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| | From AESA Council's Past Chair
By Bruce Beattie
Alberta Milk
E ver since Rumpelstiltskin was reportedly spinning straw into gold, people have been looking for ways to add value to agricultural byproducts. Like the alchemists of old, we seek to convert elements that appear worthless into something valuable. As you read this issue of Green Matters, it may seem that fairy tales can come true.
With livestock production comes manure, historically used mainly as a source of nutrients for crops. When fuel was cheap and commodity prices high, the investment of time and money in technologies to convert large volumes of manure into an energy source made little sense for the agriculture industry. Today, rising energy costs and low commodity prices are changing that view. Agriculture is stealing a page from the oil industry, refining a product that was often considered waste, to extract all the value, and using nature’s own processes to accomplish the goal.
The agricultural processing sector has similar issues of increasing costs and tight margins. Economics 101 says there are two ways to increase profits: decrease costs or increase prices. In our highly competitive retail sector, the latter is not an option. And any farmer will tell you, there isn’t much room to reduce raw material costs. So the alternative is clear. Rather than spending money to dispose of what was considered waste, processors are capturing value from their byproducts and generating returns on both sides of the ledger.
Completing the story from the farm gate to the consumer’s plate is the dairy industry’s recycling program for milk containers. It’s a great example of industry working with municipalities to find solutions with winners on all sides. Recycling is not a new concept; pop cans, car tires and beer bottles have led the way in reducing landfill loads and recapturing energy and materials for new uses. What is special is the willingness of the dairy industry to share responsibility for what happens to the consumer waste from their products.
Yes, some fairy tales can come true, but sometimes there is a troll under the bridge, waiting to catch us off guard. We need to make sure this doesn’t become the case with the issue of disposal of animal health care wastes from farms. The Alberta Environmental Farm Plan workbook identifies options for safe disposal of these wastes, but those options may not be readily available in every community. Here is an opportunity for the companies that manufacture and sell these products to come to the table with resources and partner with government and the agriculture industry to develop safe, convenient disposal options for producers.
There’s no magic in being a successful farmer. Food production will remain our primary source of revenue, but to remain viable, we must continue to search out technologies that make economic sense. Finding ways to produce food more efficiently and with less environmental impact remains the central theme of the Alberta Environmentally Sustainable Agriculture (AESA) Program. Converting our wastes into assets will help in that effort. |
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For more information about the content of this document, contact Roger Bryan.
This document is maintained by Deb Sutton.
This information published to the web on June 15, 2006.
Last Reviewed/Revised on June 10, 2008.
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