The following is a summary of the Cornell Nutrition Conference posted by first-time attendee, Ashley Sweeting. Ash is VP North America of ProAgni, an Australian biotech startup and finalist in this year’s GrowNY innovation competition. (CCE)
Methane emissions are a huge issue, and they are not going away. Many people across the industry are looking for effective tools to address livestock methane. Most people want to take steps to reduce methane but very few want to pay for it themselves.
On the positive side, the methane issue is creating unusual bedfellows. Collaborative partnerships are emerging between what many people would have thought of as traditional rivals. Environmentalists are teaming up with farmers, big food, scientists, government, and multinational corporations to search for creative solutions to livestock methane mitigation.
On the less positive sides, what many people had hoped would be effective solutions are not living up to expectations. Issues remain around food safety, animal welfare, availability, long term efficacy, and impact on farm productivity.
There is no escape. The methane issue is just as relevant for the North American, European, Australian, and New Zealand farmers as it is for the 1.25 million farmers in India with 1 -5 cows and elsewhere across the developing world.
The microbiome and how it can be managed to produce more desirable outcomes and fewer undesirable outcomes is a rapidly growing area of interest, research, investment, and product development. Genomic science has unlocked a window into improving our understanding of the microbiome. As Todd Callaway of UGA said, “Thirty years ago the rumen microbiome was a black box. Now it’s just a very, very dark box.“
Across livestock production, soils, and human health we are constantly being surprised about just how much our microbiomes impact everything we do. We are intricately interconnected and ultimately reliant on the microbiome for survival.
Personally, I am super excited about the potential of a better understanding of the rumen microbiome to revolutionize the way we manage livestock productivity and sustainability across the developed and the developing worlds.
The microbiome is the source of livestock methane. At the end of the day the methane issue is all about hydrogen. I see efforts to better understand how hydrogen is metabolised in the rumen, and the competition between methane producing microbes and other hydrogen utilizing microbes, as key to identifying increasingly effective and practically applicable solutions to livestock sustainability.
It was wonderful to hear the presentations from all the Cornell Graduate Students. Thank you all for the great work you are doing to advance our understanding of dairy production and its impact on our society and environment.
From my perspective, for new innovations to be successful they need to be focused on fostering symbiosis. By this I mean they need to be focused on addressing multiple issues simultaneously. Unfortunately, I think that solutions that only address one issue are no longer sufficient to meet our current food production and sustainability challenges. Be that addressing heat stress, methane production, nitrogen cycling, early lactation metabolic disease, food safety, or human nutrition.
A special thanks to Joe McFadden, Mike Van Amburgh, Ananda Fontoura, Tom Overton, and Derek Simmonds from Cornell University for a great conference.
To hear more about the great work Joe McFadden is doing to develop solutions to livestock methane emissions at Cornell list to his conversation with me here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2043813/11368072