FREEPORT, Maine—In the cold dark of 5 a.m., Kyle Moellar, an apprentice at Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment, ushers a herd of cows into the milking parlor. Each waits patiently for her turn to stand, eight at a time, in the milking stalls, her udders dipped in disinfectant before the suction cups are applied.
Once milked, Kyle lays a hand on each of their backs and whispers “thank you mama” as he guides them out. Although these cows live a mostly traditional life, they’re also part of a cutting edge experiment with an unusual ingredient—local seaweed.
Wolfe’s Neck Center has around 40 milking cows and produces over 1,000 pounds of organic milk a day. Recently, it took part in a research trial with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay, Maine to see if feeding seaweed to cows could reduce the methane they produce. Preliminary results have been positive but there are still some challenges to overcome including, crucially, how to make this profitable for dairy farmers. If those questions can be answered, this solution could not only dramatically reduce carbon emissions in the dairy industry, but also help to safeguard Maine’s coastal economy against the threat of warming waters.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with 80 times more warming power than carbon dioxide, over a 20-year period. It’s responsible for about 30 percent of the global warming we’re experiencing today, and agriculture is the largest human source of methane emissions. Within that, cows are the single biggest offenders—burping out methane as a byproduct of their digestion process.
The United Nations has stated that “cutting methane is the strongest lever we have to slow climate change over the next 25 years.” Similarly, climate researchers have warned that without cutting methane emissions from the meat and dairy industries, the Paris Agreement will fail.
Nichole Price, a senior research scientist and director of the Center for Seafood Solutions at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, has been working with a team of scientists for nearly a decade on a seaweed-based solution to reduce the methane that cows emit. Inspired by research from Australia, which showed that a tropical seaweed called Asparagopsis could significantly reduce a cow’s methane emissions, Price and her team started experimenting with seaweeds native to Maine in 2015.
Unlike Asparagopsis, which requires warm waters and cultivation in land-based tanks that have their own environmental footprints, sugar kelp is the most commonly farmed seaweed in the U.S and can be grown with minimal impact. Pilot studies have shown promising results—up to 50 percent reductions in methane, according to Andre Brito, associate professor of dairy management at the University of New Hampshire, who collaborated with Price. While the exact numbers are not yet published, Price admits that “we’re excited, let’s just say that.” More of this article (Inside Climate News) - link - more like this (bovaer) - link - more like this (farming) - link - more like this (Maine) - link
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