Burning Bio News

Environmental groups and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reached a settlement requiring the agency to propose a rule on greater information gathering on confined livestock farms. The rule, to be proposed within 12 months, would require the 20,000 or so domestic factory farms to report information like how they dispose of manure and other waste. – mj: The process of revising the federal manure rules began over ten years ago. It has cost millions of dollars, and the ’solution’ will not ‘fix’ the problem. I’d say the public process has failed the public. Unfortunately, the regulation of manure is only a minor example of this crisis.

JBS Five Rivers Cattle Feeding is planning to install three of the Harsh-built commercial gasifiers at their Kuner, CO facility. The new gasifiers will be fueled from feedlot manure, handling up to 2 tons of manure per hour. The gasifiers will replace the feedlot’s three boilers that are used to flake corn, part of the diet given to cattle. As part of the $18 million renovation of that feedlot, a manure composting facility is also planned.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced a new interagency agreement promoting renewable energy generation and slashing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock operations. The agreement expands the work of the AgStar program, a joint EPA-USDA effort that helps livestock producers reduce methane emissions from their operations.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) Awards for sustainability to each of two Clarkson University (NY) teams that participated in the Sixth Annual National Sustainable Design Expo on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The first Clarkson project, “Farm Waste to Energy: A Sustainable Solution for Small-Scale Farms,” optimizes viable anaerobic digester technology for diary farms in cold climates with 50 or fewer cows. The second team project, “Sustainable Year-Round Food Production in Cold Climates,” includes the design, feasibility, analysis, and impact assessment of a pilot controlled-environment, high rise farm. Each team will receive a $75,000 grant from the EPA to further develop their design, implement it in the field, or move it to the marketplace.

The number of dairies in California has plummeted by more than 500 in the past decade, with many moving to other states enticing them with promises of lower costs and simpler regulations. Eight states, ranging from Idaho to Iowa, have been courting dairies from California, the nation’s largest milk producer. The reason is clear: Cows mean cash for local economies. Mike Meissen, vice president for value added agriculture for the Iowa Area Development Group, estimated each dairy cow has an economic impact of $15,000 a year. “So if a thousand cows go into a county, that’s $15 million.” While officials in other states offer California farmers a number of reasons to consider moving, one of the biggest incentives seems to be the promise of fewer regulations. — mj: There is a real cost to over-regulation. Regulation is ultimately paid for by wealth creation …unless it leaves.

For now and into the foreseeable future, a portion of the road leading to Six Flags St. Louis (Eureka, MO) will be paved with a lot more than good intentions. It will also be covered as well with recycled hog manure. Hog farmers and retired aerospace engineers combined hog manure odor control and an industrial bio-oil process from the University of Illinois, to create a product suitable for use in asphalt. Much remains in the commercial development of this technology, but they have taken a resource of hidden value (manure), successfully converted it into something of value (bio-oil) and identified a market (asphalt).

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland visited the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center on the Wooster, OH, campus recently to see first-hand the anaerobic digester Cleveland-based quasar is building there. The digester will turn agricultural and other waste streams into methane that can then be used to generate electricity, thermal heat, natural gas or vehicle fuel. The 550,000-gallon digester that will be able to process 30,000 wet tons of biomass annually with more than 750 kW of electrical generation capacity.

West Lampeter Township, Landcaster County, PA, is being courted by a company that wants to build a $45 to $50 million bug-based anaerobic manure digester system to pump out “green” electricity for up to 30 farms. In exchange for manure from poultry and pigs, farmers would get free power, free odorless fertilizer and a modest lease payment. Cow manure would not be used, at least initially, because it is often mixed with straw.

The Frontier Dairy is planning a 10,000 cow facility near Edgeley, ND. In addition to the milking cows it would also have another 2,000 dry cows and 16,000 heifers on the premises. Output from the operation would average 800,000 pounds of milk per day. The operation will contract with local farmers for about 9,000 acres of corn chopped for silage. That corn will be chopped over a two-week period each fall and piled on a 25-acre asphalt slab outdoors. The farms methane digesters will be partly owned in conjunction with Great River Energy. The solids from the digester are dried and used for bedding within the farm or pressed into briquettes sold to power companies to burn with coal. The liquid waste will be spread out over about 4,000 acres of farm land.

A Cargill built and operated anaerobic digester on the Bettencourt Dairy B6 Farm, in Idaho, is now converting manure from the farm’s 6,000 cows into 1 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per month. The electricity is sold to the local power grid. The project builds on the success of a Cargill anaerobic digester operating since 2008 on another 10,000-cow Bettencourt Dairy farm nearby.

The salmonella threat in peanuts at the processing level last year pushed the U.S. industry to seek additional ways to strengthen food safety efforts across the supply chain — grower, sheller and manufacturer. “Peanuts are food ingredients, so food quality is established at the farm,” said Darlene Cowart, director of food safety and quality, Birdsong Peanuts, Blakely, GA. Good agricultural practices include documentation and employee training, ideal land selection and crop rotation, soil fertility, irrigation, animal exclusion and pest control, pesticide usage, and equipment maintenance and sanitation. Use of raw manure is not recommended in peanut production; composted manure is okay. If raw manure is used, apply it on the crop preceding peanuts. A raw manure application in a peanut crop should be incorporated into the soil by March 1.

Wisconsin’s secretary of agriculture announced a $200,000 grant Friday to help a Tomah (WI) manufacturer develop a manure digester that could help small farms turn waste into electricity. USEMCO has developed a tank that makes it economical for farms with as few as 100 cows. The first model will be tested on a 150-cow Chaseburg dairy. USEMCO’s funding was part of $3.5 million in competitive agriculture grants announced Thursday by Gov. Jim Doyle. Most of that money will go to support a $47.2 million expansion at a Foremost Farms plant in Appleton.

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley announced today a $1.6 M investment in clean energy economic development and job creation, marking another step forward in Maryland’s goal of building a vibrant clean energy sector. These awards mark the first round of the Clean Energy Economic Development Initiative (CEEDI), with applications for the second round of funding being accepted until April 30, 2010.

Nothing says “I love you” like a half-mile wide heart made out of manure. A southern Minnesota man created the Valentine’s Day gift for his wife of 37 years in their farm field about 12 miles southwest of Albert Lea. Bruce Andersland told the Alberta Lea Tribune that he started the project with his tractor and manure spreader Wednesday and finished Thursday.

At Josh Frye’s poultry farm in West Virginia, the chicken litter is fed into a large, gasifier. In addtion to heat, out comes a charcoal-like substance known as “biochar” — which is not only an excellent fertilizer, but also helps keep carbon in the soil instead of letting it escape into the atmosphere, where it acts as a greenhouse gas. – mj: The biochar research is still being conducted, but this article is a nice contrast to the more common reports of manure destroying the environment articles.

The state of Maryland’s Eastern Shore poultry industry has found enough alternative uses of manure that they at times don’t have enough. Recent research throws concerns on manure as a fertilizer from a water quality standpoint. –mj: There is not enough information presented in the article to replacing poultry litter with organic fertilizer (?) to assess whether it has merit or not.

Greeley Colorado is pursuing plans to construct a waste-to-energy facility that would utilize local agricultural and food processing waste streams to produce biogas for electricity generation. According a recently completed feasibility study, conducted by Symbios Technologies LLC, the most manageable and profitable scenario for a first-phase Greeley Clean Energy Park project would be a 2-megawatt anaerobic digester with a combined-heat-and-power unit for electricity generation, capable of processing more than 500 tons per day of waste from three main waste sources—cow manure from a JBS feedlot, and waste from Leprino Foods Cheese Plant and the city water pollution control facility.

The La Crosse-based Dairyland Power Cooperative has signed an agreement with Bach Digester LLC to purchase the energy from a new anaerobic digester at Bach Farms near Dorchester, WI. The 1,200-cow dairy farm is expected to generate about 300 kilowatts of renewable energy, capable of powering 219 average homes throughout Dairyland’s four-state service area.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced Thursday that $10 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act State Energy Program is being awarded for 15 biomass and waste-to-energy projects. These grants will support $110 million in private investments statewide. One of the projects is a dairy manure digester on a 1,000 cow dairy in Chatham, VA.

Joe Kramer and the Energy Center of Wisconsin have released the 2009 Wisconsin Biogas Casebook. Wisconsin remains at the forefront of US farm-based digester use. This second edition of the Wisconsin Agricultural Biogas Casebook includes brief case studies of farm-based anaerobic digesters installed in Wisconsin. This report gives a look at the experiences of 21 farms with operating anaerobic digester systems in Wisconsin as of fall 2009. Use of anaerobic digestion (AD) to treat livestock manures and other feedstocks continues to grow. AD systems treat raw manure using a heated, oxygen free container that allows digestion that began in the cow’s stomach to continue.