Feeding their cows 600 to 800 pounds of chocolate scraps a day saves the farmers $.50 to $.60 per cow. “That’s a lot of savings,” Orville said.

But is it good for the cows? According to farm nutritionist Verton Miller, yes, it is. “Oh yea … chocolate is high in energy. It’s good for the cows. They need two things, and that’s energy and protein.” The Millers also implement a daily limit of 6 lbs. of chocolate per cow, so they’re not just eating dessert.

And the Millers don’t stop with chocolate. They also feed their herd leftover Mexican food from another nearby factory. “It’s corn meal, soft tacos, cheese, refried beans … you name it. It’s a combination of some high fat, high energy.”

Orville notes that there is “a science to feeding cows” — he’s not just dumping garbage in those troughs. But he also realizes it’s a financial win-win. The farmers can recycle food scraps while saving plenty of money for themselves. This reuse of scraps is also helping the Millers deal with current drought conditions across the U.S. and the lack of crops available for livestock feed.

Main photo credit: Geograph

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It’s not just population growth driving the need for increased production, the FAO and OECD said in a new report released this week. Changing diets in developing countries, urban migration, and higher per capita income are all affecting the demand for food. Demand for biofuels is also rapidly increasing; bioethanol and biodiesel production may nearly double by 2021.

Because the area of farmland is projected to increase only slightly, the increase in food production will have to come from better productivity. Right now, food production is growing at around 2 percent a year. That rate is expected to slow to 1.7 percent in the coming decades, because of higher input costs, resource constraints, and growing environmental pressures including the impacts of climate change.

The biggest increase in productivity will happen Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, where there is the most potential for greater production. The FAO said that it will be critical for agriculture to become more sustainable. Currently, 25 percent of farmland is highly degraded, and water scarcity is a major issue. The report recommended that governments help encourage better farm practices and food systems, including plans for better storage, transportation, and reduced food waste.

Image credit: Flickr user nosha

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Khalil Nasrallah, co-founder of Wadi Food, a network of organic farms that produce more than 300 products including olives, pickles, pasta sauces and honey, is passionate about sustainable farming. But he told the Egypt Independent that most sustainable farming techniques are not cost-effective in Egypt. Organic certification, compost and fertilizers are expensive, he said. And the government incentivizes oil, not clean energy tools.

“You’re at a disadvantage if you try to use sustainable energy,” he told the newspaper.

Case in point: Wadi Food currently uses diesel fuel to pump water for irrigation, largely because the Egyptian government subsidizes it, according to the newspaper. The company, however, is so committed to sustainability that it’s still planning to transition to a solar-powered irrigation pump.

The farm combats pests by hanging cardboard satchels filled with Trichogramma wasp eggs over the tree branches. When they hatch, the female wasps destroy pest populations by inserting their own eggs into the eggs of other insects.

“It’s excellent,” Nasrallah told the newspaper. “It’s better than anything we’ve ever used, and it’s better than pesticide. It’s fully organic and it’s cheaper.”

The company also breeds Egyptian tortoises in an effort to save the endangered species. And it operates an environmental science center on one of its properties to educate youth about renewable energy and waste management. The center’s goal is to instill a sense of environmental responsibility in young Egyptian citizens.

An educational center such as the one run by Wadi Food is not in demand right now among Egyptians, Nasrallah told the newspaper. But he said he hopes over time it will increase in popularity.

“Egypt has a lot of issues to deal with,” Nasrallah told the newspaper. “We are limited in land and water, and both are being abused. Our number one priority should be to save what we have.”

Main photo credit: julie gibbons/Flickr

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Using a computer model to simulate milk production and herd management, the research project is based on a 12-acre crop bed that represents a 240-acre farm with 65 lactating cows, according to GantDaily.com. Scientists from Penn State are leading the project with help from students and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.

“We are looking at ways to conserve soil, nutrients, biodiversity and energy to design a farm that is productive as well as economically and environmentally sustainable,” Heather Karsten, associate professor of crop production and ecology and lead director of the project, told the news blog. “By using diverse crop rotations and innovative conservation practices, we think we can promote ecological processes to reduce fertilizer and pesticide use, protect soil and water quality, and sustain farm productivity.”

The project is test driving a slew of innovative farming practices. Canola, for example, is being used to power a vegetable oil-powered tractor. The leftover canola meal is fed to the cows.

The canola used in the project is grown on the farm. Researchers contributing to the project have found that canola yields increase when the crop is planted on land previously occupied by alfalfa plants.

“We hope to use the principles and results to inform researchers, educators and growers about strategies and some options, but of course they would have to be fine-tuned to different regions, soils and climates,” Karsten said.

Main photo credit: PhillipC/Flickr

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An ad by Denver-based chain restaurant Chipotle Mexican Grill has been named the best TV campaign in the world at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The ad, titled Back to the Start, takes a haunting yet moving look at factory farming, reminding us just how far removed our food supply is from the farms of yore. The animation is set over an amazing Willie Nelson cover of Coldplay’s ‘The Scientist,’ which is a perfect match for the ad’s message. It depicts a farmer turning his family farm into a factory farm, realizing what he has done, and then transforming it back into an animal and environment-friendly one.

“It was timeless with heart impact and gut impact,” said Khai Meng Tham, the chairman of the jury. “The best winners at Cannes always have a message, I think, and factory farming is such a big issue everywhere in the world. For a fast food company to do this will, we hope, change the industry, change the world.” Bill Clinton, who was attending the event to give a seminar, named the campaign as his favorite as well.

Chipotle is well-known not only for its giant burritos but also for using as many natural and locally-sourced ingredients as possible. The company’s mission statement, Food With Integrity, covers all aspects of its business, from animal welfare to environmental issues. According to the document, it has a supply chain of over 7,000 farmers which helps it serve more naturally-raised meat without the use of antibiotics or added hormones than any other restaurant company in the U.S. Having eaten there myself, I can say that the food does taste a lot better than standard fast-food fare.

Whether or not you choose to eat animal products, I think we can agree that eliminating the factory farm model from the way we process food can only benefit us all. Check out the Chipotle ad below.

Image Credit:Chipotle

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The combination of online shopping and concerns about the safety of the food grown in the country has lead to more residents between 25 to 35 trying their hand at urban farming, with online searches for vegetable seeds skyrocketing by a whopping 280 percent in the last year at Taobo, a popular online retailer.

“That means, every day, more than 6,000 people went to online shops at Taobao expecting to buy seeds and tools that can convert their balconies into a small vegetable garden,” said Lu Qi from Taobao. “They plant vegetables not to save money but to guarantee food safety.” The company also plans on adding farmland rentals to its website, assisting those who want to grow even more of their own food with access to bigger plots.

While China certainly has a massive population, 6,000 people a day searching to buy their own vegetable seeds is still an amazing statistic. In the U.S. we have seen some of China’s food safety issues pop up here in imported goods and we have had our own share of problems with food grown locally as well. An explosive growth in information available on the internet regarding those issues along with the availability of how-to gardening information, organic seeds, and changes in zoning laws has encouraged many people in the U.S. to start urban gardens of their own. Seems many residents of Beijing have also caught on to just how great it is to be able to grow one’s own food right at home.

[via AsiaOne]

Image Credit: jwalsh/Flickr

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Keep Local Farms is an education and contribution program that connects consumers with local dairy farmers and enables those interested in purchasing local foods to support local farms. According to the Boston Globe, New England has lost 66 percent of its dairy farms in the past 30 years due to low milk prices paid to farmers. Through various marketing and fundraising initiatives, the program raises awareness about the economic impact of buying locally produced foods, especially dairy products.

Harvard and the University of Vermont both participated by slightly increasing the price of their single-serve milk, and contributed the proceeds to the program. Boston Medical Center, Ski Vermont, some Ben & Jerry’s scoop shops and others also contributed to the program while others, such as Roche Brothers and Hannaford’s Supermarkets, have displayed signs about the importance of local dairy farms in their stores. The Keep Local Farms website provides a forum where local farmers can share their stories and help people reconnect to local agriculture.

“The goal is to provide New England dairy farmers that are part of Keep Local Farms with semi-annual payments to help stabilize and enhance their income despite fluctuations in milk prices,” reads the project’s Facebook page. Over the past year, 1,370 farmers received at least $100 in assistance from the program.

Unfortunately, the Keep Local Farms program was unknowingly experiencing money problems of its own. After seeking the services of an accounting firm, it was discovered that the organization owed about $63,000 in taxes. Following the discovery, the group is now reorganizing so that the funds will be managed as a nonprofit. It’s also rethinking how the money will be used to help farmers.

Photo credit: USDAgov/Flickr

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“The overall support and funding award from USDA Rural Development has been instrumental in moving the Stonyvale Farm biogas project forward. The assistance will allow the venture to achieve its long term economic, social, and environmental goals while improving the energy efficiency of the dairy operation on a day to day basis,” said Travis Fogler, a co-owner of Stonyvale Farm.

Generating biogas from biomass is not a new concept, as humans have been using the technology for millennnia to generate heat for cooking and survival. Anaerobic methane digester systems have typically been used by farms for dealing with animal waste and at sewage treatment plants for treating sewage and water runoff, governments and utility companies are starting to realize their potential as source of clean energy. In the UK, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has even released its own Anaerobic Digestion Strategy and Action Plan (PDF) outlining how it is planning on using the technology to generate power and heat.

So what is an anaerobic digester? Simply put, it’s a closed system that promotes the decomposition of biodegradable materials in the absence of oxygen as a way to manage waste materials or to generate energy. In this case, at Stonyvale Farm, manure and food waste is fed into the digester where it is kept at a high temperature long enough so that naturally-occurring bacterial microbes can do all the hard work of breaking down the organic materials in the product. The result of this breakdown is a digested solid which can be used as fertilizer or soil conditioner and methane gas, which is captured and burned to generate electricity.

There are four stages to the anaerobic decomposition process:

• In the first stage, bacterial hydrolysis starts a chemical reaction which breaks down insoluble organic polymers, converting them into simpler, easier to digest monomers. Glucose is the most common monomer, present in over 77% of all plant matter.
• In the second stage, acidogenesis, bacteria then converts these monomers into carbon dioxide, hydrogen, ammonia, and volatile fatty acids.
• The third stage, acetogenesis, converts these fatty acids into acetic acid and generates more CO2, hydrogen, and ammonia.
• In the final stage, methanogenesis, bacteria converts the CO2, hydrogen, and ammonia into a final product consisting of methane and carbon dioxide.

Generally speaking, there are two types of anaerobic digester systems in use today: Completely Mixed and Plug Flow.

Completely Mixed, also called Batch, consists of loading a large tank with waste, shutting the door, and allowing the microbes to do their job and digest it all. The generated methane gas is captured from the tank and once everything has been processed, the resulting solids are removed and used as fertilizer or conditioner.

In a Plug Flow system, sometimes referred to as Continuous, the waste is fed into long tube-like channels where it is moved along by the force of additional waste being constantly added to the channel. The methane gas is captured on a constant basis as the waste is digested in the tubes.

In a lot of ways, an anaerobic digester works just like how your backyard compost pile could work but on a much larger, much more efficient scale – and if you were able to capture any of the methane gas coming off the pile to heat your home with.

The anaerobic digester at Stonyvale Farm is the first one to be installed at a dairy farm in Maine and one of only about 12 large-scale systems in the entire country. It is owned and operated by Exeter Agri-Energy, a subsidiary of Stonyvale, Inc., and Biogas Energy Partners is the development firm responsible for regulatory issues surrounding biogas plants.

Excess heat produced by the digestion system will be used to heat the buildings on the farm, helping to offset over $250,000 of expenses per year.

Stonyvale produces 7,000 gallons of milk each day from its 1,100 dairy cows. The anaerobic digester is expected to process at least 10,000,000 gallons of manure and food waste per year, generating enough electricity to power 800 average-sized homes. It will cut the farm’s annual CO2 emissions by 8,000 tons, the equivalent of removing 3,000 cars from the road.

Special thanks to Adam Burk from TEDxDirigo for the tip and to the Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department at Penn State for the graphics.

Image credit: Exeter Agri-Energy

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