There has been much media hype about manure digesters and how they “solve” climate change by capturing and burning methane from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs – aka factory farms). Billions in taxpayer handouts and other incentives through pollution offset trading markets are encouraging factory farms to expand in order to profit from their waste stream. In Wisconsin alone there are fifteen such digesters getting cash payments from the California Cap and Trade System for their supposed greenhouse gas offsetting. Economists now speculate that factory farms are earning more from making methane than milk! A new report goes even further suggesting that if the U.S. really wanted to reduce livestock’s toll on the earth’s climate, it would make more sense for regulators to phase-out/split-up CAFOs and shift taxpayer support towards smaller grass-based operations instead.
Sadly, the misguided notion of manure digesters as a “solution” to the climate crisis is nothing new. Back in 2009 at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen I almost fell off my chair when then USDA Sec. Vilsack announced that manure digesters on factory farms were going to be a key part of Obama’s greenhouse gas reduction agenda. He later admitted that less than 10% of dairy farms (e.g. CAFOs) would be large enough to qualify for these USDA digester grants – another example of how federal policies support industrial agribusiness to the detriment of smaller farmers. This digester building binge has ramped up even more under Biden – with Vilsack once again back at the USDA. Nearly half of the $1 b+ in Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) spending each year now goes to help deal with CAFO waste, and in the last decade alone the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) has earmarked $78 million just for digesters. The recent Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) added another $2 billion to the REAP pot, plus a 30% federal tax credit for new digesters built. The trough of taxpayer funding behind the manure methane industrial complex is long and deep.
My first reaction fifteen years ago to Vilsack’s digester proposal remains true today – why pay to fix a problem that doesn’t even need to exist? Countless studies have shown that the most cost effective, eco-friendly, and profitable form of dairy farming is managed rotational grazing. If cows are allowed to just eat grass outside and deposit manure naturally in a pasture system, one does not have a methane problem. It is only when one decides to liquify millions of gallons of manure and then store it in large anaerobic lagoons that one has created a pollutant 80+ times worse than carbon dioxide.
Sure, one can then capture and burn such digester methane to make electricity or run a vehicle (which still means more greenhouse gas pollution), but you still have the leftover sludge (aka digestate) to spread somewhere. This digestate is loaded with nitrates, phosphorous, and – depending upon what other waste gets dumped into the digester – PFAS, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals – which will then get into ground water and surface runoff. And then there is the ever present danger of methane explosions, lagoon leaks, and pipeline ruptures. Just ask anyone who lives near Waunakee what it is like to have digester explode and pour 400,000+ gallons of manure into Lake Mendota a decade ago. Would have been so much cheaper, simpler, and less accident prone to promote composting…
Unfortunately, our current “get big or get out” farm policy does not care too much about low tech agroecological approaches to producing healthier food. Instead, corporate agribusiness is allowed to manipulate commodity markets – driving out what little competition exists from smaller farmers and local processors – and their political allies ensure that taxpayers will still underwrite the largest operations that are the easiest to vertically integrate into their oligopoly structure. Is it any surprise to see well heeled lobbyists now touting manure digesters as “climate smart” for Earth Day and pushing for pollution trading offset schemes within the 2024 Farm Bill?
Thankfully, there are better agricultural responses to the climate crisis that also treat rural people and our land, air, and water with respect. Existing federal initiatives such as the Conservation Reserve Program could provide more direct payments to farmers who are already doing so much responsible stewardship – without requiring a 25% markup for corporate offset middlemen. The EQIP and REAP programs could be overhauled to severely limit or even eliminate CAFO lagoon/digester grants and earmark more towards smaller grass-based diversified operations instead. Factory farms should be treated as a pollution point source, subject to all the monitoring, regulation, and liability required for any other largescale industrial operation. Defending local control also remains critical – and thousands of folks did respond to a recent action alert calling upon Gov. Evers to veto AB957 that would have hamstrung the ability to pass ordinances dealing with factory farms (and other toxic rural activities). Farmers can feed the world and the cool the planet – without the false promise of manure digesters.
John E. Peck is a WI Farmers Union member and operator (with his partner) of Yellow Dog Flowers and Produce near Brooklyn, WI in Green County. He also teaches Economics at Madison College and is executive director of Family Farm Defenders.