Cow palace.

When there is a will there is a way. Dairy farmers in Costa Rica have 180 Holstein cows producing more than 1890 liters of milk a day despite the tropical heat, and they are doing so in an economical and eco-friendly way. The secret is recycling. Farmers at Hacienda Pozo Azul, 96 kilometers north of the capital, use methane from the cows' manure to generate electricity to run the fans that keep the heifers cool. Fifteen million California red worms turn the remaining waste into organic fertilizer. The animals have open stables with individual stalls and eat a special formula of grass, bananas, feed, vitamins and minerals. Pozo Azul has become a kind of ecological tourist attraction, too. It has a whitewater rafting side trip, horseback riding and a hotel.

U.S. dairy farms boast double the output, at better than 20 liters per cow compared to just over 10 liters at Pozo Azul, but there's a cost. At U.S. farms, thousands of cows crowd into hot and dirty stables, a petri dish of potential cattle disease. Then there's the poop: In most places, animal dung is simply discarded into nearby streams and rivers, contaminating drinking water and killing fish. As long as U.S. cattle ranchers don't have to bear the true environmental cost, the model works. In Costa Rica, they are already thinking ahead.