Dairy Digesters 1

 Anaerobic digesters: Panorama or Pandora’s Box. Speaking at a key-note event at the climate change talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced an agreement between USDA and U.S. dairy farmers. Vilsack said this historic agreement will help accelerate the development of manure to energy systems and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ??According to the Secretary, the U.S. dairy industry has committed to a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas by the year 2020. USDA can support this goal through program modifications, added program enhancements, and better marketing of anaerobic digesters to dairymen.  The Secretary added, the agreement will make many far reaching steps and common sense improvements to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with Dairies.

Doesn’t that sound like a win-win to you. Not so fast says John Crocket of the Idaho Department of Energy:”I spent 5 years trying to put anaerobic digestion in dairies. It’s not that simple in a dairy. The problem is that it’s a biological process. A lot of the problems come in when that manure sits out there even for a short time and gets a lot of wind blown sand in it. Your system has to have some way to deal with that sand.”

Like everything, there’s 2 sides to every story.