Digester Success: It’s All in the Details

Farm Journal’s Smart Farming Week is an annual week-long emphasis on innovation in agriculture. The goal is to encourage you to explore and prioritize the technology, tools and practices that will help you farm smarter. Innovation today ensures an efficient, productive and sustainable tomorrow.

You’ve met with the digester company. You know all about the lineup of builders and sub-contractors it’s going to take to bring a successful digester project to life. You understand how the revenue stream works, and you’re thinking about signing on the dotted line.

Other producers who have been in that position will encourage you to make sure you fully understand everything spelled out in that contract. Lynn Boadwine owns and operates a multi-site dairy in South Dakota with three anaerobic digesters up and running, and a fourth in the works. He shared insight into these projects during a webinar hosted by McLanahan on anaerobic digestion success.

Boadwine dives into what he refers to as, “the not so fun part” of the digester projects. “There’s all the excitement of building digesters and making renewable natural gas. But the difficult part is in the beginning and understanding the contracts,” he says.

Analyze the Details

While Boadwine is quick to point out that overall, he has had a good experience, he also emphasizes why it’s important to go through your contract line by line. “If you think about an attorney writing a contract, they’re doing it from the perspective of the company they’re working for,” he says.

As a producer, that contract isn’t necessarily written for you, and it’s imperative to have your own legal counsel to help ensure a thorough understanding of who’s responsible for what. “I don’t want any surprises,” Boadwine says. “Trust me, there are always things when you get operating that we didn’t think of. It’s a lot harder to sort things out when it’s not in the contract.”

Digester Installment Advice

Boadwine shares a few examples that come into play especially in the case of land leased to the digester company by the farmer:

• Who holds the environmental regulatory permit?
• If there are any issues on the property, who pays for cleanup?
• Who controls the added traffic, oversees the construction site and controls dust?
• Most farms have been around longer than many of the digester companies: what happens when the companies change or the credit value goes away?

Boadwine also wants producers to understand the hidden costs and required efficiencies involved with a digester project, including insurance, planning for maintenance and avoiding downtime. For one thing, with sand bedding, it’s the producer’s responsibility to maintain the sand separation equipment, keeping the sand that enters the tank to a minimum.

The overall benefits an effective digester system can bring to a farm and community are well worth the labor-intensive attention to detail. “We can all see the world evolving. The dairy industry is moving towards their commitments: there won’t be less digesters, and we will continue to hear about sustainability,” Boadwine concludes.

For more on Smart Farming, read:

• Uniting Technology with the Youngest Herd Members on Your Farm
• He Started Out as a Milker Nearly 30 Years Ago. Now, He's the Manager and a Leader in Technology at Wisconsin's Largest Family-Owned Dairy
• Facility Focus: 4 Tips to Manage Ventilation During the Off-Season
• Beef-on-Dairy: Why Feedlots Crave This Important Information