Farmers look to poo to boost revenue

5 July 2011 Last updated at 23:00 GMT By Richard Anderson Business reporter, BBC News The farm's 4,000 pigs are contributing to the upkeep of the pens they live in What to do with 12,000 tonnes of pig poo?

That's the question farmers James Hart and Jeremy Iles found themselves asking two years ago when contemplating how best to supplement their dwindling incomes.

Thanks to the buying power of the major supermarkets, pig farming is no longer as profitable as it once was, and Mr Hart in particular was looking at ways to make the most of the resources at his disposal.

The solution they came up with was beautifully simple; turn the huge amount of pig faeces generated on the farm - not to mention cow dung and chicken droppings - into hard cash.

The mechanism for doing so is, in essence, remarkably straightforward and could secure the future of the farm and the livelihoods of the 10 families which depend upon it.

Slow uptake

Glebe Farm near the sleepy village of Hatherop in Gloucestershire is an unlikely place to stumble across a state-of-the-art, million pound biogas station of which there are just a handful in the UK.

The plant can run 24-hours a day and output can be tailored to demand

The plant itself is wholly unremarkable to look at, but what goes on inside could help to revolutionise not just this farm, but hundreds of others just like it across the country.

In fact, the technology is proven and, given the government subsidies available, profitable.

It's just that, like with most renewable energies, the UK has been painstakingly slow on the uptake. In Germany, for example, there are thousands of similar plants.

Hot air

In essence, vast quantities of animal waste are mixed with lots of grass in a cylindrical tower - "basically a 3,000 tonne cow's stomach," says Mr Hart.

Bacteria then break down the mixture, producing methane, which is siphoned off, cleaned and filtered.

Mr Hart has bet heavily on the success of his new biogas plant

This gas is then used to power what is effectively a ?200,000 Mercedes truck engine, which in turn powers a generator, electricity from which is fed into the National Grid.

A by-product of the process is large quantities of fertiliser that remain in the tower once the bacteria have worked their magic.

The heat generated by the process is also captured and used for central heating at the farm house. It is, then, in renewable-energy speak, an efficient 'closed-loop' system.

And the benefits to the farm are both numerous and substantial.

For a start, Mr Hart expects to be able to sell the 2.2 million kilowatt hours of electricity generated each year - enough to power more than 175 homes - for about ?300,000.

Almost two-thirds of this money comes in the form of a green energy generation subsidy from the government - a perfectly standard arrangement for any new energy source, and one that will be reduced once plant costs come down.

On top of this, Mr Hart should save about ?30,000 in fuel bills for the farm, and of course pay no heating costs at home.

In addition, he expects to buy about 200 tonnes less fertiliser every year, saving another ?60,000.

And what's more, the process even removes almost all the smell coming from the manure.

Harmful gases

But it's not just Mr Hart's business that benefits from the plant.

The hi-tech biogas plant requires more than 3km (1.8 miles) of wiring to run

Methane is about 20 times worse than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere and so is widely recognised as one of the more potent greenhouse gases.

By capturing the methane produced by the waste generated by his 4,000 pigs, 100 cows and 100,000 chickens, Mr Hart expects to reduce his equivalent carbon footprint by about 10,000 tonnes a year. That's the equivalent of almost 9,000 return flights from London to New York.

He is also using far less fertiliser, which can be fairly carbon intensive to manufacture.

Hard times

In theory, then, the biogas plant could give Glebe Farm a much-needed new lease of life.

A standard truck engine adapted to run on gas runs the electricity generator

Mr Hart's father took on the farm in 1969 and was able to make a good living, but his son has found life much harder.

The price he receives for his pigs from the supermarkets is the same now as it was 15 years ago, and was significantly lower for much of the past decade.

With the cost of raw materials and labour, not to mention the price of bacon and pork in the shops, increasing significantly over this time, margins have been slashed.

Mr Hart needed to take drastic action to keep the family business going.

"I needed to find another source of income and I wanted to improve my environmental impact," he says.

He and Mr Iles considered wind turbines and solar panels, but soon realised planning permission would be tricky. Nor were they convinced either would produce enough power.

Farming has moved a long way from the more traditional manual-labour intensive tasks

Biogas generated from pig poo seemed the perfect answer - a "win win solution where we could extract an income from something we already had," says Mr Hart.

Getting planning permission was easy, but finding the necessary cash proved a great deal harder. "We had nothing but a very large overdraft," Mr Hart explains.

Despite a ?300,000 grant from the Rural Development Programme for England and a payback of just four to five years, Lloyds was the only bank prepared to stump up the extra ?900,000 needed to buy and fit the entire plant from low carbon energy firm Alfagy.

Beating targets

It may have been running for just three months, but, barring any unforeseen major maintenance costs, the early signs are good.

"We are ahead of schedule and have already hit our September bank targets," says Mr Hart.

Mr Hart hopes to use the profits from the biogas plant to upgrade his pig pens

In other words, the farm is back in business. There are no guarantees, but Mr Hart says that until such time as the supermarkets pay a fair price for his pigs, he will continue to rely on the revenue generated from his animals' waste, not just to support his family and those of his workers, but also to maintain his pigs.

"I'm not an environmentalist, I'm just a farmer who wants to be as green as he can be," he says.

"As farmers, we are always thinking of the next 30 to 40 years and we [at Glebe] are now fully committed for the next half a generation.

"We are custodians of the land and are just trying to leave it in a better condition than we found it."

Thanks to the biogas plant and of course his pigs that feed it, Mr Hart and his sons may now be in business long enough to do just that.

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Forest farmers

24 May 2011 Last updated at 12:20 GMT By Paulo Cabral BBC News, Irituia, Para Debate over development or conservation of the Amazon has raged for years The ceiling fans spinning at full speed were not enough to cool the room, but the farmers gathered in Irituia's town hall are used to the oppressive heat of the Amazon.

Most of the plastic seats were empty but the 30 or so people at the meeting in Irituia were paying a lot of attention to discussions about environmentally sound agriculture in their biodiverse part of the world.

"We are not many yet but we notice that little by little more of us are realising that sustainable farming is the only way to go, and that we don't have to be enemies of the environmentalists," said Mauro Lucio Costa, chairman of the Farmer's Union of Paragominas.

Paragominas, like Irituia located in the state of Para, topped the deforestation ranking in Brazil in 2008 - and went on a government blacklist.

But since then sawmills have been closed and farms more strictly monitored.

"It's useless nowadays to cut the trees at night or away from the roads to get away with deforestation because now they are watching us with satellites. I tried that not to long ago and was heavily fined," one farmer told the meeting.

Opposing priorities

But farmers who have tried to adopt a more environmental approach get more raised eyebrows than approving nods here, especially as tensions have been heightened by the debate in Congress over changes to Brazil's Forest Code.

Continue reading the main story

[Environmentalists] want to rip Brazilian farmers out of the ground as if we were some kind poisonous weed”

End Quote Katia Abreu National Agricultural Confederation This environmental law stipulates that landowners in the Amazon must keep 80% of their terrain forested; that drops to 20% for other parts of Brazil.

Proposals to change the legislation pit those who see development and economic growth as the highest priority (including many farmers, though not all) against those who see conservation as the key issue. That group includes environmentalists and a large part of the scientific community.

"These NGOs are an international mafia that hold businesses as hostages by threatening to soil the names of those who oppose [them]. These groups thrive when there's conflict," says Katia Abreu, head of Brazil's powerful National Agriculture Confederation (CNA).

"They want to rip Brazilian farmers out of the ground as if we were some kind poisonous weed."

Pressure

The reform of Brazil's Forest Code has been debated for more than 15 years.

Just a few weeks ago it seemed that a version of the bill that eases restrictions on the use of forest land would be approved by the Chamber of Deputies.

Farmer Percio Barros de Lima says he has boosted production without clearing more land

But environmentalists managed to garner more political and public support to bring the vote to a halt.

"Even though the Forest Code has been under intense discussion for many years it was only recently, after it was approved in congressional committees, that the media took an interest in it," says Paulo Adario, co-ordinator for Greenpeace's Amazon programme.

"I think the pressure from national and international public opinion was essential to stop the approval of the bill the way the farmers wanted it and to get President [Dilma] Rousseff's government to support some of our concerns," said Mr Adario.

Among the proposed changes that worried environmentalists were plans to:

exempt small landowners from requirement to preserve 80% forestgive an amnesty to landowners who cleared forest before 2008reduce the strip of land that must be left intact along the banks of rivers and streams from 30m (100ft) to 15m (50ft)

The proposals have been the focus of intense wrangling. Deputies were again due to debate and vote on the issue on 24 May.

Demand from abroad has fuelled the expansion of Brazil's agriculture

Environmentalists argue that the proposed changes and loopholes in the legislation pose a big threat to the Amazon rainforest.

"The farmers are trying to leave doors open to allow for the permanence of plantations in highly sensitive areas like slopes and hilltops," says Paulo Barreto, a researcher at of the Amazon Institute for Mankind and the Environment (Imazon).

Many environmentalists believe that a recent reported increase in Amazon deforestation was caused by farmers trying to clear land before the new Forest Code code is approved.

This would mean that their lands could be recognised as established farmland if and when the new bill comes into effect.

Productivity

But Mrs Abreu argues that the environmentalists' concerns have more to do with ideology than with science.

"Just look at the world's history and you'll see that everywhere agriculture developed along the rivers because our activity depends on water, it's quite obvious," she said.

Mrs Abreu was critical of the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (SBPC), which has called for more for more research before the forest code is changed.

Decisions in Brasilia will have a big impact on the Amazon

That view, Mrs Abreu said, was "highly politicised".

Environmentalists say that they understand the need for more food production.

But they argue this can be done by increasing the productivity of existing farmland, not clearing more of the Amazon.

Cattle farms in the Amazon have an average productivity of less than one head per hectare (2.5 acres).

"I have invested in better varieties of pasture and in fertilisers and I have an average of 2.5 cows per hectare in my farm. I also plant corn," says farmer Percio Barros de Lima.

"When I bought this farm in 1974 it still had about half of its area covered with original forest, which was what the law required at the time. Since then we have managed to develop by increasing productivity and without clearing any new areas," says Mr Lima.

"I hope the new forest code will make all rules for our activity clearer so we'll be able to work without so many uncertainties about the future."

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Exploding watermelons perplex Chinese farmers

17 May 2011 Last updated at 08:49 GMT Farmer Liu Mingsuo: "More and more watermelons exploded"

Farmers in eastern China have been left perplexed after their watermelons began to explode one by one.

An investigation by state media found farms in Jiangsu province were losing acres of fruit because of the problem.

The overuse of a chemical that helps fruit grow faster was blamed in one report by China Central Television.

But agriculture experts were unable to explain why chemical-free melons were exploding. They cited the weather and abnormal size of the melon as factors.

China Central Television said farmers were overspraying their crops with the growth promoter, hoping they could get their fruit to market ahead of the peak season and increase their profits.

Chemical-free

According to the Xinhua news agency, 20 farmers in a village in Jiangsu province planted imported seeds from Japan, with 10 households saying their watermelons began exploding last month.

Farmer Liu Mingsuo told Xinhua that more than two-thirds of his crop had blown up.

He said he had used chemicals to boost their growth on 6 May, and the following day more than 180 melons exploded. Mr Liu was reported to be the only farmer from the 10 households who used chemicals.

Wang Dehong, who has been farming watermelons for 20 years, couldn't understand why his fruit also exploded as he had not used any chemicals.

Agricultural experts investigating the incident were unable to offer an explanation.

China has approved the usage of the growth chemical under certain quotas. So far, tests show the chemical is safe, Xinhua reported.

However, as the public is increasingly concerned about food safety, experts say a quality tracking system should be introduced, detailing every stage along the food chain, to inform the public fully, and ensure food safety.

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