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A Mid-Scale Anaerobic Biodigester Creates On-Farm Renewable Energy

ATTRA

So, when I heard of the mid-scale anaerobic digester being installed at Dickenson College Organic Farm as a demonstration of how small dairy farms can utilize manure and other waste streams to produce on farm energy, I was eager for the opportunity to visit the farm and help spread the word to other farms.

Farming 52
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Opinion: Why the Farm Bill Isn’t Prioritizing the Right Things

Modern Farmer

Agricultural run-off, including soil erosion, nutrient loss from fertilizers and animal manure, bacteria from animal manure and pesticides are the largest stressors to water quality of America’s streams and rivers. These crops are also the largest consumer of increasingly scarce river water in the Western United States.

Farming 98
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20 Sustainable Sips to Cheer For

Food Tank

The vineyards are weeded only using hoes, never herbicides, and fertilized with manure. completely reuses all bagasse (the residual pulp left after juice is extracted from sugar cane) as biofuel and compost. Their brewery in Wales became the first carbon-neutral, nonalcoholic brewery in the world earlier this year. In 2016, Rhum J.M

Beverage 120
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PFAS Shut Maine Farms Down. Now, Some Are Rebounding.

Civil Eats

Others have been able to relieve the problem through water treatments and removal of affected hay and manure. Hay provides a particular challenge because it is often sold and transported to other farms where it is fed to livestock who spread the chemicals through their manure.

Farming 129
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Managing ‘Brown Gold:’ the Challenges—and Opportunities—of Spent Substrate

Civil Eats

It’s also one with many potential uses ; it can be used as compost, as a means of decontaminating soil, as biofuel, and simply for growing more mushrooms. Composed of sawdust and soy pellets woven through with mycelium—the thread-like aspect of the fungus from which mushrooms sprout—spent substrate is a unique kind of waste. In the U.S.,

Compost 118
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Can Biden’s climate-smart agriculture program live up to the hype?

Food Environment and Reporting Network

These practices include reducing or eliminating tilling of soil, planting “cover crops” that grow during the off-season and are not harvested, improving how farmers use fertilizer and manure, and planting trees. Better manure management is among the climate-smart practices the USDA is funding in the partnerships. But it should be.

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Tim Walz’s Bipartisan Approach to Agriculture and Conservation

Civil Eats

Large livestock facilities generate more liquid manure, which emits methane, a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas. In 2020, Walz, along with three Midwestern Republican governors, appealed to the Trump administration to reject the oil industry’s attempts to exempt small refineries from being required to blend biofuels into their mixes.