The United Nations expects beef and pork consumption to double between 2000
and 2050.
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: December 3, 2008
STERKSEL, the Netherlands — The cows and pigs dotting these flat green plains
in the southern Netherlands create a bucolic landscape. But looked at through
the lens of greenhouse gas accounting, they are living smokestacks, spewing
methane emissions into the air.
Can People Have Meat and a Planet, Too?
The New York Times
The farm at Sterksel makes electricity for itself and for sale, and sells
carbon credits.
That is why a group of farmers-turned-environmentalists here at a smelly but
impeccably clean research farm have a new take on making a silk purse from a
sow’s ear: They cook manure from their 3,000 pigs to capture the methane
trapped within it, and then use the gas to make electricity for the local
power grid.