As farmers continue to innovate in environmental sustainability and find greener alternatives to traditional energy sources, manure digesters are becoming an increasingly important way to convert waste into reusable power. A Hoard’s Dairyman webinar series on sustainability explored the possibilities and challenges within the manure digestion industry Aug. 19, with several industry experts and ABC members as panelists. The panel included Mark Stoermann, COO of Newtrient; Danielle Goodrich Gingras, owner of Goodrich Family Farm; Richard Cooper, director of business development at DTE Power & Industrial; and Mark Stephenson, dairy policy expert at UW-Madison. Stephenson said 230 of the total 330 digesters in the United States are located on dairy farms. Of those, 100 manure digesters are generating 25 million cubic feet of biogas per day from 200,000 dairy cows. Despite those big numbers, Stephenson said there’s still a lot more room for potential. More >>
