“Sophisticated” and “enlightened” Californians wage legal and political war on large-scale food producers in order to reduce environmental consequences of feeding millions of people. “Ignorant” and “backward” Texans use animal wastes and sewage to produce energy and fertilizer.
Merced Sun Star reporter Jonah Owen Lamb details the benefits and tribulations of industrial agriculture in rural California (Overrun by waste: Large agriculture operations add billions to our economy but what price are we paying? Merced Sun Star, 3/21/09). Lamb extensively covers the conflict and cognitive dissonance generated by companies that produce lots of jobs, commodities for export, and pollution in rural California counties. Lamb mentions that these big California companies (e.g. Foster Farms chicken processing plant, Hilmar Cheese Co., etc.) try to clean up their acts by “treating” their sewage effluent before releasing it into nearby rivers or letting it seep into ground water. It still pollutes the water with unacceptable quantities of nitrates, among other things.
Nitrates? Nitrates! Does he mean fertilizer? While reading this article, I kept looking for the happy ending where the confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) channeled its wastes to a methane brewery, a power plant, and a fertilizer factory. The reference never appeared in the Sun Star article.
Agricultural and energy researchers in Texas have managed to figure out how to transform industrial-agricultural “waste” into valuable commodities. Methane, biogas, fertilizer, and other products provide important ways of eliminating waste while adding important revenue streams to the agricultural sector. Animal wastes produce greenhouse gases no matter what. However, under the proper circumstances, they can provide a nearly carbon-neutral substitute for fossil fuels. If reporter Lamb had spoken to University of California at Davis researchers, Extension Soils Specialist Stuart Pettygrove, Extension Agronomist Daniel Putnam, and Deanne Meyer, he might have found out about this upside of industrial grade manure streams.
Anaerobic decomposition of nutrient-rich waste streams leaving CAFOs can produce prodigious quantities of methane, an excellent fuel for generating electricity or heat. The remaining decomposed sludge makes a high-nutrient fertilizer. In fact, every “waste” product leaving an industrial-agricultural factory can become a feedstock or raw material for some other value-producing industrial process. Even the brackish (salty) water that now pollutes ground water can grow algae that can then become the basis for biodiesel fuel and other marketable commodities.
In this post-peak oil era, we must consider all processes as cyclical. “Cradle to cradle” thinking must permeate all organizations that make or use materials. Otherwise, we won’t weather the storms ahead.
July Meeting
1 year ago
1 comments:
Send that reporter a hard copy of this.
Post a Comment