Farms Must Be Exempted From Emission Rules

[BigV]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

On a regular farm, the manure goes back of the fields that grow the food for the livestock.

The factory farms produce an order of magnitude more manure and has no land to spread it on, because the livestock feed is grown elsewhere.

Shipping the manure to where the livestock feed is grown, is much more expensive than using chemical fertilizer made from oil.

The bottom line take priority over the environment.

Now there's somewhere else to ship the manure to--the digester lagoons. Of course, you have to be near a gas pipeline to feed it back into the grid, but I wonder why this couldn't be used in a standalone scenario for cogeneration of energy for the large farm much like sawmills use sawdust as a complementary sources of energy used to power the processes that create more sawdust (and wood products, of course).
California cows start passing gas to the grid

Tue Mar 4, 2008 6:30pm EST

By Nichola Groom

RIVERDALE, California (Reuters) - Imagine a vat of liquid cow manure covering the area of five football fields and 33 feet deep. Meet California's most alternative new energy.

On a dairy farm in the Golden State's agricultural heartland, utility PG&E Corp began on Tuesday producing natural gas derived from manure, in what it hopes will be a new way to power homes with renewable, if not entirely clean, energy.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by BigV

snip~ but I wonder why this couldn't be used in a standalone scenario for cogeneration of energy for the large farm ~snip

Some of the larger dairy farms in VT are doing just that, with seed money from the state.
They use the methane to run generators for power and when the process is complete they recycle the bedding for another $50/$60 K savings per year.
It costs about half a million to set the system, up on a farm with sufficient livestock to make it practical.