Making Money from Manure 1

We’ve heard report after report from the environmentalist sector that cattle ranching and dairy farming is adding to global warming because of the methane produced by livestock and now there’s an opportunity to strike back by making alternative energy and money on manure. Paul Kjellander,  Administrator for the Idaho Office of Energy Resources. “We’re interested in proposing legislation that would help to develop the opportunities to take dairy waste and convert that to pipeline quality natural gas.”

 A technology involving a manure digester is the key. How does that work? (Kjellander) “It’s basically the process in which you will put the appropriate anaerobic digestion materials together with the manure and then that will create the methane that you can then draw off and process into the pipeline quality natural gas.”

 The by-product of the manure processing can then be used as fertilizer and potting soil supplementation.  So what we just heard are two things. There is now a way to take manure and process it in such a way as to produce viable alternative fuel that could run machinery just like propane does. Furthermore, farmers could actually make money from their livestock waste product. Tomorrow, how Idaho farmers can get involved.