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Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%
- bwb 6y agoThis is so awesome, I've been waiting to see if this would make it into commercial feed. This could be a big help if it can quickly become more of a standard.
- headmelted 6y agoWorth noting that methane is up to 84 times as damaging as CO2 in the atmosphere upon release. (https://www.edf.org/climate/methane-other-important-greenhouse-gas https://www.edf.org/climate/methane-other-important-greenhou...) That means that (ironically I guess) this has the potential to be just about the biggest bang-for-buck weapon we have against climate change in the next decade. I don't envy the researchers having to explain it to their kids later though. "What'd you do in the great climate war mom?" "I made cow farts less stinky." "But seriously what did you do?" groan
- nickff 6y agoNot sure if you were just joking, but methane itself is odorless, which is why odorants are added to make natural gas easily detectable.
- headmelted 6y agoI was just joking, but you've ruined it now with your facts. Happy? ( this is also a joke so don't worry :-) )
- austhrow743 6y agoPotentially that means the cow farts would become stinkier, which is an even funnier conversation. Joke still works!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gerdesj 6y ago"this has the potential to be just about the biggest bang-for-buck weapon we have against climate change in the next decade." Now we only need to get cars 'n' lorries etc, ships and aeroplanes to eat the stuff and it's job done. Obviously, coal and gas fired power stations are already changing their diet and farting and belching less methane already. The Great Barrier Reef is already de-bleaching and the Greenland icesheet has stopped melting.
- jussij 6y ago> The Great Barrier Reef is already de-bleaching How I wish this was the true picture, but unfortunately science paints a picture that is much worse: Apr 7, 2020 'The scale of bleaching is enormous during global bleaching events,' according to Professor Hughes, 'the situation brings me to despair.' The first recorded mass bleaching along the Reef struck in 1998, at the time the hottest year on record. Then again in 2002, 2016 and 2017, as more temperature records were broken. The latest follows February’s unusually hot summer–resulting in the highest ever sea surface temperatures recorded on the Reef since controls began in 1900. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tamarathiessen/2020/04/07/great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching-climate-change-tragedy/#33224c5e71b0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/tamarathiessen/2020/04/07/great...
- headmelted 6y agoSo your problem with what I said is that there’s clearly far more to it than cow farts so you feel like we therefore shouldn’t do anything at all. Or maybe I said “best bang-for-buck” and you heard “planes eat seaweed”.
- phaemon 6y agoThe Greenland icesheet has not stopped melting. It's currently losing around 200 billion tons a year: https://files.springernature.com/getResource/Shepherd%2041586_2019_1855.pdf?token=IULUvIufpS8AXE43riPpExKrcZMUcwpHIO0w4yhOno61RnG9Vz6%2Fr7GCrI5AcBi92o1n3tikPjKFkiYotkHNpNM75Zwrwg1JnULfD6ql3lYljEP1PF4WzW2ap8pUu%2FshuCh%2FZ3DLB4IVSRfpmhKqINWdsJTc0VddwV6nVq%2BpLKuHlzENqSiEC0tJU0OqcZYl6R1Se4bGQnT7HNP7lnlhp40M0VnqSPp7kwO%2Fuk2bUqwOAP3bddKBqhSCxN7QEwlnHAim4TYcF0YU44MduELZZivHfYC7tCw%2Bi9xQ25zmUZW9NyEFwkrvJqu8DvhVa0dE https://files.springernature.com/getResource/Shepherd%204158...
- emmelaich 6y agoCow burps produce more methane than farts. Not sure whether it changes your argument though.
- dr_zoidberg 6y agoAs I understand, the seaweed reduces methane both from burps and farts. Classy sentence to write, for sure.
- marcosdumay 6y agoIt's not upon release. It's upon 2 decades of release. Upon release that number is much higher, in the 100s of times, and after two decades it's close to zero. Anyway, no, don't expect a large impact from this alone. Most of the methane emissions happen on the fossil fuel extraction and processing, not on agriculture. But it's something, and as a bonus it improves every other kind of efficiency too.
- dsirola 6y agoIt's true that methane has a much greater impact, but only in the short term. Long term, CO2 is much more dangerous. The methane that cow produces is recycled as it circulates through the atmosphere -> plants -> cows -> atmosphere cycle. Fossil fuel burning on the other hand is not. It's released from the ground and there's no way for it to get back there. Nothing is ever black and white and to think that eliminating the animals as the food source would solve the problem is naive. https://onezero.medium.com/cow-farts-are-not-the-problem-f5764c1b2a5d https://onezero.medium.com/cow-farts-are-not-the-problem-f57... https://youtu.be/vpTHi7O66pI https://youtu.be/vpTHi7O66pI https://medium.com/@caroline.stocks/debunking-the-methane-myth-why-cows-arent-responsible-for-climate-change-23926c63f2c0 https://medium.com/@caroline.stocks/debunking-the-methane-my...
- bagacrap 6y agoCO2 from fossil fuels can also be reabsorbed by plants. If you grow a forest, chop it down, bury the logs, then it's underground again. Although, not sure why you need it to be underground as long as it's not in the air.
- redisman 6y agoIf it's just sitting above the ground then bacteria will eat it and release the carbon as emissions. OR it burns and then turns into emissions.
- redisman 6y agoIt's short term (12 years seems like before being reabsorbed) but this also means that we have this big static-ish chunk being renewed and absorbed in a cycle. If we reduce emissions then that static variable goes down and gives us more time on the other 100 things we need to figure out.
- aaron695 6y agoMessing with the rumen will either increase or decrease the productivity. Methane is high in calories so it should intuitively increase the productivity, which they currently think is true but unproven - https://research.csiro.au/futurefeed/faq/ https://research.csiro.au/futurefeed/faq/ It also should increase productivity on all ruminants in theory. I like this bit - "While analysing the gas samples using gas chromatography (GC) there was a repeating scenario of a 10-20% methane reduction, until suddenly one sample showed no methane! At first it was assumed that there was a problem with the GC so the test was repeated, and when the same result was replicated we had our moment of discovery. Those results have reproduced on every subsequent test and the red seaweed Asparagopsis is the star performer."
- leipert 6y agoDiscussed last year hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711498 I was very skeptical whether this is scalable as up to two percent of the cows feed needs to be replaced with the sea weed and we simply do not produce sea weed at scale yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20713552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20713552 The TL;DR was: in order to supply 1.5 billion cows with the seaweed we might need up to 291.000 metric tons of algae per day. ~ 106 Million metric tons per year. In 2014 the world wide Aquatic Plants (which include ALL Macro-Algae) production was around 27 Million tons [0]. I would argue that the most effective way to reduce cattle emissions is to get rid of cattle. (Which is hard, I love beef and cheese). Maybe “seaweed beef and dairy” will be a premium product but I doubt it will solve the problem on scale. [0]: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5555e.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5555e.pdf, page 24, table 7
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoI eat kangaroo, it tastes great and is all wild harvested. Has anyone tried farming roo outside of Australia? Often wondered about the viability.
- leipert 6y agoThere are also deers and stuff here in Europe. ;) But I assume that wild animals are just available at a fraction of what people (want to) consume every year.
- sampo 6y ago> There are also deers Deer are ruminants, too. There is no a priori reason to assume that their digestive system should produce any less methane than that of cows, when they break down cellulose.
- danielheath 6y agoThey’re hard to farm, because they can clear a 3m fence.
- 6y ago
- seanwilson 6y agoHow much could this reduce the total environmental food print of cattle? I.e. including all the energy used to grow the crops they eat, the deforestation to make room for the crops + cattle, the waste the cows produce. Animal farming creates vast damage because of how inefficient it is and seaweed won't address how much feed cows need or that the world is eating more and more meat as countries get richer: > The energy efficiency of meat and dairy production is defined as the percentage of energy (caloric) inputs as feed effectively converted to animal product. An efficiency of 25% would mean 25% of calories in animal feed inputs were effectively converted to animal product; the remaining 75% would be lost during conversion. > Whole milk: 24% > Beef: 1.9% https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-efficiency-of-meat-and-dairy-production https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-efficiency-of-meat... All improvements are good, but I'd like to know if this is more than a distraction to make people feel better about continuing to demand products they know are damaging the environment (e.g. Amazon deforestation). Industrial farmed animals aren't eating grass, they're eating crops like soy. If you find soy milk and soy-based meat alternatives decent for example, consider eating those directly instead of products from soy-fed cows - it'll be vastly better for the environment with seaweed or not.
- svrtknst 6y agoThats an interesting question for sure. Would need to be calculated against the current energy needs, hopefully an increase in seaweed feed leads to a decrease in soy bean farming. I'd rather eat the seaweed or soy directly, but this could be an improvement.
- scns 6y agoWithout excrement from animals you need synthetic fertilizer, whose production causes massive production causes massive environmental damage eg emissions and algae bloom.
- cesnja 6y agoThere's also the "classic" option, discovered some 200 years before synthetic fertilizers - crop rotation that includes some form of legumes. IMO with the current state of agriculture and food production we went into a local maximum that is very unsustainable and bad for the environment.
- jonplackett 6y agoWhere does the methane go then? Is it never formed in the first place or does it get 'locked in' somehow?
- sampo 6y agoYou have a very good question, and I wish this was covered better. In their FAQ they explain that the actual fibrolytic microbes that digest cellulose in the rumen, produce CO2, H2 and other compounds but not methane. And then later the methanogenic microbes consume these and produce methane. I get the impression that the methanogenic bacteria are not needed in digesting cellulose, that they just "steal" part of the products from the earlier fibrolytic steps. And the chemical, bromoform, from seaweed only blocks this methanogenic metabolic pathway. "How do cow stomachs digest feed, and why might they emit so much methane?" https://research.csiro.au/futurefeed/faq/ https://research.csiro.au/futurefeed/faq/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrolytic_bacterium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrolytic_bacterium
- dkdbejwi383 6y agoIf we stop eating the bastards we can reduce it by close to 100%
- blunte 6y agoMinor correction: if we bastards stop eating them, we can ...
- durovo 6y agoIf we start eating the bastards we can
- easytiger 6y agoWhat a lovely thread of childish myopic hate and stupidity.
- dkdbejwi383 6y agoYou wanting eaten?
- mindfulhack 6y agoHi. I'm vegan. BTW I use Arch.
- dkdbejwi383 6y agoWhat's the loudest sound in the universe? A vegan Arch Linux user from Yorkshire.
- plazmatic 6y agoNow we're talking. This is great!
- emmelaich 6y agoBut will the milk and steak taste different?
- pvaldes 6y agoI still think that there is a simple explanation for the 'reduction in methane' effect, and that the plan has some severe loopholes Raising cattle in a regular diet of seaweed for its entire life and expecting it to grow correctly is still uncharted territory. Are we pushing cow metabolism to the brink of famine? Wild seaweeds are harvested and sold for several purposes: 1) To make agar-agar. A substance that is used (among other purposes) as a gut filler without calories in slimming diets and treatments for obesity. 2) As source of medical compounds. Seaweed, specially the red ones, have evolved a battery of chemical weapons to survive its many grazers. They are used to make antibiotics So, the lack of methane emission... is maybe because the gut microorganisms that released methane have been killed after giving the cattle a cocktail of antibiotics?. The problem is that cattle needs special gut microorganisms for surviving. They can not process cellulose into sugar without it. How can be (competitively) raised a cow that can not eat plants anymore? In a diet of fish or meat? This is a serious point that should be explored, in my opinion. If this cows don't grow muscle fast enough (and will produce milk with a funny flavor), all the project is doomed from the start. On the other hand there is an environmental impact to take in mind, seaweed is related with fisheries and marine production. Kelp grows really fast, but I had seen experiments removing other species of brown seaweed in some tidal rocks and it seems that it takes decades to return. As seaweed has an economical value, either the farmers buy it at a higher price, or import if from the country that cultures million tons of seaweed each year (China). They could have problems to assure enough cheap seaweed for the cattle. The cow meat raised in seaweed would be more expensive and with more waste and fuel consumption. Would increase also the dependency of third countries and external policies (that sometimes are not specially nature friendly), and wouldn't be so much sustainable as we think.
- tankenmate 6y agoThe North Ronaldsay sheep[0] survive on a wholly seaweed diet and they are ruminants, so it is definitely possible (albeit with copper metabolism enzyme issues) for a ruminant to live on just seaweed. Also, CSIRO have been doing ag research since it's inception (over 100 years ago), so I'm sure they have tested this particular seaweed's impact on bovine digestion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Ronaldsay_sheep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Ronaldsay_sheep
- czottmann 6y agoThat's great and all, but it's fighting symptoms, not the underlying problem. The underlying problem isn't cows emitting methane, the problem is too many people indoctrinated with the idea of eating all the animals, all the time. The amount of land, energy and ressources in general spent on producing way too many animals for eating is unreasonable.
- tchalla 6y agoWhat's the process to come up with the number for the right amount of animal eating?
- lm28469 6y agoidk but when I see the quality of the meat served at the cafeteria of my company I can clearly tell there is an issue, it's vile, I would probably not even give that to my dog. Somehow people prefer eating the most disgusting piece of chicken/beef I've ever seen every single day of their week rather than go for the totally fine salad bar, which is cheaper and has a variety of cheese, nuts, salad, &c. or the vegetarian dish of the day
- prox 6y agoYou can perfectly live on eating meat once or twice a week. Especially if your job isn’t that physically demanding. You reduce meat consumption to 1/7 if you do so. If most of us did that a lot of problems would be moot.
- kolinko 6y agoYou assume that the only reason people eat meat is either sociological or physical workout. You have multiple subsets of population that may find it more difficult to quit meat than the others. For women (especially pregnant), meat is a source of Iron. For people with adhd, there is a correlation with meat eating (and we can assume causation as well, since adhd is genetic). Meat is a source of vitamins that have been proven to help with adhd symptoms, and of course protein which helps with brain functioning in those cases. Personally, I don’t do much sport, but I get occasional cravings so high that I could kill anyone who would want to prevent me from eating meat. Trying to figure out what is responsible, and which supplements can help, but still haven’t figured out. With all the sympathy for animal suffering (my gf is a vegan fighter), just because you and some other people have it easy to quit meat doesn’t mean that it’s easy for all the rest.
- ajharrison 6y agoThe problem in the world now is that we have long gone past eating for survival, we now eat for desire. Anyways, go vegan.
- slothtrop 6y agoThey are not mutually exclusive. For all of recorded History people have enjoyed food, and there's so much culture surrounding food in all traditional societies on Earth.
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- dkrudy 6y agoHold up its the disgusting things we're feeding cattle that's contributing to their immense environmental impact? HUH. Maybe someday we'll realize that raising them in feedlots on 100% processed packaged food made from things like how they forage in nature is most of the problem as well, and if you raise them in distributed networks so they interact with their ecosystem instead of trampling it, and then not have to ship them 1000 miles to consumers, their emissions, and environmental impact DROPS. Maybe then we'll start putting the chain together, and realize that its not beef itself, but rather the high fat, low vitamin, amalgamation of beef we now usually consume, due to these practices is what is ACTUALLY unhealthy for us to eat.
- Neil44 6y agoI understand that what the cows eat has a large effect on the taste of the milk, so if the cows are milkers that’s an issue to be overcome.
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- im3w1l 6y agoYou are mixing up all sorts of issues in some sort of black-and-white thinking where good things are good in all respects and bad things are bad in all respects. Cows eating 100% natural gmo free locally grown grass produce methane.
- wil421 6y agoCows do not eat 100% packaged food if they eat any at all. In fact, 80% of what cows eat cannot be eaten by humans.[1] If you could add seaweed to drastically reduce emissions not would be a win for everyone. > They learned that most cow diets contain the following: Grass: More than 50 percent of cow feed is actually grass (farmers call it hay and silage). While people often think dairy cows are fed a high-grain diet, in reality they eat the leaves and stems from corn, wheat and oats far more often than they are eating grain, like corn kernels. Grain: Dairy cows do eat some grain, which usually makes up less than one-quarter of their diet. Some has been grown specifically for cows, and other types have been recycled after food or beverage production -- like barley that has been used first to brew beer. The rest of a cow’s diet includes ingredients like almond hulls, canola meal (the leftovers from producing canola oil), citrus pulp (the leftovers from making orange juice and other beverages) and more. Here’s the cool thing: These products, which were once thrown away, are actually good for cows. Cows can “unlock” the energy and nutrients in these products that would otherwise go to waste. [1] https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/do-dairy-cows-eat-food-people-could-eat https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/do-dairy-cows-eat-food...
- twowatches 6y agoI wonder which part of the seabed they will destroy in order to grow the seaweed? A reef, perhaps?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hexbinencoded 6y agoHow is this any different from hybrid vehicles still burning FF? Yes, it makes it slightly better, but eating certain protein sources is a choice, whereas transportation infrastructure is an economically-limited choice. Animal ag still causes: - climate change - inefficient allocation of calories and fresh water - water, air, and ground pollution (lakes of poo, runoff into rivers) - pandemic and other zoonotic disease accelerated evolution (many animals in close proximity, including humans and occasionally wild animals) - increased food prices - usual also including animal welfare and cruelty It seems like putting a happy face on coal, smoking, asbestos, or DDT
- ajharrison 6y agoYep yep and yep. But people these days “but mah bacon!”
- hexbinencoded 6y agoI love bacon, burgers, hot dogs, fillet mignon, and porterhouse too, but I don't eat them because they're suicidal and omnicidal choices, like slurping down 256 oz. of HFCS, smoking 6 packs a day, or weighing 200 kg. If there were really good Impossible Bacon, I would go for it. We need alternatives that don't create more externalities than they solve, whether that means cultured means or substitutes. Furthermore, I think you're right in the underlying sentiment in that we need leadership to make tough, "austerity-like" choices to outlaw certain things that are leading us towards certain doom because most people won't change unless they're dragged kicking-and-screaming. Easter Island had trees, North America had megafauna, the ancient world has slyphium and those are all gone now because of humans.
- bparsons 6y agoAustralia is not going to ban meat consumption any time soon. It is a positive step that they are at least bothering to try and mitigate huge potential sources of GHG emissions.
- kiliantics 6y ago
- daniellarusso 6y agoWhat about not feeding them corn? Does grass make as much cow farts?
- slothtrop 6y agoThat would be ideal, but of course less cost effective for farmers who want to grow them fat as quickly as possible using less land. There are organic livestock farmers in the U.S. who rotate their cattle over various nearby-lands which helps fertilize it naturally, synergy with plant agriculture.
- bamboozled 6y agoThis is a small and positive win it seems, why do many disgruntled ? People get very passionate about our food source being the cause for climate change but really, what about the real ultimate more severe causes? Fracking, mining, burning coal and oil ? Nuclear and renewables makes these things obsolete, but we still need food. Edit: Want to add I’m fully onboard with the east less meat crowd and minimising deforestation, but I can’t help feel we should focus on the bigger, more high value targets first? Worrying about food production feels more like a distraction ?
- jamil7 6y agoMy guess is our food choices are something we can more immediately control. > but I can’t help feel we should focus on the bigger, more high value targets first? I don't buy this line of thinking as it makes the assumption that a society can't tackle or talk about multiple issues at once.
- 7786655 6y ago>food choices are something we can more immediately control A great deal of evidence suggests otherwise.
- jamil7 6y agoTrue. Maybe I should have said food choices feel like something we can control?
- bamboozled 6y agoIf I don’t eat at least some meat, what do I eat ? I’ve tried living mostly off soybeans and I can tell you, it was a depressing and miserable existence, at least for me. I legitimately has no energy and felt depressed for a long time. Yes I also ate other legumes. It just didn’t really work well for me. Maybe I’ll try again someday. Even when I was vegetarian, I was freaking out about all the food that was imported and the emissions from that. You’re kind of screwed if you do and screwed if you don’t. Which is the inspiration for my original post I guess. I don’t truly feel I can stop climate change via my diet. I decided not to own a car and be more flexible with my diet instead...I’m much happier now.
- HashingtheCode 6y agoThis is akin to Germany going 100% green power with zero carbon emissions while China is building a new coal power station every other week. It's good, but in terms of global impact it means very little
- shafyy 6y agoOf course Big Meat and Big Dairy love pushing this narrative. These kind of "solution" let's them continue do what they are doing without fundamentally solving the problem. It's like making more efficient internal combution engines. Sure, it's marginally better, but what it really does is distract from the real problem, which is: Burning fossil fuels. And the same is true for this seaweed cattle. And this is assuming that it does really reduce methane emissions by 80%, which I wouldn't believe until it has been empirically demonstrated on a large scale.
- sparrc 6y agoThe article says they secured $13 million in funding. This is chump change compared to the size of the Australian beef industry. Hard to imagine that they are actually planning to roll this out on a large scale with that level of investment.
- sharker8 6y agoHonest question: can humans eat it?
- jxramos 6y agoDoes methane have any known biological function out in the wild, perhaps with microbes putting it to use? It's hard to imagine such a large quantity of energy going unused by some organism out there. Is it pretty stable at room temperature and would just sit around forever? What became of all the methane all the various livestock have produced through the millennia?
- samatman 6y agoYes, microbes break methane down for energy. The process is slow; a quick search says that methane persists in the atmosphere for approximately 9 years, at which time it becomes CO2. I'm not sure how many half-lives that is intended to represent. Averaged over 100 years, it is 28 times more effective at retaining heat than CO2. https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/education/info_activities/pdfs/CTA_the_methane_cycle.pdf https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/education/info_activities/pdfs...
- valgor 6y agoIt is amazing the levels people go to in order to make something evil less evil. Just stop eating cow and drinking milk! Get some tofu and oatmilk. Many problems are solved, not just the methane emissions problem.
- potiuper 6y agoWould love to without the Roundup
- happyjack 6y agoI own Scottish Highlanders and with our regenerative grazing plans (we are grad fed AND finished), we are a net carbon sink.