Street Roots • July 21 -27, 2017
Methane
digesters
Page 7
Special Report
C o n tio o e d f r o m p a g e 5
c
Ivan Maluski, director at Friends of
ows poop. A lot.
Family Farmers, thinks the bulk of that tax
The typical full-grown beef cow
won’t produces about 75 pounds of manure a day, credit should be going to smaller operations
rather than Threemile.
and a dairy cow produces 120 pounds.
solvethe
“For operations of the scale of Threemile,
Because many cattle ranchers and
frankly, it should be a cost of doing
smaller to mid-sized dairy farmers in
problem Oregon graze their cows for at least a
business,” he said. “They don’t need
General Fund dollars when we’re having a
portion of their lives,
budget crisis in Oregon, for a tax credit for a
much of that manure
manure digester.”
is deposited on
Myers, whom Gov. Kate Brown drew
pastures or saved
criticism for appointing to the Oregon Board
during the winter for
of Agriculture, said Threemile isn’t saving
fertilizer later in the
any money by having a digester.
year.
“Theoretically, it’s a cost-saving asset, but
But at confined
it doesn’t really work that way,” Myers said.
cattle feeding
“It looks good on paper, but the reality is
operations, the poop
it’s a very intense operation that has all
piles up. In these
kinds of burps and upsets that go along with
cases, methane
«M i
it. It hasn’t provided us a return.”
digesters can be. used
PH O TO BY A R K A D Y B R O W N
He said his digester generates 30 percent
to combust the waste,
of the electricity the dairy needs to operate.
turning it into biogas for electricity.
NW Natural’s Smart Energy program
These anaerobic digesters are often
purchases offsets from five of Oregon’s
touted as being the solution to the methane
eight digesters - with participating
problem, but they leave a lot to be
ratepayers funding the projects.
desired.
While in some instances,
“We destroy about 60,000
four or five dairies in close
tons of carbon (equivalent) a
proximity will share a
year through our methane
M i l I IA N
digester, the vast
digesters,” said Marty
IT lIL L IV li
majority of the state’s
Myers, who manages
dairies do not combust
Threemile Canyon Farms.
their manure at all, nor
Threemile houses
do any of the state’s beef
70,000 milk cows,
from
cattle
in
Oregon
feedlots.
replacement cows and
“P art of the reason why
each year
calves. The waste of 25,000
th ere are not m ore m ethane
■
of those animals goes through
the digester, which is roughly 3
million pounds of poop per day.
Threemile is owned by North Dakotan
Ronald Offutt, whose net worth is $500
million. He is also the primary supplier of
french fries to McDonald’s and owns farms
in the South, in the Midwest and on both
coasts. Myers said the state gives
Threemile Canyon Farms a tax credit of
$3.50 (dropped down from $5) for each wet
ton of manure run through the digester. But
even with the tax credit, Myers said, it’s a
barely breakeven financial endeavor.
need a constant supply of manure. My grass
needs the constant supply of manure,” said
Jon Bansen, an organic milk producer near
Monmouth. “I would have to put diapers on
my cows when they go to pasture. I know it
sounds all green to have a digester, but
it’s really not so green because your
cows have to be on concrete all day
long in order to have it.”
But the main reason digesters
won’t solve the livestock
of a cow’s methane
methane problem is because 85
emissions
percent of the methane a cow
are in burps
emits comes out of its mouth, not
its rear end, according to DEQ’s
Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program
data.
“The cows, they chew their cud and they
have more than one stomach so they have a
process in their system that creates some
belching, but not a lot of flatulence - it’s
mostly burping,” Myers said, “and there’s
no way to capture that.”
Nearly a decade ago, the Oregon
Legislature passed a bill that created a task
force to look at dairy emissions. It was
composed of industry and farm
representatives, public health professionals,
policymakers and Oregon State University
faculty. The task force “strongly”
digesters on feedlots and on
dairies in Oregon, and in the U.S.,
compared to Europe, is we have a low cost
on our power rates,” said Jerome Rosa,
executive director of Oregon Cattlemen s
Association. “If our power rate was double,
there would be more demand to go in and
put in digesters, because then it would be
economically feasible.”
But even if they were more heavily
utilized, methane digesters solve only a
small part of the methane problem.
“For a digester to really function, you
"T h e Iro n y th e re Is d a r in g th is
arch marked the first time Oregon was
la s t d ro u g h t, p e o p le w e « asked
completely drought-free in six years.
does it
1© ta k e s h o rt show ers a n d p a t
But scientists predict droughts like the state
saw in 2015 will become more frequent with
b r ic k s In th e ir to ile ts ; m e a n
take to climate change.
w h ile o u t th e re In th e C a lifo r n ia
That year, the state was so dry Gov. Kate
feed a Brown declared a state of emergency in two- d e se rt in Im p e r ia l V a lle y a n d
p la ce s lik e th a t, th e y 're g ro w in g
cow? thirds of Oregon’s counties while many
cities such as Lake
a lfa lfa , w h ic h Is a w r y w a te r-
Oswego, Bend and
th ir s ty p la n t."
Keizer imposed
GEORGE WUEHTHMER,
E C O L O G IS T
water-use limits on
their residents.
The following
to grow Oregon’s third-highest-valued
summer, Oregonian
agricultural commodity, alfalfa and other
reporters Kelly
hay, to feed livestock.
House and Mark
Ecologist George Wuerthner, a longtime
Graves revealed in
thorn in the side of the cattle industry, said
an exposé titled
this is an issue across the West. He pointed
“Draining Oregon”
south to California.
that the state was
“The irony there is during this last
BY A R K A D Y B R O W N
drought, people were asked to take short
deplete underground water reservoirs by
showers and put bricks in their toilets,
pumping water to grow cash crops m the
meanwhile out there in the California desert
in Imperial Valley and places like that,
desert.
lot of that water was being pumped
they’re growing alfalfa, which is a very water-
And a
What
M
85%
recom m ended the creation of an “Oregon
Dairy Air Em issions Program ,” b u t no
program was ever initiated.
Elisabeth Holmes, an environm ental law
attorney in Eugene, said O regon needs to
protect itself from attracting additional
confined animal feeding operations.
She often represents clients suing these
facilities in states that have been inundated
with them.
“We have a couple that are coming in,”
she said. “In other parts of the United
States, they tend to move around a lot
because what happens is they come in and
they pollute the water, they destroy the
land, and then they close up shop and move
somewhere else.”
thirsty plant.”
Oregon was doing the same thing during
its last severe drought, with more than a
million acres growing hay to feed
livestock - and state agencies had
no idea how much groundwater
there was to spare.
A bill to fund groundwater
gallons of water to
studies died this legislative
produce 1 pound
session with strong opposition
from the Oregon Farm Bureau,
of hamburger
farmers and ranchers who thought
it would be burdensome. It would
have required that water pumpers
install a device that measures how much
water they use and imposed a steep fine for
exceeding water rights.
Both National Geographic and Water
Footprint Network calculated that it takes
about 1,800 gallons of water to make just
one pound of ground beef when considering
the water it takes to irrigate the animal’s
feed, what it drinks and what’s used in meat
processing.
1,800
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