Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** anaerobic digestion (ad) of farm…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** anaerobic digestion (ad) of farm residues can benefit farmers not only as a renewable heat and power source, but also through solids recovery, odor, pathogen, and vector attraction reduction while producing a stabilized solids fertilizer. While ad installations at large farms have increased in the U.S., smaller farms have not taken advantage of ad technology. We and others have demonstrated on the pilot-scale the economic viability of modular ad technology for dairy farms of small to medium scale (25-500 cows). Yet, our research suggests that small-to-medium-scale farmers with interest still perceive economic and technological hurdles of ad technologies especially with regard to the intergration at their operations. There remains a knowledge GAP between potential ad users and developers of ad technologies: we hypothesize that these farmers will make better informed decisions about adoption of ad technology appropriate for their farms if they are exposed to viable scale dependent options. Our goal is to integrate our prototype digester at the cornell cooperative extension farm with existing processes (e.g. greenhouse, commercial kitchen) and organic wastes from producers that are required to source separte their solid waste to optimize energy, nutrient flows and use IT to educate stakeholders about ad systems for smaller-to-medium dairy farms. Data on system performance, economic performance and educational materials will be broadly disseminated to promote adoption of integrated ad technology.