Doug Young is the owner of Spruce Haven Farm and Research Center in Union Springs, New York. Spruce Haven was founded in 1987 by Doug and Janet Young along with Janet's father Dave Camp. Spruce Haven began with 120 cows and 75 heifers.Spruce Haven Farm currently has 2000 cows, 1800 heifers, 4000 acres of crop acres of corn and alfalfa. Spruce Haven built a low cost anaerobic digester in 2015 and received a patent in 2017 for the nutrient boom. This combination of technologies allows major improvements in carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus efficiency. Doug Young uses his Whole Farm Nutrient Mass Balance as an environmental performance measure. Young has applied what he’s learned to influence change on his farm and at the national and international level. He and several other farmers started looking for ways to reduce environmental impacts by forming Ag Waste Solutions in the early 1990s. This effort was in response to pending EPA regulations of nutrient applications on farmland followed by monitoring of atmospheric ammonia emissions.