Biogas plant offers new ways to reduce emissions from food production

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Viskaalin Farm is a family business run by Heikki Räinä, who has a background in bakery industry, and Tuula Kukkola-Räinä, who has a background in advertising and communications. The idea for the farm was born out of Heikki's interest in agriculture and animals and Tuula's passion for producing good, local food ingredients with ecological and ethical principles.

At Viskaalin Farm in Muhos, the entire meat production chain is concentrated in one place: the farm raises beef cattle, slaughters them and cuts the meat by hand. Sausages and meat products are also produced on a small scale. The company employs a total of twenty people.

One of the most significant new circular economy solutions at Viskaalin Farm is the biogas plant currently under construction. The biogas plant will produce nearly 20 GWh of biogas per year from the Viskaalin cattle manure and bio-waste from the slaughterhouse and surrounding areas. This is equivalent to the annual fuel consumption of dozens of trucks or hundreds of cars.

"Viskaalin Farm wants to be a pioneer in circular economy solutions for food production. What is unique about the Viskaalin biogas plant is that it will process the by-products of food production in a completely new way," says Tuula Kukkola-Räinä.

Typically, biogas plants focus on waste management. Currently, all waste-to-biogas plants in northern Finland mix so-called clean bio-waste and dirty municipal sewage sludge in their process. The end product is not only gas, but also sludge, which is difficult to use as fertiliser in agriculture, for example, because it contains traces of pharmaceuticals and other substances that are harmful to humans and nature.

"The Viskaalin biogas plant will be a remanufacturing plant, making new products from materials previously considered waste. This is a unique circular economy solution for food production, where bio-waste - the collection of which in Finland lags behind many other EU countries - is processed and the powerful climate gas methane from cattle manure is captured. The end products are fuel or energy, fertilisers and soil improvers for primary food production. Everything circulates, there is no waste," says Tuula Kukkola-Räinä.

The biogas produced by the Viskaalin biogas plant will be refined to make it suitable for transport sector and industry. In addition, the digestate will be used to produce clean organic fertiliser for use on Viskaalin and other farms.

The Viskaalin farm now has over a thousand cows. Ethics and animal welfare are at the heart of the business. The animals are divided into herds according to their breeds, and their shed is open almost all year round. The farm also does not use chemical fertilisers.

Cattle feed on grassland, which acts as a carbon sink throughout the year. It makes sense to grow grass in arctic conditions where water resources are sufficient, but otherwise it is difficult to efficiently grow a crop suitable for direct human consumption. At the slaughterhouse, the cooling system uses environmentally friendly technology and 100% of the carcasses are utilised.

“The carbon footprint of red meat can be reduced in a similar way to other sources of emissions, and agriculture is as much a part of climate actions as any other sector. Finland has a well-functioning legislation and control system, thanks to which the situation is constantly evolving," concludes Tuula Kukkola-Räinä.

The publication is one of the ClimateFood project's climate-smart success stories in the food chain. Case examples includes stories both from Finland and from Sweden.