Economic analysis of liquid dairy manure handling in support of anaerobic digester development on CT dairy farms

Dairy farms in CT looking to improve profitability by installing anaerobic digesters to increase revenue or reduce cost by generating electricity. CT's long history of livestock production means our soils are high in phosphorus. Soils that are high in phosphorus leak dissolved phosphorus in surface and ground water even if erosion does not occur, creating water quality issues in downstream impoundments. Digester projects do not have sufficient rate of return on investment on manure alone. Food waste imports are used to maximize gas production, but at the cost of importing more phosphorus. Farms with digesters n Massachusetts have doubled their manure hauling volumes with imported food waste, and imperiled their EQIP eligibility due to their inability to manage the increased phosphorus under their CNMPs. CT farms realize they need to plan for the hauling volumes and the additional Pin their CNMPs prior to starting construction. This project proposes to install GPS capability and flow meter technology on some of the manure hauling equipment on 3 farms looking to build digesters. The GPS will allow the project to collect accurate manure spreading records for some of the manure being spread. These records will provide the data for the development of realistic estimates of how much of the manure being generated can be utilized on the farm, and how much excess there will be. The farms need to quantify these excess nutrients in order to develop cost effective approaches to moving the excess off the farms. Failure to quantify the excess and develop a plan for dealing with them will force CT farms into conducting business as usual and continuing to overload more of CT farmland soils with too much phosphorus. If we do not get the excess phosphorus under control now the detrimental effects on the state's water quality will be felt for decades and possibly centuries into the future as these soils continue to leak phosphorus.