More efficient cows produce less methane: strategies for sustainable dairy farming

Equipe ESGpec
Aug 13, 2024
3 min read

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in dairy farming is crucial to the sector's sustainability. Increasing productivity per cow is a key strategy, as it reduces the intensity of methane emissions, one of the main GHGs associated with livestock farming. This article explores techniques and approaches to achieve this goal, always focusing on reducing emissions and increasing production efficiency.

The Nutritional Importance of Milk

Milk is an essential food for human nutrition, providing vital nutrients such as calcium, phosphorus, vitamins, energy, and high-quality protein. Feeding cows plant-based protein sources increases the biological value of protein for humans by 1.4 times when milk is the final product (compared to plant-based protein fed to cows). Furthermore, many feeds fed to cows are protein sources that do not compete with human nutrition.

Sustainability in Milk Production

Milk production is vital, but like many human activities, it has environmental impacts—associated, for example, with methane emissions from cattle and nitrous oxide from manure management. To address these challenges, it is essential that milk production be economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable. Reducing methane emissions is particularly critical because this gas has a shorter atmospheric lifetime than CO₂, returning to the carbon cycle within 12 years. However, during this period of atmospheric respiration, it has a global warming potential 27 times greater than carbon dioxide.

Strategies to Reduce Carbon Footprint

Several strategies can be implemented to mitigate GHG emissions. Precision feeding is one such strategy, allowing animals' nutritional needs to be met more precisely, increasing production efficiency and reducing methane emissions per unit of dry matter intake. Furthermore, improving forage quality and adding specific additives to the diet, such as 3-nitrooxypropanol (3NOP), can significantly contribute to reducing emissions without compromising productivity.

Increased Production per Cow

Increasing milk production per cow is another effective way to mitigate methane emissions per unit of milk produced. The higher the production per cow, the lower the methane emission intensity, meaning the carbon footprint is smaller. This approach, combined with genetic selection for traits such as residual feed intake (RFI), can result in more efficient cows that produce less methane per unit of milk produced.

Impact of Food Additives

Feed additives such as 3NOP have shown potential to reduce methane emissions directly in cows' rumens by interfering with the metabolic processes of rumen microorganisms that produce methane. Furthermore, the use of ionophores such as monensin can improve feed efficiency, even if the initially observed reduction in methane emissions stabilizes over time. These additives, along with improved forage quality, can significantly contribute to reducing milk's carbon footprint.

Waste Management and Feed Efficiency

Proper manure management is crucial to reducing environmental impact. Genetic selection for better RFI is also an important strategy, as cows with lower RFI are more efficient at converting feed into milk, producing less methane per kg of milk. Combining these practices can lead to more sustainable milk production, with lower environmental impact and greater efficiency.

Conclusion

In summary, adopting practices such as precision feeding, the use of feed additives, improving forage quality, and genetic selection for RFI are essential to reducing GHG emissions in dairy farming. By increasing cow production efficiency and optimizing manure management, it is possible to achieve more sustainable milk production, meeting environmental demands and maintaining, or even increasing, the sector's profitability.

The text was written based on the lecture given by Glen Broderick, at the Whole Milk Symposium in October 2022 and on the publication by the same author available at https://www.esgpec.com.br/post/roleta-premiada

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