Gas in the Natural Cycle

       Fair Oaks, Indiana, is home to Fair Oaks Farm, home to around 30,000 cows. The farm's endless supply of manure generates enough electricity to milk all the cows. Fair Oaks uses the livestock waste "to create enough natural gas to power 10 barns, a cheese factory, a cafe, a gift shop and a maze of child-friendly exhibits about the world of dairy." And where does the extra part of the total five million pounds of cow manure go? It is fueling the farm's delivery trucks and trailers making runs across the state and to Kentucky and Tennessee. Isn't this exactly what we need? Because Fair Oaks now uses "biogas" they are taking "two million gallons of diesel off the highway each year." Everything at the Farm has a place in 'the cycle' as I call it.

That's a lot of manure! Waste? I don't think so! It is just
waiting to be processed into natural gas!

        I bring up 'the natural cycle' because I have been hooked on Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma which talks about the food we eat and the process it goes through before it ends up on our plates. I have become much more aware of the reoccurring theme of the natural cycle - or lack thereof. Indeed it has become somewhat linear nowadays. Before Fair Oaks completed their own cycle of putting the livestock waste to good use, they "burned off the excess methane, wasted energy sacrificed to the sky." This is still the case for many farms and manufacturing plants today, especially in the not-so-natural ones. They are known as CAFOs, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. Here the cycle has become completely linear because of the demand for more meat, faster and cheaper. The manure at these plants turns into manure lagoons, aka toxic waste, because of the numerous chemicals and antibiotics in them. Manure equals good fertilizer, right? The manure at Fair Oaks does but at every CAFO, a fertilizer can't be "good" with antibiotics and hormones. Now that Fair Oaks has put gas in their natural cycles will it come soon for other farms? Definitely not CAFOs. In the next couple years, we will see more and more biogas projects emerging. This could definitely be a turn in the right direction and away from fossil fuels.