Climate Change

There are a lot of people employed in and by that farm.

You reckon stocking the milking platform at 6 plus cows ha is a more environmentally friendly system and less polluting then 5 150 cow farms stocked at the national average of circa 2.75 cows ha on milking platform?

It's a pretty sh**ty hill to pick to die on defending that particular example of a affected dairy herd

Way things are looking I'd say the state are looking to hold and use any carbon sequestration figures for themselves

Imagen dropping a few million on a AD plant drastically reducing your cows methane emissions and not getting any allowance for carbon/methane sequestered over a base cow figure that's slurry is spread on land....

It's time to just play the cute hoor, they want agriculture crippled altogether and want us to go broke trying to comply with whatever vision they dream up

That's it. Don't go broke, take it handy. A few cows and and a few followers. Draw any euro that's going. I personally think it might help farmers. No young person wants to take over from a maniac running from morning to night, who can't help themselves from renting/buying more land/cows. There has been a few farmers took there own lives around here lately, what's it all for

See....that's a big problem if true if you ask me..

Being reasonable and fair when you deal with people goes a long way.....

I had a German student here a while back that had something like 100 cows and an AD plant at home. He said more time and effort went into the plant than the cows. They got big grants but regretted putting it in.

There may be some hair brained idea by the greens as part of the package in AD's being given permission here is that they will only be allowed in grass growing areas and that grass and multi species sward feedstocks will only be allowed as per the planning permission requirements. Another stipulation is that no fertiliser is allowed be spread on the feedstock areas.

They really have no idea what they're doing. It's been made up on the fly. The idea was that the country needed biogas but then they looked at what occurred in areas with biogas and decided they'd try and break the mold and put a green wishy washy slant on it. None of this will work. There's a reason rye and maize is grown for Anaerobic Digestors and it's because per kg of feedstock it's multiples more efficient than grass. Could be in the region of 20 times more effective. (There was a graph presented back in johnstown castle pre covid at an AD info day).

That's 20 times more land required and twenty times more loading the plant required. Teagasc have now opened a plant run on grass silage to see if the figures are wrong from other countries. Meanwhile the country has just agreed these are going ahead with the terms and conditions above and will contribute to reducing energy emissions.

Edit : If per kg of feedstock it's 20 times more productive. It'll be more than 20 times more land required as these are more bulky crops than zerograzed grass or multispecies swards. Again this is all on the fly.

On the ad plants above, a few BIG fellas with money to invest will make even more money from any wrong decisions by the man with the bicycle, taxpayer's picking up the tab.

I don’t understand it fully either but I have seen enough very informed posters bring this up again and again so there is definitely something in it.

I think that or something like that could finally be a bridge to far finally

What sort of acreage is needed even with maize and rye to feed one.

Would the acreage of many Irish farms be enough. I wouldn't like to invest on the basis of the neighbours growing crops.

Maybe Comrade Ryan feels different.

From this 2013 paper, AD was found to be less profitable than beef or sheep.

That's not saying much for it, and even before the extra inefficiencies you highlighted.

I think you're right about the 20 times extra land needed, not to mention the emissions from the haulage of feedstock, or the depletion of soil organic matter.

AD from grass in Ireland is simply madness.

They do add water but there's almost enough from the silage, the digestate is essentially like all a cows waste products mixed together at about 4/5percent solids alot of them put through a seperator so it doesn't build up in storage tanks. Your not far off 1:1 of what goes in to the plant vs being spread back on land and they like to jazz it up with waste fruit and the like if possible a usual mix is 2/3 Maize, Rye, Triticale ,Grass they're less fussy on mould as sheer volume waters it down but Dry matter needs to be to a certain spec. Silage gets tested for it's theoretical gas production potential.

Another thing is without a widespread gas mains system you need an engine to burn it on site for electricity and the esb wont give connections for anything essentially. In the uk now they prefer to clean up the gas and inject into the mains as more profitable, they can also clean off co2 and sell it from the tanks. So much one off housing makes district heating hard.