If everything goes as planned, Philip Lynn is going to be paid about $400,000 every year for electricity generated from the manure his cattle produce.

What's more, he should also get about $630,000 a year for selling high-grade specialty fertilizer that will be a byproduct from turning manure into electricity.

These are my figures, based on simple arithmetic, because neither Lynn nor Nils Semmler, president of Renewable Energies Technologies Inc. (RENTEC), the company installing the necessary equipment at Lynn's farm, will tell me exactly what the project will cost, or what revenues it will generate. Semmler says only that it has a payback period of less than seven years.

But before I explain the figures, I should point out that there will be other farm benefits. Lynn has a feedlot for beef cattle which produce far more manure than he can use. Currently, he hauls away excess manure, a cost he'll no longer have.

Also, there's what farmers call liquid waste: cattle urine that mixes with rain water or snow, and has to be contained in large concrete holding tanks until it can be sprayed on fields. No longer will that be necessary.

Normally, I wouldn't write about a project such as this until it is up and running, so that I can verify details.

But the Ontario government is scrambling to find new sources of electricity, and to protect groundwater from contamination. This project deals with both.

To see the feedlot is to understand the problem Lynn has with manure. There are 5,000 steers in pens that stretch for two-thirds of a kilometre. In one year, they produce 45,000 tonnes of manure, and 13.6-million-litre holding tanks are needed to store liquid waste.

Lynn is installing a biodigester to handle both the manure and the liquid waste. It will produce methane gas, water, and high quality fertilizer.

The water will supply a third of the cattle's needs. The methane will be used as fuel to run a generator producing 7 million kilowatt hours of electricity (kWh) a year over and above the 142,000 kWh that Lynn needs to run the farm. And 9,000 tonnes of specialty fertilizer will be created annually

At today's average selling price of 5.8 cents per kWh, Lynn will get $400,000 a year for the 7 million kWh of surplus electricity.

Revenue from the fertilizer is trickier to calculate. Ordinary dry manure sells for about $21 a tonne at the farm gate. However, fertilizers that qualify under federal regulations sell for about $50 a tonne.

Semmler says that with strict controls over cattle feed and manure handling, the biodigester will produce fertilizer that meets federal requirements, with a nutrient content of 2.4 per cent for both nitrogen and phosphorus, and 2.7 per cent for potassium. Chemical fertilizers have similar nutrient content, but unlike biodigester fertilizer they don't contain organic material.

Because greenhouses and certain specialty crops need organic fibre as well as nutrients, Lynn sees a specialized market for his fertilizer. The price, I assume, will be about $70 a tonne. His 9,000 tonnes should bring in another $630,000 a year.

On paper, it sounds terrific. More than $1 million a year in extra income; 7 million kWh a year of electricity for Ontario, enough for 1,600 residential users; no worries about contaminating ground water.

This is the kind of small scale initiative that the Ontario government should be promoting in a big way.

NEXT WEEK: Promoting small producers