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Thursday, October 20, 2016

When the story broke that a diary farm was making more money from cow manure than the milk it sells to a supermarket, it was cause for a reflective moment. But the economics of it explains it clearly enough. The owner of the diary, however, testily lamented about how "bottled water" has become more expensive than pasteurised milk; and he was correct as in some instances it is. But that was a side remark; his point was "it's hard to make a profit from the d...iary side considering the enormous costs of keeping the cows fed, healthy and productive".

I have discussed this earlier that "sometimes waste is simply not waste" as there is something to be discovered about it that is of value. Here it is: cow dung. Cows produce manure daily, a prodigious amount of it. Now, a decaying manure release a gas call methane, a biogas product. Well, this owner built a plant to process that gas, and turns it into electricity, use what he could for his own requirement and sells the rest to the electricity grid -- and that, is the activity currently making the business of having cows profitable for him.
So right there in our dust, in Africa, is a product of energy potential that can be harnessed for economic use. This practice has gained traction in India and Pakistan at very small scales, even at the level of a home. Still, I would like to crowd-fund this in a village as a test project for viability in Africa; and I am sure I will enjoy the experience. Won't you? Our energy crises is simply out of control.