US cash cow for livestock

Grant money will fund technical assistance to livestock operators, including animal feeding operations.

The project’s aim is to help livestock operations by raising awareness to farmers of the environmental impact from the agricultural sector, which is responsible for large amounts of GHG emissions and water pollution.

Allison Wiedeman, EPA branch manager, told Edie: “The [financial aid] that’s been allocated is a congressional appropriation. This project will assist livestock operations by ensuring farmers realize the environmental impact and understand how to address [those issues], to result in improved water and air quality.”

The EPA estimates that in the United States there are 1.3 million farms holding livestock, with approximately 238,000 of these farms considered as animal feeding operations. These operations generate more than 500 million tonnes of animal waste annually and, as a resulte, continually face the challenge of how to best manage the waste in a way that reduces adverse impacts on the environment.

Grant recipients will provide livestock operations with two types of technical assistance at no cost to the operator: