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Ruminants such as cattle, buffaloes, sheep and goats produce nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and methane, the most emitted gas released by belching.
Scientists are working on ways to reduce these emissions, including raising less rotten animals, adjusting their feed to produce less methane, and planting trees on pasture.
"We domesticated ruminants more than 10,000 years ago and relatively little has changed, it is time to improve them," said Elizabeth Latham, co-founder of Texas-based Bezoar Laboratories.
His company is working on a type of probiotic bacteria – useful or yeasts in the digestive system – that showed a 50 percent reduction in methane emissions in cattle during research.
Although it is less widespread than carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, methane is more powerful because it captures 28 times more heat, according to a 2016 study of the Global Carbon Project, which brings together climatological researchers.
The Bezoar probiotic can be put in the water or feed, and even sprinkled on the grbad, said Latham, who won a Unilever Young Entrepreneurs award in 2017 for the pending product of patent.
Thousands of kilometers away, the New Zealand AgResearch raised sheep to produce 10% less methane.
"In a single sheep, a 10% drop may not be so important, but when there are 19 million sheep in the country, it starts to have a huge impact," says geneticist Suzanne Rowe. at the government institute.
Low methane sheep are the result of a decade of research, and they are also leaner and produce more wool, she said.
"The beauty of animal husbandry with low methane content … is permanent," Rowe told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that the team is conducting similar research on cattle and deer.
Agriculture accounts for almost half of New Zealand's total greenhouse gas emissions and the transformation of the sector is essential to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 said climate change minister James Shaw.
Improving Productivity
Attempts to reduce methane emissions from livestock are not limited to the richest nations in the world.
In India, a national program to boost milk production of cows and buffaloes by improving their diets also contributes to the environment, according to Rajesh Sharma, senior director of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).
The NDDB uses software to evaluate the ideal diet for an animal, based on its physical profile and environment. Changes usually include adjusting the amount of food and adding mineral supplements available locally.
The adapted diet means that each animal produces 12 to 15% less methane, according to Sharma.
In the past five years, the program has reached about 2.6 million of the estimated 300 million cows and buffaloes recorded during the 2014 India census, he said.
In Kenya, scientists are testing various local grbades to see if they improve livestock productivity, which would reduce the amount of emissions per kg of milk, meat, or eggs.
The cows are placed in breathing chambers where scientists measure methane emissions from different foods available in East Africa, said Lutz Merbold, senior researcher at the Mazingira Center, a research-based institution. in Nairobi.
Results are expected in mid-2019, according to Merbold, who hopes to persuade farmers to adjust food practices by appealing to their concerns about climate change.
"If you have a well-fed cow and the drought strikes you, it will probably survive longer than a less well-fed cow," he said.
Productivity improvements alone could reduce up to 30 percent of methane emissions from livestock around the world, said Anne Mottet, head of livestock policy at FAO.
His department developed a web-based application that allows farmers and researchers to calculate how changes in animal feed can affect emissions.
Latin American farmers are experimenting with silvopastoralism by planting trees in pastures where they absorb greenhouse gases and offset emissions, while restoring degraded soils and improving biodiversity.
"There can be different types of trees – for wood, fruit trees and even the trees that animals can eat," says Jacobo Arango, a researcher at the International Center for Animal Health. tropical agriculture, based in Colombia.
Balanced diet
As consumers became more environmentally conscious, ruminants were vilified for their emissions, as well as the amount of land and water they needed.
Cattle farming in particular has been heavily criticized, accounting for 41% of the greenhouse gas emissions of the livestock sector, according to the FAO.
In a report released in March, Greenpeace warned that a continued increase in the consumption of meat and dairy products could undermine the goals of the Paris Agreement to prevent temperatures from overtaking more 2 degrees Celsius.
The environmental group called for world production and consumption of meat and dairy products to be halved by 2050.
Yet, meat abandonment campaigns sometimes ignore the reality of small farmers in Asia, Africa and South America who depend on animals for their health and livelihoods, experts say.
Merbold, from the Mazingira Center, said consumers in rich countries have the privilege of turning away from high-meat diets.
"But if you live in some parts of Africa, cattle provide you with essential nutrition that you can not find elsewhere," he said.
Animals are also used to haul water and plow the land, as well as to produce manure to fertilize crops, said FAO's Mottet.
What is needed is balance, she said.
"We have countries that consume about 100 kg of meat [per person each year] in others, that is about four."
Reuters
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