant, every farm, maybe every home. Maybe rather than chasing the dream of the Kyoto protocol, our governments should focus on something like this.
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