Cattle can be green too

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Green certainly is the color of choice at the moment. Al Gore has won Oscar, Emmy and Nobel prizes, everything but an election. NBC has turned their peacock logo green and sent their morning crew to the far reaches of the world to highlight the environment.

What seems to be escaping attention is the fact that farmers are the original environmentalists. Crop rotation, using livestock manure and old alfalfa stands for fertilizer, and spring plowing has given way to no-till, GPS application of fertilizers and chemicals, buffer strips and carbon credits. With the renewed push for ethanol, cattle and other livestock are now entering the “green revolution” as well.

Making ethanol from corn does not mean we feed less corn to animals, just in a different form. Gluten, DDGs (Dry Distillers Grains) and WDGs (Wet Distillers Grains) are feedable by-products of the ethanol process. All can be fed to livestock, however, cattle can utilize them better and at higher rates in the diet than can hogs, sheep, chickens and turkeys. So how does this make cattle “green?” Let’s look at two examples of innovation.

Two ethanol plants are exploring the possibilities of linkages between ethanol and livestock production. The E3 BioFuels plant in Mead, Neb., and the Panda Ethanol plant in Hereford, Texas, are trying to take advantage of the synergies between ethanol and livestock production.

The E3 BioFuels plant is co-located with a 30,000-head cattle feedlot. This co-location determined the size of the ethanol plant. The 24-million-gallon-per-year plant is designed to be powered by biogas derived from the 228,000 tons of manure annually produced at the feedlot. The feedlot has a slatted floor system that allows the manure from the cattle to be captured and processed on two 4-million-gallon digesters. Power is also saved because the distillers grains from the ethanol production process are not dried; wet distillers grains will be fed directly to the cattle in the feedlot. In addition, thin silage, another ethanol co-product, will be fed into the digesters to help maintain digester temperatures without the use of natural gas. In this closed-loop system between ethanol and livestock, output from each component can be used as input for the other. In fact, the end product from the digester can be used as fertilizer, providing an additional linkage to the corn used in the production scheme.

Panda Ethanol is expected to come on-line in the first half of 2008. Like the E3 BioFuels plant, the Panda plant will use manure as a power source. With the Panda plant’s location in the middle of Texas cattle country, manure is in steady supply. The 100-million-gallon-per-year plant will also create 900,000 tons of wet distillers grains to be fed to local cattle. Both plants take advantage of two key factors: The ability to use cattle manure as an energy source for the ethanol plant and the ability to feed wet distillers grains to the cattle. Both factors contribute to cost savings in plant operation and should allow the plants to be highly competitive in the ethanol industry.

These two plants do highlight a question about the ethanol industry and its relationship with livestock: Does it make more economic sense to place the ethanol plant where livestock currently are or to move the livestock and the ethanol plant close to where the corn is grown? Historically, the ethanol industry has located plants in areas of inexpensive corn and has not taken advantage of livestock synergies. The E3 and Panda plants show that the ethanol industry is evolving to capture other cost advantages.

Illinois corn is now being sent by the train load to Texas to make ethanol and power these feedlots. Why not keep the corn here and bring cattle feeding back to Illinois? We have the corn and our weather is suitable for feeding cattle. We could also revitalize and expand the Illinois cow-calf operations by having feedlots in Illinois.

Maybe this is too simple to work, but growing a renewable source of fuel (corn), feeding the by-product and using animal waste to fuel the operation seems to make “green sense” to me. At the same time we would be bringing jobs, industry and diversified agriculture back to Illinois instead of chasing away opportunities for economic growth in this state. All this and reducing our dependence on imported oil.

Technology is always making advances as we continue to seek new and clean sources of energy other than fossil fuels. Corn based ethanol is not the only answer, but combined with feeding cattle and “closed loop” operations like Panda and E3, certainly it can be a big player in the green revolution. Remember, whether helping to fuel your car, power an ethanol plant or on the grill — beef is what’s for dinner.

Larry Magnuson is on the board of the Illinois Beef Association.