I attended the Energizing Agriculture: Opportunities for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency on the Farm conference sponsored by the Town of Warwick hoping to meet a farmer raising grass-fed animals.
What I got was an eye-opening education at what the farmers in my own back yard are already doing to convert their farms to using sustainable agriculture techniques - many of them profitably and affordably.
I learned that any number of crops can produce fuel (biofuel) for transportation, lighting and heat; I learned that in Warwick schools are already using local Burger King cooking oil (biodiesel) to run diesel engines. I learned that Orange County has the space and the zoning to create local sources of fuel. I learned that there are grants and rebates for the installation of solar and biofuel technology.
Local government, educators, entrepreneurs, farmers and engineers spent a day sharing knowledge and trying to figure out ways for each of them to operate responsibly and profitably. The US is woefully behind other countries, but we’re closer to being oil-independent than I realized. Now it’s just a matter of educating our fellow citizens.
The fourteen co-sponsors of this conference included Orange Environment, an organization committed to environmental activism, research, education, and advocacy. I know how I’m planning to spend Earth Day this year.
It took a farmer to wake me up to the reality that the Hudson River is a time-honored ROAD to the huge New York City market. That adds a new perspective to my understanding of the word local. Many of the roads, bridges, tunnels and railroad tracks carrying people and products into New York City are less than 50-years-old. The Hudson River has been a cost-effective means of transporting people and products for hundreds of millions of years.
I’m still poring over my notes and the handouts. The conference presenters promised we’d leave with more questions than answers. What I left with, to borrow Obama’s phrase, was the audacity of hope.
Here are a few more things I learned:
- Orange County, NY is number one in agricultural production in the Hudson Valley.
-Among the crops that can be planted to produce biofuel, canola yields 127 gallons of fuel per acre, soy yields 48 gallons of fuel per acre and corn yields 18 gallons of fuel per acre. There are plants that grow in other environments, like oil palm, which yields 635 per acre.
-Many sustainable technology products and practices pay for themselves in two-to-five years. That’s enough to satisfy lenders. Photovoltaics can now last 50 years. Local farms are generating more electricity from wind power than they consume and enough corn fuel to heat most farm buildings, including greenhouses.
-Cornell University and Penn State University are actively researching methane digestion, ethanol production, creating pellet fuel out of saw grass, waxed cardboard, and wood chips for fuel.
-There is growing venture capital interest in many of the sustainable technology options being developed and improved.