Originally published in 2008
- Two plants have located near the airport- White Energy and Panda Ethanol. Each plant is expected to produce more than 10-million gallons of ethanol annually.
- Kevin Buse estimates that Champion Feeders removes between 45 and 55 tons of manure from his feedlot each year. Panda Ethanol alone expects to use up to l billion pounds of cow manure each year.
- Ethanol plants like Panda’s use a technique called “gasifying” to process manure into a gas which can then fire the boilers needed for the enormous corn stills that produce ethanol. Except for the manure, the process is much like making moonshine.
- Hereford, Texas, is extraordinarily well positioned for manufacturing biofuels. It sits within the largest conglomeration of cattle in the world-who happen to produce the largest manure/ ethanol energy resource on the planet; it is at the crossroads for railcars bursting with grain for both cattle and energy production; and, a lucrative co-product of ethanol production is “distiller’s grains,” a corn leftover from ethanol production that cattle thrive on eating . The cyclically efficient corn – cattle- energy- corn – cattle relationship is alive and well in Hereford