Big Oil and Big Ag are teaming up to turn cow poop into energy — and profits. The math doesn’t add up.
The hundreds of billions of pounds of waste produced by America’s dairy cows every year has long been a headache for farmers.
Manure is expensive to manage and, to state the obvious, it smells terrible, which can lead to complaints, protests, and lawsuits from neighbors — even the occasional fine or misdemeanor charge. And when dairies store their manure in giant open-air lagoons, the most common and cheapest method, it becomes a climate problem: As the manure decomposes, it produces methane, a climate “super pollutant” that accelerates climate change at a much faster rate than carbon dioxide.
But in recent years, a growing number of large dairy operations have managed to simultaneously turn their costly, burdensome manure into money, and their climate problem into a supposed climate solution.
This is the first in a series of stories on how factory farming has shaped, and continues to impact, the US Midwest. You can visit Vox’s Future Perfect section for future installments and more coverage of Big Ag. The stories in this series are supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which received a grant from Builders Initiative.
