by Eduardo Martinez
Of many discussions around Global Warming and the subject of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), the majority are focused on causes like energy production or transportation emissions, and most of those emissions are carbon dioxide. According to EPA’s 2016 Report, Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, electricity production and transportation produced over 56 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
In addition to those well known causes, agriculture and livestock production also contribute significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. The three main GHG emitted by the agriculture and livestock sector are nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, as well as losses of nitrogen (N), energy and organic matter that undermine efficiency and productivity in agriculture.
The greatest opportunity for reduction of GHG emissions in the livestock sector lie with improving the efficiency with which producers use natural resources (think tractor fuel) engaged in producing plant protein for animal production, to manage the cost per unit of edible or non-edible output. These improvements are always being pursued in the interest of increasing yield, enhancing quality, or reducing production costs, all while providing a safe and affordable food supply to the public.
There is an obvious and direct correlation between GHG emission and carbon intensities and the efficiency with which producers use natural resources. But among possible opportunities for reducing GHG emissions, fascinating breakthroughs lie in improving livestock nutrition efficiency at the unit level—in this case—the cow level. The average cow emits around 250 liters of methane per day and ruminants overall (animals like cattle, goats and sheep) contribute about 25% of all anthropogenic or man-made methane emissions.
Today universities and industry are working closely together in many ways to improve cattle production and efficiency by eliminating waste, applying the latest enzyme research to improving ruminant digestion and protein conversion. They are also introducing alternative forms of plant protein that might also be more sustainable than traditional energy-intensive animal feedstocks like soy or corn.
For example, recent studies have identified how livestock diet can affect or minimize methanogenesis — methane production. One common misunderstanding on playgrounds across America is that the back end of the cow is the prime offender in producing GHG in the form of methane. But the truth is the vast majority of methane comes from the cow’s burp—over 95%, in fact! Thus the opportunity for improvement lies earlier in the animal’s digestive tract.
Rocky De Nys, Professor of aquaculture at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, has been studying the effects that introducing seaweed to a cow’s diet can have on methane production. Specifically, Professor De Nys and his team discovered adding a small amount of dried seaweed to a cow’s diet can reduce the amount of methane a cow produces by up to 99 per cent. The species of seaweed is called Asparagopsis taxiformis, and JCU researchers have been actively collecting it off the coast of Queensland.
“We had an inkling that we would get some success from this species, but the scale or the amount of success and reduction we saw was very surprising,” he said, adding “methane gas was the biggest component of greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture sector.” The key aspect of Asparagopsis taxiformis is that it produces a compound – bromoform (CHBr3) – which prevents methane production by reacting with vitamin B12 at the final step, disrupting enzymes used by gut microbes that produce methane gas as waste during digestion.
Advances such as these are critical to increasing sustainability in the farm and livestock industry and reducing the carbon intensity of farming and producing our global food supply. TerViva is providing forward thinking solutions in the form of our tree-based platform for producing plant protein and vegetable oil, Pongamia pinnata.
TerViva’s Pongamia tree produces 3 times the plant protein per acre than soy (3 tons vs 1 ton) and 10 times the vegetable oil per acre than soy (400 gal. vs 40 gal.) and all without the negative environmental impact and carbon intensity of annual row crops. Permanently installed orchard crops like Pongamia trees provide tremendous opportunities for carbon sequestration that offset anthropogenic GHG starting with the obvious visible form of the tree visible to the eye, and also from the deep and stabilizing root system below ground. Pongamia is also a nitrogen fixing legume that takes atmospheric Nitrogen and returns badly needed (N) to the soil.
In the next 12 months, TerViva will be modeling the exact amount of carbon sequestered by our trees per acre, and therefore, the exact amount of carbon reduction that our protein meal offers as compared to soybean. I’d bet that we’ll find our protein meal offers a compelling advantage over soybean meal in terms of greenhouse gas reduction overall.
Add these sustainable characteristics to the numerous high value products that Pongamia trees yield, and to top it off, a nice shady canopy to host a songbird’s nest or to provide some welcome shade to cattle or sheep on a hot, sunny day and you’ve got a winning addition to tomorrow’s sustainable farming portfolio.