Digester about to go into production – Plan in the wind to help gassy cows

Rupert, ID dairyman Steve Whitesides says he’s more optimistic today than he was months ago when construction began on his anaerobic digester.

By: Bill Scott

http://www.aginfo.com/reportView.cfm?recordid=2595

WHITESIDES –“As far as where fuel prices sit, where natural gas prices sit it just makes more and more sense every day.”

Brad Frazee of Intrepid Technologies says their digester concept at Whitesides Dairy will allow them to produce a lower priced gas product.

FRAZEE –“Natural gas is current up around seven dollars and its expected to break ten over the winter heating months, probably 30 to 40 percent higher than a year ago. We can produce the gas much cheaper than you can currently purchase it from Intermountain Gas and that drives out market.”

It’s a matter of weeks before all of the on-site work is completed, the equipment is tested and manure from his dairy is put into the digester with the goal of extracting a natural gas product. Whitesides just received a 28 thousand-dollar USDA grant.

WHITESIDES –“It will give us the opportunity to do a little bit of experimentation on how we can use the gas possibly on farm and keep our cost down as a producer here.”

97 grants were handed out this week to help farmers and ranchers develop new products and markets for agriculture based products.

Today’s Idaho Ag News Bill Scott

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Plan in the wind to help gassy cows

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200410/s1222718.htm

Scientists in New Zealand and the Gippsland region in south-eastern Victoria have launched joint research into ways of reducing methane emissions from cows.

An estimated one fifth of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are produced by agriculture.

The Victorian research will be conducted at the Ellinbank offices of the Department of Primary Industries, south of Warragul.

Scientists at Ellinbank will have access to state-of-the-art equipment to take accurate readings of gas emissions.

Denison dairyfarmer Graeme Anderson has cautiously welcomed the research.

"Sometimes with researchers they can get the answer they want but being done at Ellinbank I would hope that it has a lot of credibility," he said.

"I know there’s been a lot of work done in New Zealand and I’m just not sure what you can do with nature anyway but it will be interesting to see what they find."

Mr Anderson says the greenhouse issue is becoming a financial threat to farmers.

"Anything that’s going to cost or have an effect on production is big pressure," he said.

"If people want to chew food they’ve got to remember that the more impost you put on sooner or later they’re going to have to pay more for all this kafuffle that goes on and we need to monitor it very carefully, so hopefully there’s a lot of work done before they come up with any decision."