Where there's muck there's brass

This old Yorkshire adage should be followed by the New Zealand and other country dairy industries to save on costs, provide energy and clean up the environment. As the global recession bites, New Zealand and other country dairy farmers will come under tougher cost pressures from increased electricity charges and environmental compliance. One solution is to use dairy waste to raise heat and power. Instead of taking fright at New Zealand greenhouse gas (GHG) emission rules, farmers can turn the situation to their advantage. New Zealand has a particular problem with methane, as 49 % of its GHG comes from grazing animals – mostly from their gut and out of their mouths and a the rest from the back end.

The technology involved comes off the shelf. It is in widespread use in the United States, being taken up in Europe and is now taking off in Asia. Any company which ‘cracks’ the packaging of a flexible system for dairy farms, will make a good living. Whanganui, where I live, and situated between large dairy regions, Taranaki and Manawatu, and having dairy farms of its own, could become a regional centre.

The technology works like this: dairy shed waste is flushed into a set of sumps; the grit is left to settle and then the waste is pumped into a digester. This produces methane gas from the waste, which is then burned to raise heat. It can also be burned in a small methane engine to generate electricity. Remote farms, using expensive diesel generators, can replace them. If a feed pad system is used, then more waste is collected while the cows are eating.

Here are the three wins:
• First, it allows farmers to manage their effluent better, including nitrous oxides. The process does not eliminate nitrogen, but manages it better.
• Second - it converts methane –20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide – into useful energy.
• Third, in future, farmers will earn carbon credits for doing this. All political parties should be thinking about how to bring farmers into such a system early, to encourage the take up of biogas generation, now.

The Christchurch, NZ company, BioGenCool and Landcorp have a working prototype. Other trials have been conducted on middle sized dairy farms and several New Zealand companies are in talks with farmers to set up projects. Warwick Cutfield, technical director of Maunsell Engineering laid out the issues in a presentation to our Whanganui River Institute annual seminar back in February. Environutra, a start-up company is in discussions with dairy farmers in the region. The brass is in sight.

May 1st reminds us - working hours are too long

May 1st is a Workers’ Holiday in many countries. It began as a harvest holiday. It became formal after tough strikes in 1886 in Chicago, for the 8 hour day. May Day should give us pause for thought about how long our working hours are. Between them, Kiwi men and women spend an average 62 hours a week at work. There is no legal limit on weekly working hours in New Zealand. Only four other developed countries have no limits.
The deep recession should also give us pause. There is much less work around. To preserve existing jobs, the National Government has extended the nine day fortnight scheme to firms with 50 or more employees, taking it down from the 100 minimum before. Well done. Shorter working hours would also share work around.
Long hours have a huge impact on family life, separating men, especially, from their children. Kiwi men work the second longest average weekly hours in the developed world, after the UK. Many women are working to boost family income because they have no choice, when their kids are young. These days we have many kids who are often ‘home alone’. Throw temporary, agency and migrant work into the mix and we can see social problems being created daily. Families are under pressure and the loss of income in the recession hits hard as well. Decent pay is essential, too.
Long working hours are damaging to health as well as to family life. May 1st makes us reflect and so, too, does our own Labour Day. It also commemorates the struggle for an eight-hour working day. New Zealand workers were among the first in the world to claim this right when, in 1840, the carpenter Samuel Parnell led the fight for the eight-hour day in Wellington. Labour Day was first celebrated in New Zealand on 28 October 1890.
Another milestone in the fight for shorter hours came with the Blackball miners’ strike in 1908. Blackball was the birthplace of the New Zealand Labour Party. Its foundation followed the 1908 miners’ strike to reduce hours of work. If we are to have a healthy society and families which spend time together, then working hours must be reduced. There needs to be much better social support provided for working families with young children. Otherwise we will reap an even worse whirlwind of social problems.