| Haubenschild's honored for dairy farm |
By Joel Stottrup Some people consider a room with a view one where you look out on pretty landscape.But when Dennis and his wife Marsha Haubenschild of rural Princeton were on a trip in Germany last March, the exciting view for Dennis from their hotel were digesters that generate methane, a type of bio-gas. They were round metal bins into which was put corn silage, and they had pipes connected to it. If a person knew the Haubenschilds, they would understand why such a view would get their attention. The Haubenschilds are this year’s Farm Forum Innovative Dairy Farmer of the Year. The award is sponsored by the Dairy Today magazine, and International Dairy Foods Association. The Haubenschilds and their sons Bryan and Tom own and operate the 1,300 acre Haubenschild Farms located nearly 9 miles northeast of Princeton in Wyanett Township. The farm has 1,100 Holstein dairy cows, of which about 900 are being milked at present. Thirty four people are employed there in a mix of full and part time. The Farm Forum honor that the Haubenschilds received recognizes U.S. dairy producers who apply creativity, excellence and forward thinking to achieve greater on-farm productivity and improved milk marketing. Haubenschild does talk up dairy products but he also talks up just as much the production of energy from farm manure, as well as other alternative forms of energy. Since 1999 the Haubenschilds have had a methane digester in which manure flows slowly through it and in the process it becomes digested and produces a methane gas. The gas is siphoned off and run through a pipe to a Caterpillar engine that turns a generator to produce electricity. The manure that emerges at the other end of the digester on their farm is still good for fertilizing the fields. When the digester is working (it is down now for maintenance), the generated electricity from its methane powers 60-70 homes. The Haubenschilds have taken it a step further by setting up a hydrogen fuel cell that makes hydrogen out of some of the methane run to it. That hydrogen is the future for running automobiles, Dennis said this week. Because of reducing greenhouse gases by capturing methane from the farm’s manure, the Haubenschilds are also granted what are called carbon credits. The Haubenschilds were the first to sell such credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange. Industries that pollute buy such credits in order to meet government pollution regulations. The University of Minnesota has been assisting the Haubenschilds in their fuel cell work but Dennis said last week that government funding that he needs to continue the work has pretty much dried up. He also says he has not gotten the assistance now from his local power co-op like he did at first when he started up the methane digester. Government and other officials in the U.S. who work with energy development should become more proactive in alternative energy, Dennis says. He explains that fossil fuels will become less available and that operations such as his digester reduces greenhouse emissions while also producing energy. One fact Haubenschild brings up is that 100 of his cows produces the equivalent of one barrel of oil per day when considering the methane from their manure. That means his herd of 1,100 is putting out the equivalent of 11 barrels of oil daily. Dennis Haubenschild compares this movement to the one that brought electricity to the rural parts of the United States in the 1950s. The power companies needed all the government help they could get back then to bring electricity to the rural areas, he said. “We had to protect them in every way possible,” he added. Haubenschild tapped into history lessons about alternative energy a long time ago. While reading history in college, he learned how Germany produced bio-gas in World War II to generate electricity fuel for tanks. Today the Europeans continue to be “way ahead of us,” Haubenschild says. He and Marsha were in lodging in Germany about 80 miles north of Frankfurt last March with plans to travel to another part of Germany to see methane digesters. He hadn’t expected, however, to see one right out the window of the lodging north of Frankfurt. Turns out there are digesters like that all over Germany, he said. Dennis said that when he saw those digesters from his hotel window he decided to not leave that location until he found people at the digester complex to tell him all about the setup. Back at his home last week, Dennis pulled onto his computer screen images of bio-gas digester equipment he had seen during the trip to Germany. “It’s enough to make you cry,” he said, explaining how much more developed alternative energy such as bio-gas is in Europe than in the U.S. “We have to research all ideas,” Haubenschild continued. “We can’t have roadblocks on everything we do [in trying to develop alternative energy].” Haubenschild added that he hopes the generation that is running things now can leave a legacy of a decent life for the next generation. And what does Haubenschild think of being honored as a innovative farmer? “To me,” he said, “it’s just a stubborn German not letting the word, ‘No,’ stop me.” Comments (2)
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written by maureen Muldoon , March 11, 2010 where can we buy their products? ...
written by Donna Kendall , February 04, 2010 A very enlightening story and a sad one. Sad is the fact that the U.S. is so far behind in developing alternate energy & foreign countries have been operating this way for years. Maybe if the U.S. had been considering this years ago, when oil imports were hitting sky high prices, we would not have had all the family farms closing down & sold to developers for non-farm uses. Write comment
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