On a pig farm across the road from the open pit of the Callide coalmine near Biloela in central Queensland, mining of a very different sort is under way.
In this unlikeliest of places, in an unused shed surrounded by thousands of pigs, father-and-son farmers Paul and Laurie Brosnan are mining cryptocurrency.
Even rarer is the fact that they are doing it in an environmentally friendly way, using excess energy from their on-farm biogas plant to power the computers that generate new bitcoin.
It’s normally a painstaking, costly and energy-sapping process, but the yield can be profitable, especially when it’s done sustainably.
Long regarded as industry innovators, BettaPork in 2015 set up two three-million litre tanks which provide the farm’s electricity by using pig and food waste from schools and cafes in town to create methane that is used to power a generator.
A business partner recently approached BettaPork to offer bitcoin mining as a way to use the roughly 100kw of excess power generated at the piggery.
General manager Laurie Brosnan, whose grandfather founded the farm in 1959, says a trial using two terminals has proved successful and more machines will soon be brought in.
“These two little boxes are up there screaming, doing all that they do, validating transactions, creating a lot of heat, and making money,” he says.
“Last week, each machine was making $8 every four hours, this week it’s $6.
“In Germany they joke that pork is a by-product of power because they pay so much for the electricity they generate.
“Here, we can do it sustainably. It’s good for the environment, it’s good for the hip pocket, and it’s good for the pigs.”
The number of cryptocurrency mining terminals is limited only by the amount of electricity available, which is limited only by the amount of feedstock for the biogas plant.
“Our limit right now would be 20 machines, but if we have enough feedstock we could do 1000kw,” Brosnan says.
“If we want more crypto, we need more food waste.”
The farm’s technological overhaul came without government grants and was driven by the family’s desire to be as energy efficient as possible.
They also installed their own fibre cable to be able to control pumps on the farm over the internet. And the innovation hasn’t stopped there.
“We’ve got some old sheds that are 25 years old,” Brosnan says. “If we update them we can save ourselves 70 per cent power.
“There’s another two or three crypto miners.
“We are looking at things and thinking, ‘if we replace that fan, we can get another crypto miner’.”
The biogas plant accounts for all of the piggery’s organic waste and generates water and fertiliser that can be used in the paddocks.
Read full story on The Australian Business Review