Technoscience, Anaerobic Digester Technology and the Dairy Industry.

Structural change in the U.S. dairy industry toward fewer and very large farms has fueled interest and government funding of research into the feasibility of constructing anaerobic digesters on large operations. Environmental groups opposed to increasing scale and concentration in dairy also become opposed to AD technology as it is seen as facilitating concentration. But, AD technology is essentially scale neutral as is seen by its application to very small farms around the world. The conflation of AD technology with large scale in the U.S. is a social construction brought about by its inclusion in the debates over agricultural industrialization. Using a survey of dairy farmers in New York, we find that interest in AD technology occurs at all farm sizes. And that factors other than farm size are important in determining interest in the technology. We conclude that the technoscientific question raised by these findings is: will applications to, and interest of, smaller dairy farmer operators result in shifts in policy and funding priorities toward more diverse agricultural research agendas regarding AD technology? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]