Okay, maybe it's not actually "hitting the fan" – but increasingly, it could be powering it.

There are two things that beef and dairy ranchers have in common and in abundance: an ongoing struggle to stay in business and the fecal matter produced by their livestock. For decades, there was little to do with the latter but let it lie or use it to fertilize crops. The problem here is that there is usually far more manure that can be used for fertilization; the excess winds up in streams and rivers, fouling water resources.

The use of such manure for generating usable energy is promising to address both the cash flow problem and the issue of pollution – at least on a small, localized scale.

Take the case of Washington State. According to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article published in 2007, two out of every five dairy operations in Washington failed over a ten-year period [1]. Much of this was due to falling prices for dairy products, but the nail in the coffin for many of these farmers was skyrocketing energy costs. Another report in the September 2009 issue of National Geographic says that fuel and petroleum-based fertilizers can eat up 12.5% of a farm's operating budget [2] – something that matches my general experience.

While the topic of biomass as an alternative source of fuel for the nation's electricity generation plants is a hot one, it is unlikely that cow pies and other forms of agricultural waste are going to provide any sort of large-scale solution to the nation's energy problem. The major fly in the ointment here is transportation costs; in many cases, the expense of transporting waste from the farm to a processing plant cancels out any net savings in terms of money and energy. To put it another way, if it costs $10 a ton to transport and process an amount of waste that will only generate $9 worth of energy, there isn't much point.

That doesn't mean that this energy can’t be tapped, though. Although the use of cow manure and agricultural waste may not be practical for large-scale energy generation, it could be very useful in making farms and their surrounding local communities more environmentally friendly and energy independent. Consider that the production of food in the U.S. accounts for up to 3% of the nation's energy consumption and 7% of its greenhouse gases [3] – and that isn't even taking into consideration the cost of processing and transportation.

By placing a biomass digester on the farm itself in order to provide its own needs, the farmer is looking not only at substantial financial savings, but significant reductions in pollution as well. If, as has been proposed by Washington State University researcher Craig Frear, surplus energy generated on a farm could be sold to local residents, it would represent an additional income stream while localizing resources – something that is increasingly seen as a key to long-term survival and sustainability.

The anaerobic digesters required for such processes are not cheap – they can cost in excess of $450,000 – but government grants are available for such purposes, and with the financial, environmental and social costs of fossil fuels, such an investment can pay for itself in less than ten years. Plus it helps farmers be more independent.

Sources

Koerth-Baker, Maggie. "Cow Manure, Other Homegrown Energy Powering U.S. Farms." National Geographic News, 4 September 2009

Stiffler, Lisa. "Ranchers Turning Cow Manure Into Kilowatt-Hours." Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 16 August 2007

Graphic  Above by AgCert: http://www.agcert.com