The hundreds of black and white Holstein cows milling about the barn at Laurie Stanton's dairy farm may not look like a valuable source of energy, but each animal on the hoof has a lot of potential.
In the search for a way to deal with the vast quantity of manure his big herd generates and to do something useful with it, Mr. Stanton, a third-generation dairy farmer, had a quirky idea: why not try to turn the dung into a valuable commodity, like electricity?
Later this summer, Ontario electricity consumers will start using power that Mr. Stanton's herd will contribute to the provincial grid. Each of his cows is expected to produce enough manure to keep three 50-watt light bulbs constantly illuminated.
The sprawling dairy operation, located near London, Ont., is poised to become the largest source of farm-biogas-derived electricity in Canada, with its cow manure turned into methane, the active ingredient in natural gas, and burned in a miniature power plant to produce electricity.
"There is huge potential for it," Mr. Stanton said of his scheme. "We're absolutely sold on this system."
The idea of turning cow waste into electricity, according to its boosters, which include the Ontario government, the source of $2.5-million in financing for the venture, sidesteps one of the biggest quandaries in agriculture today.
It's the question of whether it is good sense or folly to turn valuable human food, such as corn and soybeans, into renewable fuels, such as ethanol or diesel, to use for cars.
The rush to make ethanol from corn has more than doubled the price of the agricultural staple, and although it has also helped to curb petroleum use, it has prompted global worries about food-price inflation.
But in the case of manure, it is a material nearly no one wants; while farmers typically spread it on their land as a substitute for fertilizer, the activity is often a source of complaints from neighbours offended by its pungent smell, and worried about its potential to pollute groundwater.
There is something alluring about getting energy from "materials that are not really competing with food," observes Franco Berruti, director of the University of Western Ontario's Institute for Chemicals and Fuels from Alternate Resources. The institute, along with two other Ontario universities, will conduct research at the Stanton farm, tracking its progress in turning agricultural wastes into energy.
Dr. Berruti says society should be looking for a "sustainable type of biomass that can be converted into value-added products, and manure is certainly one of those."
He thinks people should view manure and other similar materials in the same way they'd view a crop.
"When you look at farms, agriculture operations, nothing is waste. Everything is a resource. It's just a matter of harvesting," he said.
The province announced funding for the $5-million project earlier this month, saying it hopes the Stanton's on-farm power plant will suggest a possible way of dealing with some of the nearly 50 million tonnes of biomass, or waste residues from plants and animals, that Ontario produces annually.
If converted to energy, the biological waste could produce enough power to meet the needs of seven million homes, according to a Ministry of Research and Innovation estimate.
Manure is used to produce energy in many developing countries, although the operations are often primitive, little more than covered pits with pipes for methane collection. But in Germany, considered the Western leader of the technology, biogas projects are currently producing about the same amount of electricity as a large nuclear plant.
In Canada, only a handful of farms produce electricity from their waste material, in part because building small power stations is expensive and because it requires large-scale agricultural operations to be economically worthwhile.
The Stantons, with 750 milking cows, operate one of the biggest dairy farms in the country.
Ontario's electricity grid is also at capacity in many areas, leaving little or no room for new suppliers to hook up to it.
Yet given the huge potential for biomass energy, John Wilkinson, Minister of Research and Innovation, said he thinks agriculture can produce both food and fuel, if it uses waste materials for energy.
