Acting now to reduce methane emissions will provide immediate benefits to the climate that carbon dioxide reductions cannot achieve on their own, said Danone.
The Global Methane Hub (GMH) was set up to fund pioneering efforts to reduce methane emissions. Since its launch, the organization has raised over $300m including $200m from climate philanthropic organizations.
Its R&D Accelerator was established to invest in breakthrough research and innovation to create new scalable and practical methods for livestock farmers to mitigate enteric fermentation.
The company would not disclose the amount it is investing in the accelerator, but says it will work, via that partnership, with academic experts and technology providers to test solutions that support dossier building for regulatory approvals and that drive farming innovation in multiple countries.
“We will set up long farm term trials to ensure safety and efficacy is measured consistently and to collect data for building dossiers for approvals. Working with these experts will also ensure that trial set up, data collection and results are representative for different farming types and can be broadly applied,” Anco Van Schaik, agriculture and plant-based director, Danone, told FeedNavigator.
Farm system innovation will take different forms, depending on the local context, he continued. Innovation along the lines of an animal diet related app providing optimal feed advice to farmers is envisaged. Such an app could have the potential to improve the health and output of cows and therefore reduce total methane emissions. In geographies where farmers already have access to technology and cows are more efficient, the approach would focus more on the use of methane blocking feed additives, said the Danone representative.
Methane accounting tool
In addition to its work under the accelerator, the company said it is collaborating with the GMH on the development of a methane accounting and feed optimization decision support tool for dairy cattle, with a pilot project in Morocco, involving 1,000 farmers, kickstarting this initiative.
The tool, which will be developed in collaboration with local universities or research institutions, will help farm advisors in regions such as North Africa formulate dairy diets based on regionally available, well defined raw materials.
“The main goal of the project is to demonstrate the benefits of improved livestock nutrition in terms of enhancing animal productivity, increasing farmers’ income, and reducing methane emissions,” commented Van Schaik.
The team will create a data library that includes the nutrient composition of feed ingredients used by dairy farmers in various climatic regions of a particular country.
“We will develop a nutrient requirement model calibrated to cattle in Morocco that will use information from the feed library, combined with information on animal characteristics and methane prediction equations to optimize the feed ration.”
Several prediction models based on extensive data have already been developed by a consortium of international researchers and these will be integrated into the platform, added Van Schaik.
“Seventy percent of agriculture driven methane emissions come from enteric fermentation,