ASH CLOUD

Agriculture impacts climate change and climate change impacts agriculture. Dr Richard Eckard from the University of Melbourne has spent the last 20 years working on better understanding these interactions. In conversation, with Ash Sweeting, Richard discusses how today, changes in management practices can reduce livestock emissions by 10-15% and the potential for new products in development to reduce emissions by over 50%. Critical to enabling farmers to benefit from reduced emissions are the open source carbon accounting tools his team has developed, are maintaining, and deploying across industry. Richard also explores the nuances between emission reduction credit can be traded daily and a carbon sequestration credit can be traded once and then need to be maintained once it has been sold.

Interviewed by Ash Sweeting

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The effects of antibiotic use in livestock are far greater than the human health impacts of antimicrobial resistance. It is estimated that 90% of the antibiotics given to livestock end up in the soil. Despite these antibiotics no longer being detectable in manure they still significantly impact the soil microbiome. Research shows that these antibiotics reduce the ability of the soil to capture and store carbon, and the ability of soil to respond to increased temperatures. Livestock manure and the soil are breeding grounds for antibiotic resistant microbes increasing the potential impact on human health. 

Dr Carl Wepking is a soil microbial ecologist who has been studying the effects of livestock antibiotics use on the soil microbiome. His research has focused on how livestock antibiotics reduce soil microbial activity, decrease microbes’ ability to adapt to high temperatures, and decrease the soil’s ability to sequester carbon. He also found that the effects of livestock antibiotics on the soil microbiome did not require detectable levels of antibiotics in manure. Carl is at the University of Wisconsin- Madison where he is running the Grasslands 2.0 program that aims to develop sustainable livestock farming systems. 

I recently caught up with Carl to hear more about his work.

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Could nature provide a map to greatly reduce the climate impact of animal agriculture. Dr Athol Klieve has spent his career researching the microbiome of ruminants and kangaroos and why ruminants produce methane and kangaroos do not. In our conversation Athol also explains how there are no identifiable patterns in nature as to why a particular species produces methane or does not produce methane and that with us humans, some of us produce methane and some of us don’t. The exciting thing is that the current situation is not fixed, things can be changed. 

Athol also delves deeply into the complex community structures within the microbiome, how micro organisms cooperate with each other, how they compete, how they protect or sabotage other microbes and, how they communicate or talk to each other. He also discussed the adaptability of microbes to change their metabolism and even genetic pathways under different conditions. The ultimate focus of Athol’s research has been how to better understand these complex ecosystems to improve animal agriculture and drastically reduce livestock methane emissions. 
 
I recently caught up with Athol to hear more about his work.

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Harry Lawson runs Australia’s largest Angus seed stock business. Lawson Angus (www.lawsonsangus.com.au) sells 1000 bulls annually across all states. While working to breed cattle that bridge the sustainability demands of beef consumers with the productivity requirements of his beef producing customers, he realized that collaboration among highly educated and skilled young people is critical. Sustainability and productivity are not mutually exclusive but much of the current thinking is moving the whole industry in the wrong direction.  

The issue is that very few people actually understand the whole livestock production system, biologically these systems are very complex. Harry’s big hope is that accelerating the transition to the next generation of highly educated farmers will bring that much needed knowledge and understanding to the industry.  

The Lawson Angus breeding program bucks the industry trend to breed larger cows. With the breeding herd producing around 70% of beef industry methane emissions Harry focuses breeding lower emission cows. It’s a win win that these moderately sized, highly fertile and energy efficient cows animals are also much more drought tolerant. 

When Harry’s children started questioning the environmental footprint of the family business, he soon realized he didn’t have the answers that would satisfy either his children or himself. His initial digging around has now led to developing his own research program to include methane emissions in his breeding program.

I recently caught up with Harry to discuss how he is working to improve beef sustainability. You can listen to our conversation here. 

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For the billions of people living on less than $5 a day the only available option with rising food prices is to buy less food. It’s easy to blame this current crisis on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, when you look at things more deeply there are bigger issues at play. The coupling of fuel price and food prices is crippling food systems for many of the world’s poorest people. On top of this are growing impact of climate change and the flow on market effects of countries locking up food and energy reserves for their own perceived national interest. 

The Hunger Project works across Africa, South Asia, and Latin America to help millions of people end their own hunger and poverty. By far the best tool available is increasing local food production. This is especially the case if these systems are growing highly nutritious indigenous crops and include small scale livestock production.

I recently caught up with Tim Prewitt, The Hunger Project’s CEO to discuss how the current spikes in food and energy prices are impacting world’s most vulnerable. He described a small regenerative farm and agribusiness in Uganda run by Fareeda, where she grows and processes pumpkins and a few other crops.

There were no neat rows with trees and other crops dispersed across the farm. The trees included cocoa, mango, and papaya. The crops included, corn, soy, okra, melon, pumpkin, and other vegetables all growing together. You could see how the plants were working together. All the waste from the farm and business were composted and returned to the soil. The farm was feeding her family and several others around her by using these techniques. She’s really proud of her work.

Fareeda’s farms show how food can be produced locally and regeneratively. It also highlights the challenges of scaling regenerative agriculture, especially given the agricultural subsidy policies that remain highly focused on the industrial production of wheat, corn, rice and sugar. You can listen to our conversation here.

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Agriwebb arguably has visibility over more head of livestock and acres of grazing and farmland than anyone else with over 20 million sheep and cattle and 125 million acres being managed through their systems.  Agriwebb is now working with their customers to reduce carbon emissions. A key aspect of Agriwebb’s success is that by becoming the trusted partner of farmers and ranchers, who are collecting large amounts of production data, they can create a digital paper trail that makes it easier to target value adding certifications such as carbon neutral beef or participate in carbon sequestration schemes. 

AgriWebb strongly believes that livestock production systems can be productive, profitable, and sustainable all at the same time. However, whilst technologies already exist that can enable these improvements the issues of who pays for these technologies, who captures the premiums and how premiums are shared, and how risk is shared across the supply chain are still significant hurdles to change.

I recently caught up with Justin Webb, AgriWebb’s Co-Founder and Executive Chairman to discuss how AgriWebb is working to improve food sustainability globally.

"...supermarkets and the retailers themselves step up to take responsibility through the supply chain. They have to be the ones making calls into the wedge of profitability ..." - Justin Webb, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Agriwebb

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Dr Matthias Hess has been spearheading the assessment of compounds and feed additives for their impact on cattle methane emissions in the United States. Matthias is a microbiologist in the department of animal science at UC Davis where he has spent the last 8 years looking into the ruminant microbiome to better understanding how these different microbes breakdown complex plant materials into smaller molecules that can be utilized by the animal.

Matthias current work is leading research focused on understanding the biochemistry of how these microbes convert plant materials into small molecules that can be utilized by the animal. A huge part of his work is looking at the production of undesirable metabolites and especially methane with the aim of finding solutions to how methane emissions can be reduced.

The exciting news is that his team is using new techniques including DNA, RNA, and protein analytics to understand the microbial processes in the rumen on a molecular level.  This is leading to a much better understanding of not just the species of bacteria, archaea, and also fungi in the rumen, but more importantly how they interact, what activates these microbes, and the intracellular communications that control what genes are switched on at any point in time.

Ultimately, as methane production is an energy inefficiency within the ruminant digestive system Matthias thinks solutions that solve the methane problem will also increase protein production. That said, because of the complexity if the rumen microbiome it is highly probable that there will be different solutions for not different production systems, grazing and fed animals, and also for different environments.

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