Gaslit by Biogas: Big Ag’s Reverse Robin Hood Effect

Executive Summary

“Manure Biogas” (also known as factory-farmed gas, or FFG) is rapidly expanding, and industry has structured it to produce a reverse Robin Hood effect: the increasing subsidies for FFG are supposed to incentivize green practices but instead fund greenwashing that promotes the growth and entrenchment of the largest factory farms at the expense of the surrounding communities, the climate, and public health.

“Biogas” is how Big Ag refers to the use of methane digesters—large sealed tanks with no oxygen—to capture gas emanating from the cesspools of waste that concentrate on factory farms. These costly and inefficient digesters process some portion of the waste from factory-farmed animals into fuel while also producing a polluting byproduct called digestate. “Biogas” is more accurately described as factory farm gas or FFG for short.

FFG functions to pump billions of dollars into propping up industrial animal production. In places where data is available like Wisconsin and Iowa, FFG growth has meant the growth of factory farms. In 2023, federal subsidies for biogas began rapidly expanding and exceeded $150 million. In one federal grant program alone, there was an over 2,600 percent year-over-year increase in federal grants for biogas. These public funds have attracted private investments that further exacerbate the problem.

Farm Forward’s analysis reveals that these subsidies flow almost exclusively to factory farm interests and disproportionately to the biggest, most destructive farms—rewarding the ones that do the most environmental damage. In addition to grants, low-interest loans, tax deductions, and other free monies from public coffers, the justification of FFG involves a blatant overvaluation of environmental credits. Despite these obvious problems being flagged by 15 members of the U.S. Senate and House,1 the federal government has doubled down on support for FFG.

Greenwashing gas from factory farms is not a climate solution. It’s climate gaslighting. The real solutions to the problems of factory farming are well known: reducing our overall dependence on animal products and raising the remaining animals on farms that combine the best of traditional and modern models to reduce the many public health and environmental costs of large-scale animal agriculture.

See our parallel report, “The ‘Biogas’ Plot: Fueling Factory Farms in the Midwest.”