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family farms
Manure Digesters: Another False Solution That Makes Climate Injustice Worse
There are better responses to the climate crisis that also treat rural people and our land, air, and water with respect.
Apr 21, 2024
There has been much media hype about manure digesters and how they will “solve” climate change by capturing and burning methane from confined animal feeding operations or CAFOs—aka factory farms. Billions in taxpayer handouts and other incentives through pollution offset trading markets are encouraging factory farms to expand and profit from their waste stream. Some economists now speculate that factory farms are earning more from making methane than milk!
A recent Friends of the Earth and Socially Responsible Agriculture Project report
goes even further, suggesting that if the U.S. really wanted to reduce it’s agricultural contribution towards greenhouse gases, it would make more sense for regulators to phase out or split up CAFOs and shift taxpayer support towards smaller grass-based livestock operations instead.
Sadly, the misguided notion of manure digesters as a “solution” to the climate crisis is nothing new. Back in 2009 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, I almost fell off my chair when then-U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that manure digesters on factory farms were going to be a key part of former President Barack Obama’s climate change agenda. He later admitted that less than 10% of dairy farms (ie 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.
Intentional factory farm production and subsequent “climate smart” combustion of methane is not only oxymoronic, but will undermine the future prospect of life here on Earth.
This manure digester building binge has ramped up even more under President Joe Biden—with Vilsack once again back at the helm of the USDA. The latest Instititue for Agriculture and Trade Policy report critiquing the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) reveals just how much of this popular USDA effort has been hijacked by a small elite number of CAFOs, to the detriment of the majority of farmers who have their EQIP applications declined. Encouraging livestock grazing is NOT front and center among “climate smart” practices promoted under EQIP and the Natural Resources Conservation Service—that star role is held by waste lagoons and manure digesters.
A typical CAFO digester for 2000 dairy cows costs over $2 million, with EQIP covering up to $400,000. But there are many other funds available, such as through the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), which bankrolled $78 million for digesters in the last decade. The recent Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) added another $250 million to EQIP, along with another $2 billion for REAP, including a brand new 30% tax credit for all new digesters built.
The current trough of taxpayer funding for the manure methane industrial complex is long and deep, but there is even more potential revenue to be milked. In Wisconsin alone there are now 15 manure digesters getting money for their methane offsetting of 1.3 million carbon credits available through the California Cap and Trade System. How does this work? Build a methane digester in Wisconsin, claim that by burning off this really bad methane it is equal to reducing the impact of so many tons of carbon dioxide emitted in California, and then get a bonus check for that hard offset work! The value of one carbon credit on the California market as of April 2023 was $28.66.
The problem with this taxpayer mandated and subsidized “cap and trade” system is that it does not necessarily reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions—it just moves pollution around (and the atmosphere doesn’t care about your zipcode). Worse yet, if your offset claims prove to be bogus and corrupt, the climate crisis ends up much worse. This was exactly the case when Midwest activists alerted California officials that some of the Wisconsin CAFOs claiming methane offset credits were really engaged in wire fraud, since their digesters were either broken or not effectively functioning to capture methane as claimed. More details can be found in the SRAP expose of this 21st century Ponzi style scheme. Along with many allies, Family Farm Defenders has been diligently opposing such corporatized pollution trading mechanisms through the Alliance Against Farm Bill Offsets, whether they involve offsets for carbon sequestration pipelines, manure digesters, or “no-till” GMO monocultures.
My gut reaction 15 years ago to Vilsack’s manure digester panacea to global climate change 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 often quite profitable form of animal husbandry—including dairying—is managed rotational grazing. If animals are just allowed to enjoy pasture outside (as they prefer and are meant to do by mother nature) and then also allowed to deposit their manure in a healthy perennial ecosystem, one does not end up with a methane crisis. It is only when one decides to confine thousands of animals in a warehouse, offer them nothing but TMR to consume (with dubious components like feather meal and ethanol leftovers), liquefy millions of gallons of their manure, and then store it in massive anaerobic lagoons, that one creates a pollutant 80+ times worse than carbon dioxide.
Sure, one can always capture and burn the methane that doesn’t leak from a CAFO digester to make electricity or run a vehicle (which means more greenhouse gas pollution), but you still have the leftover sludge (aka digestate) to deal with. This is loaded with nitrates, phosphorous, and—depending upon what other waste gets dumped into the digester—PFAS, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, heavy metals—which will then seep into the ground and became part of runoff, contributing to tainted wells, beach closures, toxic fish, the list goes on and on. Besides methane, there are other toxic CAFO gases—such as hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and nitrous oxide—that cause chronic headaches for neighboring residents and hurt anyone else downwind.
And let’s not forget the ever present danger of methane explosions and lagoon ruptures. When a massive lagoon leaked on a hog factory farm in Wayne County, North Carolina, in May 2022, spilling into the nearby Nahunta Swamp, it was revealed that hundreds of rotting pigs, along with deli meat and discarded hotdogs, were part of the digester feedstock to make the methane being sold to Duke Energy. Closer to home, just ask anyone who lives near Waunakee, Wisconsin, what it was like to have a poorly designed and managed digester both explode and also leak 400,000+ gallons of fresh manure into Lake Mendota about a decade ago. This single disaster set back Yahara Watershed cleanup efforts for years. It would have been so much cheaper, simpler, and less disastrous for Wisconsin state and Dane County taxpayers to have promoted composting instead (which some better CAFOs actually do, without lagoons).
In November 2022 Kari Lydersen wrote a disturbing investigation, chronicling the many risks to farm workers from factory farms and their manure digesters. She tells one story of Bob Baenziger, Jr., retired Army veteran and former offshore oil rig diver, who died in 2021 as a hired contractor trying to fix a broken cable in an Iowa manure digester. Drowning in such a squalid pool is something straight out of Dante’s Inferno. The same year Samuel Antonio Padilla Castro, a Honduran immigrant, was working a 12-hour shift at the Fair Oaks Farm in Indiana when his clothing was caught in manure handling equipment, strangling him to death. His death left behind a widow, three children, and a token $10,500 Occupational Safety and Health Administration fine. Austin Frerick’s profile of the McCloskey family, which owns Fair Oaks Farm, in his new book, Barons, reveals more of the underbelly of this “Dairy Disneyland,” including their role as digester cheerleaders. Another Fair Oaks tourist and digester advocate he mentions is Tom Vilsack.
Our current “get big or get out” farm policy does not have much time or interest in agroecological approaches for healthier food that also ensure food sovereignty. Instead, corporate agribusiness is allowed to manipulate commodity markets—driving out what little competition exists from smaller farmers and local processors. The political allies of the food giants then ensure that taxpayers help underwrite the largest industrialized operations left standing, since they are the easiest to vertically integrate into the dominant oligopoly structure. Is it any surprise to see agribusiness lobbyists and their academic apologists now touting manure digesters as “climate smart” just in time for Earth Day and pushing for pollution trading offset schemes within the 2024 Farm Bill?
Thankfully, there are better 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 be expanded to better direct payments to farmers who are already doing so much responsible land and climate stewardship—without carbon offset peddlers skimming 25% off the top. The EQIP and REAP programs need to be overhauled to severely limit or even eliminate CAFO lagoon and digester grants and earmark more towards smaller grass-based diversified operations instead. This is the gist behind the EQIP Reform Act, introduced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Mike Lee (R-Utah) last year as part of the Farm Bill debate.
More generally, factory farms must be treated as a pollution point source, subject to all the monitoring, regulation, and liability required for any other industrial operation. Why should CAFOs evade the common sense oversight that other businesses respect? Defending local control also remains critical. Last year grassroots activists in St. Croix County were able to push back and shut down a massive digester proposal near New Richmond, Wisconsin, being aggressively promoted by Nature Energy, a Shell Oil subsidiary. Thousands of folks recently responded to a statewide action alert successfully demanding that Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers veto CAFO industry-crafted preemption legislation that would have hamstrung the right to pass ordinances that would restrict their manure digesters and other rural mal-development projects. Democratic direct action can get the goods!
NASA space probes have revealed that there is a massive ocean of liquid methane on Titan, one of the moons circling Saturn. There is also not any life that we know of on Titan… Intentional factory farm production and subsequent “climate smart” combustion of methane is not only oxymoronic, but will undermine the future prospect of life here on Earth. Farmers can feed the world and the cool the planet—without the false promise of manure digesters.
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The 2023 Farm Bill Is a Chance to Save Small Dairy
Through our Dairy Together campaign, the Michigan and Wisconsin Farmers Unions are proposing a federal program to manage the unchecked growth of large-scale dairies and to preserve local agriculture.
Nov 19, 2023
I consider myself lucky to be a fourth-generation family farmer in mid-Michigan. For years, my family had a thriving dairy cow herd on our 300-acre centennial farm. But as the years passed by, we were faced with the reality of surprise jumps in milk pricing and corporate dairy’s growing power. Eventually, after a tough decision, we stopped raising dairy cows. This was our livelihood, but we could not make a living the way things were.
Across the Midwest, due to the oversupply of dairy, independent farmers are forced to dump their milk, wasting precious time and money, and leaving the future of small dairy farms in peril. Imagine what thousands of gallons of wasted milk looks like; this situation is an unfair reality for independent farmers across the country whose viability is at risk. This problem is leaving our family farms in a dire state: Since 2018, more than 450 dairy operations in Michigan closed their doors.
The upcoming farm bill is an opportunity to save small dairy farms and to make our food system more secure. Michigan Farmers Union, along with our counterpart, Wisconsin Farmers Union, have a solution to preserve small dairy farms while ensuring independent farmers have a voice. Through our Dairy Together campaign, we are proposing a federal program to manage the unchecked growth of large-scale dairies and to preserve local agriculture. It’s time we rein in the corporate influence wreaking havoc on farmers and eaters alike.
The exponential growth of dairy operations is leading to overproduction, which hurts farmers and the consumer.
The Dairy Together initiative proposes a mandatory program for managed growth in the 2023 farm bill that is based on market demand and price stability. Through this program, if an operation wanted to grow above their allowable rate, they’d have to pay a premium (called a market access fee) in order to produce more milk. The allowable growth rate would be determined by the historic production levels based on each individual operation. As a result, our country would see more success on family farms because there would be fewer incentives granted to large-scale corporate agriculture.
Corporate megafarms are one of the leading existential threats to independent farmers and our food system, and the dairy sector is not immune to this problem. In 2017, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that just 2,000 farms with herds of at least 1,000 dairy cows produced over half of our country’s milk. In contrast, in 1992, roughly 500 of those operations produced 10% of the country’s milk. Deregulation in agriculture following the 1996 farm bill—dubbed Freedom to Fail—allowed corporate agriculture to scale up exponentially, putting tens of thousands of independent farms out of business.
In order to perpetuate this outsized market share, wealthy agriculture companies hire lobbyists to write laws that protect their bottom line while everyone else pays the price—especially independent farmers. While dairy production and the total headcount of cattle are growing in Michigan, there is an actual decline in the number of dairy farms, which means that smaller farms are dying and the corporate operations are getting larger.
The exponential growth of dairy operations is leading to overproduction, which hurts farmers and the consumer. When supply and demand aren’t in check for the dairy sector, smaller operations struggle to make ends meet, while large corporate operations find it easier to recoup their losses due to their scale. This “get big or get out” mentality is hurting the vitality of rural farming communities and independent farmers across the country. Additionally, overproduction leads to volatile pricing, leaving families buying dairy in the lurch when groceries are already expensive.
For growth management to work, the program needs to be implemented nationally with government authorization and the full buy-in from farmers. Farmers would have direct control in growth management and price stability. Much of this oversight would happen under a farmer-led board that is elected regionally, ensuring that farmers have meaningful input in the development, implementation, and governance of this program.
As we look to the farm bill, which is supposed to get passed every five years, our federal lawmakers must pay attention to the growing insecurity that dairy farmers across the country are facing. As my own Senator Debbie Stabenow (who leads the farm bill process in the Senate) noted when retiring, heralding the next generation of leaders is paramount. In order to leave the state of dairy better than how we found it, now is the moment to heed the call for fairer and more competitive markets. I urge you to contact your federal lawmakers in support of a growth management plan for dairy in the 2023 farm bill.
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Challenging Racism in the Food System
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives fights for Black lands, agriculture, and equal justice
Oct 14, 2015
The 2015 US Food Sovereignty Prize will be awarded on October 14 in Des Moines, Iowa. This year, one of the two winners is the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a network of cooperatives comprising mostly Black family farmers across the deep South. The Federation upholds a vision of local production for local consumption and defense of their family land needed for that local production. The second winner, the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras, has a similar mission and values.
Some Federation of Southern Cooperatives farmers continued working land that the US government had deeded to their ancestors after they were freed from slavery. Ben Burkett, president of the federation and a member of the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives, farms the 164 acres that his great-grandfather was given by the government in 1889. Burkett still has the land title signed by President Grover Cleveland.
Composed of 35 agricultural co-ops, representing 12,000 farm families in 13 states from Texas to North Carolina—primarily African-American but also some Latino, Native American, and white—the Federation employs organizing, political advocacy, and legal strategies to defend land. It also helps develop economically self-sufficient communities, assisting member co-ops in purchasing supplies and finding marketing outlets. Moreover, it offers financial and technical assistance.
The Federation's work to keep land in the hands of the small farmers is one of the foundations of food sovereignty, a framework of policies, principles and practices through which food systems are controlled by, and serve the best interest of, people instead of corporations.
Taking on the "Last Plantation"
In 1920, one in every seven farmers in the US was African-American. Together, they owned nearly 15 million acres. By 1982, however, African-American farmers numbered one in 67, owning only 3.1 million acres. 1 Racism, violence, and massive migration from the rural South to the industrialized North caused a steady decline in the number of Black farmers.
Even for those who have long held onto their family's land, maintaining it today is a constant struggle. Historical patterns of racism and economic pressures in an agribusiness-driven food system have pushed many Black farmers off their land.
Institutional racism in the agricultural policies of the United States Department of Agriculture - nicknamed "the last plantation" - is also to blame for the loss of Black land. Over the years, studies by the US Civil Rights Commission (CRC), as well as by the USDA itself, showed that the USDA actively discriminated against Black farmers. A 1964 CRC study showed that the agency unjustly denied African-American farmers loans, disaster aid, and representation on agricultural committees. 2
In response, in 1997-98, African-American farmers - organized through the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and other Black organizations - filed class-action lawsuits against the USDA for unjustly denying them loans. The lawsuits were consolidated into one case, Pigford v. Glickman, settled in 1999.
However, due to delays in filing claims, nearly 60,000 farmers and their heirs were left out of this settlement. In November 2010, the U.S. Congress passed the Claims Settlement Act, or Pigford II, to compensate Black farmers left out of the first settlement. President Obama signed the Claims Settlement Act a month later, making $1.25 billion available for claimants through cash payments and loan forgiveness. The final settlement allocated about $50,000 each to roughly 16,000 farmers nationwide.
"I never would have thought the government would pay anybody any money," Burkett said of the settlement. "Initially, I would say, 'You never get a dime.' But I was wrong."
"Not As Good As We Want It to Be"
Over the years, each generation of the Burkett family bought more land, so the original 164 acres has expanded to 296 acres. On them, under the name of B&B Farms, Burkett - with the help of his family - grows 15 different varieties of vegetables and timber. Burkett says he believes the co-op structure is the only way to survive as a farmer in the rural South.
Speaking of Pigford and Pigford II, Burkett says he would have preferred that the money had been pooled and put into a trust to borrow against or to help new farmers. He added that that would have provided future generations with some seed funding and current farmers a layer of security.
In an interview, Burkett explains the rationale of the Federation taking a lead in the Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit.
"The lawsuit was about discrimination in the county office of the USDA. I got a loan to buy my equipment, seeds, and fertilizers. I could not write any checks directly. I had to write a check, and somebody in the [USDA] office had to sign it. They were only treating black farmers like that, not white farmers. For example, if I wanted to buy $5,000 worth of soybean seed, I had to find the seed from the Forest County co-op and get an invoice. I then returned to the [USDA] office and got the check. They sign the check, and I sign it, and then I have to take it back to the store. I'm just one of them; they treated me like that.
"A lot of farmers go in and get their loan approved. This happened to me, too. My loan was approved in February or March, but I didn't get the money until July 15th. That's cutting time. Planting is over. It was several things like that that brought the suit about. A lot of black farmers went into the USDA offices and were denied. They wouldn't even give them the application for a loan. The USDA officers told them, 'You can't make any money farming, so. . .' In the lawsuit, [denial of your loan] had to happen to you between '81 and '96. It was happening before then, and it is happening now, after the lawsuit. That's just the price of doing business, I suppose.
"They can pass a rule in Washington, D.C., [in the] USDA or Congress. Then, it comes to the state of Mississippi. If the state says they don't want to, they don't have to. We have a [USDA] county committee comprising five farmers who do the hiring, the firing, and everything else. Those fellows in Washington, D.C., can talk but can't fire anybody. They cannot fire a soul in the state of Mississippi.
"As long as it's set up that way, it won't change. I believe that in my heart. There are all kinds of laws about discrimination [that say] 'regardless of race, religion, creed or color.' Discrimination, morals, people's ideologies... you can't make policy or legislate that away.
"But, it is much better. I remember the '60s, I remember segregation, and it is better now. Not as good as we want it to be, but not as bad as it was."
Because racism persists in the agricultural system, hurting the efforts of Burkett and other Black farmers, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives keeps fighting for equal justice through grassroots mobilizations, in the courts, and through state and national legislation.
Burkett said, "Racism is still here in the marketplace and credit, but we have learned to deal with it and not give up on changing the system. We struggle every day to bring about a change."
Footnotes
- Public Broadcasting System, "Challenging the USDA (1980s and 1990s)," Black Farming and Land Loss: A History.
- Public Broadcasting System, "The Civil Rights Years (1954-1968)," Black Farming and Land Loss: A History.
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