Yesterday’s New York Times article, “One Moos and One Hums…”,
describes a recently proposed plan to power data farms with biogas produced from the manure from dairy farms. Clever, but flawed. This proposal is combining the worst practices of the current “green” movement with the worst practices of modern industry.
In order to meet power quotas, farmers will need to confine their cattle to the “barn” to ensure the collection of deposits of fresh fuel. This will create a double-commodification of the animals in which their livelihoods will be even more tightly controlled in order to maximize profitability. The evils of industrial agriculture have been discussed at length elsewhere. Here’s a list of concerns surrounding factory farming for those of you not in the know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farming#Key_issues
Let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. Capitalizing on biogas is brilliant. Our proposal: decentralized, small scale, organic/free range/grass fed data/dairy farms. In this model, the power generated is determined by the manure produced. The data center in no way interferes with the day-to-day affairs of healthy livestock. Perhaps this wouldn’t produce much energy. But imagine if every dairy farm in the United States was powering a server.