Feeding Cows Seaweed Can Cut back Methane Emissions, however the Components Nonetheless Come With Loads of Challenges

By Matilda Hay, Inside Local weather Information, Sentient Media

This text initially appeared on Inside Local weather Information, a nonprofit, non-partisan information group that covers local weather, vitality and the atmosphere. Join their publication right here.

Within the chilly darkish of 5 a.m., Kyle Moellar, an apprentice at Wolfe’s Neck Middle for Agriculture and the Atmosphere, ushers a herd of cows into the milking parlor. Every waits patiently for her flip to face, eight at a time, within the milking stalls, her udders dipped in disinfectant earlier than the suction cups are utilized. As soon as milked, Kyle lays a hand on every of their backs and whispers “thank you mama” as he guides them out. Though these cows reside a principally conventional life, they’re additionally a part of a innovative experiment with an uncommon ingredient—native seaweed.

Wolfe’s Neck Middle has round 40 milking cows and produces over 1,000 kilos of natural milk a day. Not too long ago, it took half in a analysis trial with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay, Maine to see if feeding seaweed to cows may scale back the methane they produce. Preliminary outcomes have been optimistic however there are nonetheless some challenges to beat together with, crucially, find out how to make this worthwhile for dairy farmers. If these questions will be answered, this resolution couldn’t solely dramatically scale back carbon emissions within the dairy business, but additionally assist to safeguard Maine’s coastal economic system in opposition to the specter of warming waters.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gasoline with 80 occasions extra warming energy than carbon dioxide, over a 20-year interval. It’s chargeable for about 30 % of the worldwide warming we’re experiencing immediately, and agriculture is the biggest human supply of methane emissions. Inside that, cows are the only greatest offenders—burping out methane as a byproduct of their digestion course of.

The United Nations has said that “cutting methane is the strongest lever we have to slow climate change over the next 25 years.” Equally, local weather researchers have warned that with out reducing methane emissions from the meat and dairy industries, the Paris Settlement will fail.

Nichole Value, a senior analysis scientist and director of the Middle for Seafood Options at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, has been working with a workforce of scientists for almost a decade on a seaweed-based resolution to scale back the methane that cows emit. Impressed by analysis from Australia, which confirmed {that a} tropical seaweed known as Asparagopsis may considerably scale back a cow’s methane emissions, Value and her workforce began experimenting with seaweeds native to Maine in 2015. Not like Asparagopsis, which requires heat waters and cultivation in land-based tanks which have their very own environmental footprints, sugar kelp is probably the most generally farmed seaweed in the usand will be grown with minimal impression. Pilot research have proven promising outcomes—as much as 50 % reductions in methane, in keeping with Andre Brito, affiliate professor of dairy administration on the College of New Hampshire, who collaborated with Value. Whereas the precise numbers will not be but revealed, Value admits that “we’re excited, let’s just say that.”

Indigenous individuals throughout North America have used seaweed as a meals, medication and textile for hundreds of years, however it’s solely within the final 20 years that scientific curiosity in seaweed has actually taken off. A number of species of seaweed, together with Asparagopsis and sugar kelp, produce a bioactive compound known as bromoform that disrupts the methane-producing microbes in a cow’s digestive system, stopping manufacturing of the greenhouse gasoline. Nonetheless, bromoform is a unstable compound that may simply escape from the seaweed throughout storage, making the seaweed much less efficient at decreasing methane over time.

“Sometimes the seaweed was very effective,” says Brito, talking a few latest research the workforce has not but revealed, “then a couple of days later you’d see less response.”

Value and her workforce are researching methods to stabilize the bromoform and generate a extra fixed methane discount within the rumen. “We’re working on making sure that whatever additives we come up with have a shelf stability,” she explains. “It’s the last challenge, and that’s exciting me.” One other animal trial with the College of New Hampshire is because of begin this spring.

Value can be enthusiastic about attainable coverage developments that would provide a brand new path to earn FDA certification for his or her product. At the moment, a seaweed product would require drug certification, a protracted and costly course of requiring years of scientific trials. However new laws known as the Progressive FEED Act of 2023, at present underneath evaluate by Congress, would enable seaweed to qualify as a gut-modifier, a classification with a much less arduous approval course of. Different international locations, together with the U.Ok., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and people within the EU, have had that certification for years.

“The United States is really behind, not only in seaweed production and marketing but in regulatory pathways,” says Value.

If authorized, Bigelow’s product may open up an enormous new marketplace for Maine’s burgeoning seaweed business. Regardless of a protracted historical past of untamed seaweed harvesting, the U.S.’s first business kelp farm wasn’t established till 2009. That operation was opened by Atlantic Sea Farms (then known as Ocean Authorized) in Casco Bay, simply 17 miles from Wolfe’s Neck Middle. Working with small impartial fishing companions up and down the coast to develop kelp within the winter months, it’s grown its output yearly because it was based.

Atlantic Sea Farms lowers the barrier to entry for farmers by offering the preliminary seeds and a buy-back assure that guarantees to take their harvest. Final yr they produced a mixed 1.3 million kilos of kelp. They’re anticipating to double that in 2025.

“The level of scalability here is incredible,” says Thew Suskiewicz, their director of sea science. “Right now there’s only 120-130 acres being actively farmed out of several 100,000 potential acres.”

Their mission is pushed by a have to diversify Maine’s marine useful resource harvesting economic system, which generates over 75 % of its income from lobster harvests.

“Having your entire coastal economy based on a single species is never a good idea,” says Suskiewicz. Warming waters have triggered a complete collapse of the lobster industries farther south, round Lengthy Island and Massachusetts, and Suskiewicz has seen that sample progress up the coast during the last 20 years.

“It’s complete destitution, people can’t keep their boats, people can’t keep their houses,” he says. “I have a six-year-old daughter, I want her to be able to grow up in coastal Maine.”

But it surely’s arduous to develop an business with out a rising demand for the product. Though seaweed is the quickest rising aquaculture sector within the U.S., the nation’s manufacturing accounts for lower than 0.1 % of world provide, and pales compared to international locations like South Korea, which has a seaweed business that employs 1000’s and produces exports value $750 million. With solely 40 partner-farmers and 18 staff, Atlantic Sea Farms is the biggest seaweed firm in North America.

“Every single month we’re wondering, how much more kelp can we sell? How do we build this market?” says Suskiewicz. He’s hopeful that Value’s work will open up new alternatives.

The largest problem, nevertheless, will likely be making seaweed components a beautiful proposition for farmers.

“Even if it does work,” says Thomas Prohl, the senior supervisor of farm operations at Wolfe’s Neck Middle, “one issue is the cost.” Whereas natural dairy farmers are extra in charge of their margins than most—at Wolfe’s Neck they’ve grass-fed cows and a constant purchaser at Stonyfield Natural, which is owned by dairy big Lactalis—for typical dairy farmers, not solely can the worth of feeds like grain or alfalfa fluctuate as a result of world occasions, such because the warfare in Ukraine, however the sale worth of milk “goes up and down like the stock market,” says Prohl.

Even when they needed to, Prohl says, “there’s no money to give away if you’re a dairy farmer not making much.”

Analysis from the College of New Hampshire discovered that half of the natural dairy farmers surveyed in Maine can be keen to pay a bit of additional for a methane-reducing seaweed additive, however provided that it certified them for presidency subsidies or had extra advantages reminiscent of greater milk yields or well being advantages for the cows that lowered veterinary payments. Whether or not sugar kelp can ship such extra advantages is one thing Value is exploring, and would be the topic of future trials.

One other attainable option to revenue is by promoting carbon credit for decreasing methane. However that is dependent upon the event of well-regulated carbon markets and precisely measured, verifiable reductions— one thing that Congress is making tough. First although, farmers want to have the ability to measure the methane. The analysis trials at Wolfe’s Neck used an $80,000 ‘Green Feed System’ that sampled the cows’ breath as they ate—an funding out of most farmers’ attain. Value’s workforce has acquired a grant from the Nationwide Science Basis to develop smaller, cheaper, wearable methane sensors for the cows. In the event that they succeed it might be a lot simpler for farmers to obtain funds for decreasing methane or credit that might be bought in a carbon buying and selling market.

Prohl has additional issues concerning the scalability of a seaweed additive, declaring that not all dairy farms are close to the coast, reminiscent of these out within the Midwest. Cows eat a median 40 kilos of meals a day. Although the seaweed required can be lower than 1 % of their food plan, that’s nonetheless an enormous amount.

“Transporting it across the country has carbon emissions too,” he provides. “In my opinion, I don’t think it’s going to be the sort of thing that changes the dairy industry, especially considering the majority of those methane emissions are coming from farms with 3000-5000 cows, not 30-40.”

Value agrees that including sugar kelp grown in Maine received’t work for everybody elevating dairy cows, however she doesn’t see this as a “silver bullet, one-size-fits-all solution.” Her lab can be engaged on options with microalgae, often known as phytoplankton, which will be grown in vats of salty water on land. Whereas it wouldn’t qualify as natural, it’s a less expensive possibility that might be grown domestically in landlocked states. Bigelow Ocean Laboratory has nearly 4,000 strains of microalgae of their repository, and Value’s workforce is testing all of them.

“We’ve got some really strong candidates,” she says, “but we’re still screening across all of those options.”

Nonetheless, for farms by the coast, there’s little doubt {that a} partnership that expands the kelp business has different environmental advantages. Kelp forests take up extra nitrogen and phosphorus within the water, cleansing up marine air pollution. A research revealed in Nature discovered that every hectare of kelp forest supplies habitat for a median of 900 kilograms of harvested fish and seafood yearly.

Kelp’s excessive photosynthesis charge makes it probably 20 occasions simpler at sequestering carbon than land vegetation, and when bits of seaweed fall to the ocean flooring, that carbon is locked away in sediment long run. Farmed ocean kelp wants no fertilizer, pesticides or extra water. “It’s a zero-input crop,” says Suskiewicz. “It’s low impact, it’s scalable and it’s delicious.”

It’s nonetheless a protracted street, however Value is optimistic they’ll resolve the hurdles, making kelp a worthwhile enterprise proposition for each harvesters and dairies. “With aquaculturists and terrestrial farmers working together, we can offer new market opportunities for both and help meet climate emissions goals,” she says. “It’s a win-win-win.”

This text initially appeared in Sentient at https://sentientmedia.org/feeding-cows-seaweed-reduce-methane-emissions/.

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This story was initially revealed by Sentient Media.

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The publish Feeding Cows Seaweed Can Cut back Methane Emissions, however the Components Nonetheless Come With Loads of Challenges appeared first on The Good Males Mission.

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