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34 sats \ 7 replies \ @kr 29 Mar 2023 \ on: Irish farmers turning cow poop into BTC bitcoin
very cool concept. one thing i don’t understand is how they’re able to effectively collect so much cow manure.
typically on regenerative farms, all the manure released by cows on pasture is absorbed back into the soil with the help of chickens or other animals (which actually helps the soil produce more grass/crops moving forward).
having the manure spread around the fields can make it so that farmers don’t have any input costs (like chemical fertilizers, made from fossil fuels).
if this bitcoin mining strategy means the farmer then needs to go out and buy chemical fertilizer to keep his soil “healthy”, i’m not sure it’s the clean energy win people believe it to be.
curious to know how he’s actually managing to collect manure without damaging the soil too.
Did they say it was a regenerative farm? I didn't see mention of that but could well have missed it.
I'm not sure, but I suspect that any emissions targets for Irish farming don't include impacts from externalities like artificial manure manufacturing.
Economically speaking, one has to be skeptical about the long term viability of pretty much any way of generating income via farming in the EU, but in the short term, there are many games one can play and win if you're nimble like these guys.
I don't want to seem overly critical though – I'm happy to see experimentation in this area.
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no, they didn’t mention it in the video.
the main point i was trying to make was that manure is needed to maintain healthy soils, so i was trying to figure out how they could keep their soil healthy while also removing the thing that keeps soil healthy.
many factory farms (this didn’t look like one from the video) don’t keep cows on pasture and therefore need to dispose of manure somehow, so this might be a good use case for them… but they’ve got the worst soil of all farms, pretty much devoid of life and a big negative externality that often goes unaccounted for.
also happy to see new experiments like this, would love to visit the farm and get a deeper understanding of the process.
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i think they were using cut grass and the manure
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Gotcha, and agree that this seems like the typical Irish farm that's necessarily focused on revenue generation rather than doing what's right for the environment. (again, not to criticize - this is just the reality). I grew up about 50 miles from the farm in the video and my brother is a farmer who is doing some experiments in regenerative farming. I'll be curious to see what he thinks of this.
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nice, would be interested to hear what your brother thinks too!
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Well, I asked him and he's quite positive on anaerobic digester use for electricity. He's not well informed on bitcoin or mining though.
I'd love to know the portion of time these guys sell back to the grid vs mining, and how much that might change as this becomes more and more prevalent.
Then again, the UK (where this farm actually is), doesn't seem too well set up to produce cheap electricity anytime soon, unless they really get their shit together, so it could be viable approach for years to come.
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interesting, thanks!
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