DURHAM – University of New Hampshire and outside researchers are creating a computer model to help organic dairy farmers cut greenhouse gas emissions such as methane, because Beano probably isn't an option.

Nitrogen- and carbon-based greenhouse gases are produced via a complicated system at dairy farms that is affected by everything from the weather to the soil to the feed to cow burps, among other things.

"Cows emit most of their methane through belching, only a small fraction from flatulence," said the project's principal investigator, Ruth Varner of UNH's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space.

UNH has been awarded a $700,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to create a computer model that measures the amount of greenhouse gases an organic dairy farm produces and thus provide ways to cut those emissions.

Varner said the study will focus on the waste streams at farms. Using UNH's own organic dairy farm as a testing ground, researchers will measure things like how spreading manure on pastures will affect the amount of greenhouse gases produced.

The idea is to use the various factors to create a computer model that farmers can use to plug in data for their own farms.

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There once was a time when New Hampshire was full of flinty old dairy farmers who worked cooperatively with mother nature and God on the hilly, granite boulder strewn land that the ice ages left behind. They converted pastures and hard work into dairy products and their only concern about the cow's waste output was fertilizing the pastures with it.

Dairy farming 40 or 50 years ago wasn't too much different from dairy farming 200 - 300 years ago. Maybe a little cleaner and brighter and hygienic, but still pretty much organic, and not on purpose.

I guess more recently there have been some farmers who have used chemicals to increase milk production, and that's not organic. Now we need to worry about cows burping and farting and global warming. Some manufacturer of cow catalytic converters will get rich if he can get enough congressmen to pass a law.

The way I figure, God (or the supreme deity of your choice) created (or caused the evolution of) cows with their burping and farting habits. -- Either He's planned for the methane they're emitting and it's not going to cause the end of the world; or He's planning on doing us in, and if we stop the methane, He's just going to get us another way.

I kind of like to think of Him as a Benevolent God, so I'm not paranoid about global warming or anything else. Other religions, which I won't name, seem to think that their moon-god is a violent dude who wants to slay all the infidels. They're probably real worried about global warming, asteroids, getting AIDs, and inhaling cow farts.