Solar arrays can provide energy to pump water to watering troughs for cows, improving water quality on remote pastures and saving money too. Farmers can more sustainably manage their pastures if cows are not all clustered around small creeks, eroding the banks.

One example of a worst case scenario is Dick Lester’s Spring Valley Ranch in Cherokee County, Iowa. He had one tiny creek that his cattle were trampling to death, reducing their own water supply.
He needed to pump water 150 feet up the hill to three separate watering troughs so the cows would spread out and not trample the creek’s stream banks, fouling their own drinking water supply and reducing the flow by eroding the stream banks.

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In a post-Copenhagen move; the US Dairy industry announced today that it is partnering with the US Department of Agriculture to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2020 by greatly ramping-up the use of anaerobic digesters.

While cows have been with us since at least 2020 BC, now that we are growing towards 9 billion on our one and only planet, obviously dairy farming has far more impact now than it did in our earliest farming days. So the news comes as a very welcome announcement.
Climate change will devastate US farming if our greenhouse gas production is not turned around by 2020.
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