Technoscience, anaerobic digestertechnology and the dairy industry: Factorsinfluencing North Country New Yorkdairy farmer views on alternativeenergy technology

Structural change in the US dairy industry toward fewer and very large farms has fueled interest and government funding ofresearch into the feasibility of constructing anaerobic digesters (ADs) on large operations as a waste management strategy.Some groups opposed to increasing scale and concentration in the livestock sectors, including dairy, also oppose ADsbecause of the connection with larger scale operations and the potential for facilitating increased concentration inagricultural production. But the connection between AD technology and large scale is a social construction promoted by itsincorporation into the debates over agricultural industrialization. The technology per se is essentially scale neutral and itsscale-implications are artifacts of design choices, as is seen by its successful application to both very small farms around theworld and large-scale agricultural enterprises in the USA. Using a survey of dairy farmers in New York, we find that interestin AD technology occurs at all farm sizes; and that factors other than farm size are important in determining interest in thetechnology. We conclude that the technoscientific question raised by these findings is: will applications to, and interest by,smaller dairy farmer operators result in shifts in policy and funding priorities toward more diverse agricultural researchagendas regarding AD technology?