Guests: Dr. Bill Weiss, Ohio State University; Dr. John Newbold, Scotland Rural College This journal club episode comes to you from the 2024 Tri-State Dairy Nutrition Conference. The paper is “Methane in the context of circular dairy farming” from the conference proceedings.
This journal club episode comes to you from the 2024 Tri-State Dairy Nutrition Conference. The paper is “Methane in the context of circular dairy farming” from the conference proceedings.
What is circular dairy farming? The concept is that instead of extracting or using natural resources and then discarding the wastes in a linear kind of fashion, economies should try to be increasingly circular. This would include the concepts of reusing, recycling, upgrading, upcycling, etc. Traditionally, the focus on methane was about the inefficiency and leakage of energy and finding a way to minimize that from the perspective of energetic efficiency and productivity. More recently, the focus on decreasing methane has been the environment. (3:19)
Dr. Newbold talks about the trade-off between circularity and methane. High fiber diets produce more methane than high starch diets. Adding fat to diets can also decrease methane production. However, starch and fat are human edible so if we leave starch and fat in feeds to decrease methane in dairy cattle, that leaves less starch and fat for human consumption. The concept of “local” also plays into circularity, whether that be feed production or milk processing. (7:01)
What are the metrics of circularity? Two approaches to this present in the literature. The first is human edible efficiency: how much human edible food are we producing? In a dairy setting, the measurement would be how much human edible food are we putting into the cow compared to the amount of human edible food coming out of the system? The second metric is the alternatives for land use. (10:45)
What is the best way to express methane production? Dr. Newbold shares three, and they are generally used in different contexts. First is methane production, usually presented as grams per cow per day. This is an easily scalable measurement, but may not be the best or easiest way to manage interventions on-farm. The second common metric is methane yield which is generally expressed as grams per kilogram of dry matter intake. Lastly, methane emissions intensity is grams of methane per kilogram of milk. (12:26)
When considering the human edibility equation, the denominator consists of the human edible content of the feed. In principle, depending on how hard you worked and how much money you spent, you could extract some of the starch, fat, and protein and use it for human food. However, there's no consensus in the literature about this kind of edibility coefficient. In other words, what proportion of the protein in soybean meal or the proportion of starch that's left in wheat middlings or distillers grains is human edible? Greater consensus about what is and what is not human edible would actually be quite useful in allowing for better and more consistent calculations. (18:29)
Dr. Newbold gives examples of relative efficiency comparing U.S. dairy production, a grass-based system, and a tropical grass based system. Each of these have a different human edible efficiency and a different amount of methane produced. (19:59)
When it comes to lowering the environmental impact of milk production, don't focus on one metric in isolation of the rest of them. If you're setting off in a particular direction, whether that's trying to drive methane down or milk production up, think about the potential trade offs and unforeseen consequences. (32:12)
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Scott (00:07):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the pubcast where leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in dairy nutrition. We're here with our next episode of the journal club, and we have our resident emeritus professor, Dr. Bill Weiss with us once again, Bill, we're doing a little something different this time. Normally, we will review journal articles this week. We're gonna, we are at the Tri-State Nutrition Conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and we're reviewing the proceedings from four different talks that's being given. And I'm, I'm kind of excited about this there, there's some good talks. I'm looking forward to it. The first one Bill, why don't you introduce the guest that you brought with you and yeah, go ahead. Okay,
Bill (00:52):
Thanks. Thanks, Scott. I can't remember when we first met, but it's been a very long time ago. But it's my pleasure to introduce professor John Newbold. He's a professor at the Scottish Rural College, obviously in Scotland. And like I said, I don't know, you've been there five years, 10 years. Five years. And before that you were an industry for many years, so. Well, well, welcome to Indiana. So my, I'm from Indiana.
Scott (01:21):
So, did you grow up near here, bill?
Bill (01:23):
No. About as far away as you can get. Still very southwest corner.
Scott (01:27):
Alright. Very well. So we, we don't wanna forget to introduce our co-host here, Dr. Clay Zimmerman. Clay, welcome. And I've gotta ask what's in your glass tonight? Although I know it is a fat squirrel. A fat squirrel. Yes. Yeah. And I'm having the same thing and it's quite tasty. Yeah, it's, how would you describe that?
Bill (01:46):
It has sort of a nutty aftertaste.
Scott (01:48):
Yeah, it's nice. Yeah, that's good. Cheers. All right.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
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Scott (03:03):
Bill, why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about the paper that we're gonna be reviewing this morning. Okay.
Bill (03:09):
Well, the title is methane in the context of circular dairy Farming. So obviously the first question is, what is circular dairy farming?
John (03:19):
Yeah. I think this concept of circularity is sort of gaining ground in the discourses around farming and, and agriculture. And it's an extrapolation extension from the circular economy in general, and the concepts that instead of sort of extracting natural resources using natural resources and then discarding the wastes in a linear kind of fashion economies should try to be increasingly circular. So concepts of reusing, recycle, upgrading, upcycling, et cetera. So that we're basically making the best use of the resources that we're using and minimizing the leakage of those resources. And the consequence is sort of negative environmental impacts.
Bill (03:58):
So like, using manure on the farm would be one.
John (04:01):
Yeah. Using manure on the farm would be a, would be, would be a part of that. Renewable energies will be a part of that. And when it comes down to, to methane sorry, methane, methane, tomato, tomato clearly that, that, I think that the fit of that into the concept of circularity, it's, it's mostly about the inefficiency and the leakage of energy in particular. So bill, you'll know very well that if you think about the history of, of, of methane research, it began back in the fifties and the sixties, and it was all about energy, trying to capture more of energy. You know, we've got what, five, 6% of the gross energy of the diet going into a dairy cow that just gets lost as, as, as methane. So the focus on trying to minimize that has been there for 30, 40 years, but driven by energetic efficiency and hopefully productivity. And it's only then more recently that we've said, no, that's not the main reason. The main reason, of course is the environmental. Environmental,
Bill (04:54):
Yeah. How, how big a deal is methane in animal ruminant methane in, in the, the grands? Because it's got a short half life.
John (05:03):
Yeah. It's got a short half life. And the, I think this, this whole discussion and this recognition that despite the fact that the world works in the whole area of greenhouse gas mitigation using the concept of CO2 equivalents so again, you can argue about the equation, but basically expressing the global warming potential of every greenhouse gas on the same unit whether it's CO2 or nitrous oxide or, or, or, or methane. But that misses the distinction around methane. That it has this relatively short cycle. This short half-life in the atmosphere quickly goes back to CO2, which of course plants can then capture through photosynthesis. And back around we go. I think there are two implications of this. One is a really positive one for, for, for animal agriculture and, and, and dairy, dairy agriculture, which says that actually if you kept total milk production the same, the total number of cows the same, then you're not really making any net effect net contribution because yes, she's producing methane, but in the course of a couple of decades, it's gonna go all the way back round again and come, come back into the animal as as, as, as as feed through photosynthesis of the CO2.
John (06:11):
So that's one side of the story. But the other side of the story is the recognition that because it's a short-lived greenhouse gas, if the world in general wants to make a quick impact on climate, then reducing methane quickly is an effective way of doing it. 'cause You're, if you put less methane out there, you are sort of supported by the fact that the methane that is out there is going to degrade quite quickly. So from a policy perspective, I think that's recognized with a lot of push to try to pull methane emissions down from all sectors. So, you know, we hear about the problems of, you know, methane flared off in, in the oil and gas industry, for example, but, but animal agriculture as well.
Bill (06:47):
And one, throughout this paper you make this argument or discussion about the trade off between circularity and methane. Would you go into that? Because I think that's a really critical point here and
John (07:01):
Yeah, I, I, I've been thinking about this in the sort of, in the course of of preparing the paper and it's been a great excuse to go back and, you know, read the liter literature and you obviously learn a lot more in, in, in, in, in preparing these kind of things. But I think this is the central point is it's almost at the end of the day, blindingly obvious, I think where you, where you get to. So if you are trying to reduce methane through nutrition in a dairy cow, think of the strategies, think of the things that we do. We know for example, that high fiber diets are gonna favor higher methane. Conversely, higher starch diets are gonna bring methane back down. We know that dietary fat will have a positive effect on reducing methane initially because it's simply providing non fermentable energy and displacing exactly fermentable energy in the diet, but also potentially some more direct effects depending on the nature of, of, of the fat.
John (07:51):
So again, fat and starch are going to be associated with lower methane emissions. But fat and starch inherently are human edible. Exactly. So, exactly. You know, if we leave, if we leave the starch in the fat, in the feed in pursuit of lower methane, that's starch and fat that we could potentially take outta those feeds and use, use ourselves. So that's why I say, I think at the end of the day when you think around this, it almost becomes fairly simple and blindingly obvious that there is this trade off.
Bill (08:20):
So how, how does society pick where to go?
John (08:23):
Yeah. how that's, that's quite interesting. And the other thing thinking about circularity is this question of being local. And again, in the paper, I've tried to look at a couple of references from, from work done mostly in Europe. There's a really interesting piece of work done in Finland that's, that's looking about the, the benefits of keeping things local, whether it's feed sourcing or indeed, whether it's milk processing. And again, the benefits of that can be brought in terms of circularity by, take a simple example. Avoiding lots of investments in the cost of transporting stuff, mostly water from one place to another. So if you've got to transport milk, if you've got to t manure, if you've got to transport food, feed you know, it's, it's an inefficiency in itself.
John (09:09):
So then you, then you sort of think about this in terms of dairy systems in different locations. And just a little word about where I'm living and working at the moment, which is in southwest Scotland which is actually quite an interesting little microcosm of different dairy systems in the same, in the same location. For anybody who's, who knows that part of the world, you probably will realize it can be fairly wet. It's fairly mild. So growing seasons are potentially relatively long. The land is fairly hilly and undulating. So not all of it's suitable for, for crop production. What we are good at doing is growing grass. Yeah. And I say grass specifically, so thinking in particular things like perennial ryegrass, but this is the foundation. This is the natural resource that we have driven by the natural capital that we have available.
John (10:00):
So then you start to think about circularity and methane mitigation in the context of that local resource where the primary feed resource is grass. And it's a very different primary feed resource than, for example, Fort Wayne, Indiana. Yeah. Bill, as a native of the state, I wouldn't need to tell you anything at all about what you do. You can do what you grow at the world car Well. Oh, yeah. So again, starch. Yes. so you know, you're starting off from a very different position, both in relation to the likely general potential methane yield and the likely general circularity of, of, those resources. And the other thing that then comes into this, I think is, is, well, what do you mean by circularity? You know, you, what's the metrics? Because you can you can very easily say what the metrics are around methane.
John (10:45):
We've got production in grams per day, we've got yield in terms of grams per kilo of dry matter intake. We've got intensity in relation to milk production. But circularity spits sort of nebulous, isn't it? And I think this is a real challenge and an issue that needs addressing. Two, two numbers. 2, 2, 2 approaches to this that I think are present in the literature quite a lot now are this concept of human edible efficiency. So how much human edible food are we producing in the case from the dairy system, depending on the amount of human edible food that's going into the cow to generate that. And obviously we'd like to get more out than you're putting in would be the, the, the objective. And the other. The other question here, which I'm not really gonna go into too much, is then the alternatives for land use. So if you could use your land for growing food directly rather than growing feed for animals, again, inherently there's a, like, there will be less leakage of resources in that process than if you're doing the two things in combination. So there are a couple of metrics that are emerging, I think, that are relevant to quantifying what we mean by, by, and by circularity. So I think I've gone a bit off topic there. No, no,
Bill (11:56):
It's, that's, yes, you did do one, you discuss different efficiencies a lot here in the human cle which I've never heard about. I kind of know what it is. Per protein production per land unit, several, several measures of efficiency. Methane per unit of milk or cow. Again, what, let's stick with methane. How, how should we express methane per cow, per kilogram intake, per kilogram milk, per kilogram fat?
John (12:26):
The answer is yes, all of them. Yeah. But it is, it's a really important question, and I think it's, it's important that people get clarity in, in your mind about what it, which unit you're talking about, depending on the context that you're in. 'cause They're all relevant in different ways. So first of all, methane production on a cow basis, generally grams per cow per day. And obviously from that you could scale up to, you know, grams per country industry, what, whatever. So that's the absolute amount. And clearly as far as the global warming issues are concerned, the absolute amount of methane that's being generated is, is, is a key driver. But it's not necessarily the easiest or best way to manage things when you're thinking about nutrition or interventions on farms. The second common metric that's in the literature is then methane yield which is generally expressed as grams per kilogram of dry matter intake.
John (13:18):
But the other metric of which nutritionists are used is percent of gross energy intake, you know, this five, six, 7% number, that's also a methane yield expression of course. So how much methane are you getting for the intake that's going into the animal? And I think that's quite useful when you're, when you're trying to assess different nutritional strategies and, you know, are we, are we making an impact or not? Because quite, quite a lot of the things that we would do likely to affect methane production are also going to affect dry matter intake. So you need to take that out as far as the sort of carbon footprint questions are concerned. And as far as the real, you know, farmer issues are concerned, I think methane emissions intensity is a, is a really useful number to have, and an easy number to keep in mind.
John (13:59):
And so this will be grams of methane per kilogram of milk. Generally people would use fat and protein corrected milk just to account for variations in milk, in milk quality. And if you're doing sort of carbon footprint exercises on farms, that's likely to be the key sort of number that you get. Benchmark number, where am I this year? Where was I last year? Where will I be next year? And trying to drive that number down. So all of these metrics, it's not a question of choosing one or the other, I think they're all useful. But those three methane production, methane yield, methane intensity, keep those in mind. It's a relatively straightforward way to think about things. I,
Bill (14:30):
I've always thought the methane per cow is very deceiving, because if I do more to get more milk, I'm methane usually goes up, but it's just, yeah. Globally methane
John (14:42):
Should go down, down, which is one methane intensity is you know, then you start to think you've got, it's an equation. You've got two numbers to tackle, haven't you? You've got methane to tackle and you've got a milk field to tackle. So anything that you're doing to promote milk, milk yield rate of milk production, that's not going to be in impact directly on methane. You've got a win there in terms of methane intensity being lower.
Bill (15:02):
Yes. And you guys can kick in here too,
Scott (15:05):
Oh, no, you guys are doing a nice job there.
Bill (15:07):
But we have one more follow up if I can't, you know, in, in the US now, and this may be more than us, you know, soy, soy oil, biofuel, direct. Yeah. And, so the big deal is soybean meal is probably gonna become cheap and plentiful. That's by definition, human edible, but we don't eat it. So what, how does that factor into some of these feed foods or feeds could feed a human, but we don't want to eat 'em.
John (15:35):
The, and some of the, some of the academic literature on this topic's actually quite interesting, including some work done here in the states a couple of years ago and some, some of the work in Europe, because they've then explored sort of different scenarios. Like, so you say you could but don't want to extract and use all the protein from that soybean meal, that may well become more plentiful. That's fine. And then in the economic context of the, of the us with that going on, you don't need to you could explore it also that said, okay, what if, what if, what if you know, bad things, bad things happened, population populations increased, or there was disturbance of other supply chains and there was a need for that protein, then you could, and you could say, right now I'll recalculate all my numbers, assuming that we're gonna be a little bit more aggressive in using more of that potentially human edible resource for, for, for people. So it depends how you calculate it. Yeah, yeah,
Scott (16:28):
Yeah. One of the things I'm just still trying to get my mind around is this concept of human edible feed conversion efficiency. Yep. And so is it all about the energy leakage? Or is it about you know, you talked a little bit about land usage and would it be better to use the land for, for, for human feed as opposed to animal feed? But then I'm thinking, you know, starch and oil goes into making, you know, proteins, amino acids and, and, and specific fatty acids. And so it's not an apples oranges, right? A little bit.
John (17:03):
No, but if you think about extrapolating it from let's just part, part the land use question for the minute. Yeah. And just talk about the efficiency of the, of the food conversion. So we're all used to sort of feed efficiency in general. Yes. You know, how many, how many kilos of milk or fat protein corrected milk are you getting out per, per unit of dry matter going in? So these, these questions of human edible efficiency are really just an extension of of, of that. And, and let's look at both. Let's look at both of those, the numerator and the denominator in that equation. So fat and protein corrected milk is an expression of the value that we're producing as a dairy industry. Great. You know, the fat's important, the protein's important, the yield important in terms of the amount that's there. And it's all human edible, of course.
John (17:42):
But you could go beyond that and you could say, okay, we're then really looking to value that output. Let's think about the quality of that product. And you could do this with energy, but it's quite often done with protein. So you know, the protein quality to us as a human consumer of a milk protein is going to be higher than every plant protein and a lot more than some plant proteins, right? So you can factor that into that as well. So many of these calculations use the currently recommended approach for looking at digestibility and amino acid profile of proteins. And therefore you get a better expression of the benefit, the numerator in the equation in terms of milk. You could extend it, you could talk about human edible calcium efficiency. You could talk about human edible, vitamin B12 deficiency.
John (18:29):
You could talk about human edible healthfulness efficiency. If you think about a more basket of, of, of metrics around the value of the, of the food the milks being produced. And then on the other side, of course, you've got what's the human edible content of the feed going in and crudely speaking? Well, you think the starch, you think the oil, you think the proteins in principle, most of that you could, depending on how hard you worked and how much money you spent extract and using for human food. There's not consensus in the literature about this kind of edibility coefficient. You know, what proportion of the protein in soybean meal or grape seed meal or the proportion of starch that's left in wheat middlings or distillers grains or something is human edible. So that's an area I think that in terms of the science of this, some greater consensus about what is always not human edible would actually be quite useful in allowing us to make better and more consistent calculations. Sorry, that's
Scott (19:25):
A No, it makes perfect, perfect sense. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. You know, one of the other questions I had as I read through your paper is, you know, the, the, the, the importance of, of reducing methane or methane would our time be better spent? Right? There's a lot of cows out there that are producing very low milk production. Would our time and efforts and energies be better spent trying to replace those cows with more efficient cows as opposed to trying to tweak and improve, you know, these all already very efficient animals that we have today, at least here in the US and Scotland.
John (19:59):
I think we need to just define that again, efficiency. It's the efficient use of the resources that they've got available. Yeah. So again, here, here in the US with plentiful resources in terms of corn silage underpinning the production systems supported by corn, corn grains in one form or another, supported by proteins in soybean and one sort or another. I think those are good resources to convert quickly into milk production. And again, I always prefer to talk about the rate of milk production rather than milk yield. We can produce milk very quickly from the resources that are available, and we've bred the cows available are capable of doing it. I think it's very different if you go to different situations around, around the world, you could take the example of where I'm working is a slightly sort of intermediate case where the resource that we've got to work with is, is the grass.
John (20:52):
That's, that's what the natural capital is, is giving us. So it's, it's, in some ways it's going to be less efficient to convert that grass into high rates of milk production because of the nature of grass and, and what, what that, what that means. But using the cow to use that resource in terms of the human edible milk food production is gonna be a lot more efficient than doing something else with that land in that particular context. The additional benefit of converting, using the cow to convert grass to milk, rather than trying to use the relatively unsuitable land for other, other arable purposes, for example, is going to give you the net net greatest food supply. The more extreme case, perhaps, if you think about it globally, is again countries where the feed resources are very poor and in quantity and in quality. The forage base is largely going to be tropical grass, a C four photosynthesis grass, which is inherently going to be less digestible. So again, you're never gonna use that resource as efficiently to produce milk, but it's still useful, it's still positive to use the cow to generate human edible food from that relatively human inedible resource. Okay.
Clay (22:04):
So related to that, are there certain cropping systems that are more favorable in you know, thinking about this in a circular fashion?
John (22:16):
I think the, the, the concept of circularity, I think is, is applicable in all of these different circumstances. The way the numbers might stack up at the end of it are, are, are going to be different. So in every dairy system there are some going to be some benefits of trying to think, well, how can I make this more circular? It might not be methane, it might be more to do with things like energy. If fuel use efficiency manure management, we've gotta focus on nitrogen and phosphorus as we're not just carbon, as we're talking about about today.
Bill (22:45):
How does, in the US we're very efficient, very intensive, and we produce milk relatively cheaply, and food cost is, is an issue. So how does the cost of food, if we would become more circular, I think our food prices would go up. I think, I don't know. Yeah.
John (23:03):
And this I think is the, is the kind of the central point bill that you're touching on there that I'm trying to get at today. In thinking again about the, the relative importance of the circularity metrics take the human edible efficiency as the, as an example of that and, and methane yield. So if I could, again, go back firstly to my situation with a high grass-based diet, we are gonna have relatively high human edible protein efficiency. And I'll show some of those numbers in the, in the talk later on. But we're also gonna have relatively high methane yield by relatively high. I mean, in comparison with, let's take an example. Indiana and in Indiana where you're gonna have a relatively low lower human at all protein efficiency compared to a grass-based system. But you'll have a lower loop methane yield.
John (23:52):
Yeah. The key point I think is then about the relative losses and gains of changing anything. And in, in our situation, there's a politically and in the political discourse around the overall drive towards net zero in the economy in, if I talk to policy makers, government advisors, et cetera, it seems to be kind of always about methane, methane, methane, greenhouse gas, greenhouse greenhouse gas, driven by the fact that other sectors have been able to reduce their green, other sectors of the industry have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions more quickly than agriculture has. So agriculture is in the spotlight and it's get that methane number down. And so my argument to back to that is, yes, fine green, we need to work on that and there are things that we can do, but for goodness sake, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
John (24:38):
Because if you bring that meth, that methane yield down, you will bring down these other metrics of circularity, which I think are really important. And people understand it kind of intuitively about the place that livestock should have in the, in, in the, in the landscape. So if you took the cows outta the area where I'm working, you would have, yes, you'd produce less methane produce a lot less road, you produce a lot less food, you'd have a real disturbance of the local economy. People talk about a just transition, I dunno if that phrase has currency over here. And you'd have a very unjust transition if you started to do that. Coming to the other situation as a, as an, as a sort of contrary example thinking about dairy production over here. If you said, oh yes, we need to latch onto this concept of circularity and let's try to get more human edible protein efficiency, for example. But the price you would pay would be quite a significant increase in the methane yield, for example, from that dry matter intake of that feed resource. So again, you would be throwing out a, a, a, a baby, a different baby with a different bath water, but, but still making probably an inappropriate compromise given that you are already at such a good situation in terms of low methane yields.
Bill (25:50):
So I think one, we just have to look at a bigger picture instead of just methane or something. 'cause There's little things we could do that Joe would be positive. We may not ever get a hundred percent circular, but little things and, but we have to be aware of the unintended consequences.
John (26:04):
But no, nobody ever wants to get a hundred percent circular because in that case we'd have, you know, no coffee for example, or, you know, or no beer.
Bill (26:11):
Exactly. No fat squirrels.
John (26:14):
Yeah.
Bill (26:16):
Yeah. So I guess, you know, with a lot of this, they said if we, we could reduce methane and probably increase circularity, but it's gonna cost who pays? Mm. Yeah. That's the, the,
John (26:27):
And, and again, very much conscious as I'm sure we all are of the, of the inflation re pressures in the last few years, the fact that you know, there are sectors of society in developed countries like the UK and the US that really struggle with with affording good, good quality diets, and particularly relevant when we think about the quality of dairy as a component of those, of, of, of those diets. So in terms of who pays the one, one glib answer that may still have some relevance though is aside from those concerns over, over afford affordability, for most of us, you know, historically our proportion of our available income that's spent on food has gone down and down and down. Hasn't it? Progressively, has it gone down, down too, too much?
Bill (27:07):
That's a good point. Yeah. Is it too cheap?
John (27:10):
It's too cheap. Yeah.
Bill (27:11):
I asked one kind of non circular question in your paper. You talked about something I've never heard about before, but this is high lipid rye grass.
John (27:19):
Yeah, yeah.
Bill (27:20):
Could you, again, this a little off topic, but
John (27:22):
It is a little off topic, but I think again, this idea of it's
Bill (27:24):
Really high
John (27:25):
Beginning with beginning with the feeding systems that you're at and then starting to address the, you know, the, let's go through the, the menu of possibilities of, of reducing methane. So if I'm starting out with a grass, before I start to think about, well, I need to kind of lower methane by diluting that grass or those grass cell walls in particular with the higher starch or whatever. Are there things I can do with the grass itself? And there's a couple of things there that I think are relevant to this question. There has, and there are on the market, what people tend to call high sugar grasses that have been bred to have a higher concentration of water-soluble carbohydrates. I think the evidence showing that they reduce methane is a bit mixed actually. Yeah. Sometimes the actual level of sugar in the grass isn't as high as maybe you wanted.
John (28:09):
And then there's then this concept of higher lipid grass as well. So talked earlier on about how fat can can help reduce reduce methane if, if only by displacing o other things like grass, cell walls. And I'm, I'm aware of, and I've just read a couple of papers of, but no, no more than that. Some work in New Zealand where through gene editing they've done something to produce quite significantly higher lipid grass. No, it's not. Just a little bit is effective in vitro has been shown to be effective in vitro in reducing methane. I don't think it's yet been taken through to, not in dairy cows anyway, to in vivo. That
Bill (28:40):
Was news for me. And I said it was not a small increase in fat.
John (28:43):
It was quite substantial.
John (28:44):
But again, if it's genetically modified, there are offices and regulatory questions depending where you are about that.
Bill (28:50):
Okay.
Scott (28:53):
Alright. Clay, anything else?
Speaker 5 (28:57):
You were talking about, you know, the local earlier, how do you define local in the context of Great question. Of
John (29:04):
This great, great, great question. The usual good answer is there are all sorts of ways to answer it, So, I mean, but it's actually useful to think about it in this context of circularity. So by local you could think about the field, couldn't you, you know, and if you're thinking about manure management, for example, of minimizing nitrogen runoff, et cetera. Yeah. Let's think about it on a field scale. You know, I better not put too much slurry on this field up the hill because it's gonna rain and it's on a slope and it's gonna wash straight off, for example. Right? And you can certainly think about it at a farm level, you know, how can I manage my resources as, as a farmer, a decision maker with power and control over that parcel of land that is, that is my farm.
John (29:43):
You could also think about it on a sort of neighborhood level. Some interesting thoughts here about how you might exchange different crops with your neighbor if he's got more or less suitable land for growing some crops. Certainly manure, you could think about it on a regional basis in, in Scotland again with a sort of east west climate difference on the west of the country with a lot, lot of rainfall. It's really good at growing grass, as we said. Therefore, really good at producing milk on the east of the country. You've got much more arable land, mostly wheat, barley grape feed, some fruits and so forth. And that land has progressively lost organic carbon over time. So putting manure back on that would be a good thing to do. So is there some sort of regional system that you could, you could work of import and export in the region of some of those resources that would make it more circular and you could go on beyond that to sort of national level and, and indeed a global level.
Scott (30:35):
Gentlemen, I think that's a good place to maybe call, last call. What I'd like to do is just kind of provide your key takeaways of, of the conversation today. And, Clay, why don't we start with you?
Speaker 3 (30:46):
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Speaker 5 (31:08):
Very interesting paper. I'm looking forward to hearing it this afternoon. Yeah. But a great topic. I don't know, I don't know that we've thought about it and maybe enough about it here in, in the US from that standpoint, but certainly, certainly introduced a few new terms to me that this concept of human edible efficiency I was really not familiar with. So looking forward to learning more about this actually.
Scott (31:41):
Yeah. Bill, any final thoughts from you?
Bill (31:43):
I just think this is very complicated. I think you do a good job of showing all the potential interactions. You, there's answers we don't know, but to just concentrate on methane, we, we lose, I'm gonna say I think we lose and if we just concentrate on something else. So you just brought into all these things you need to start thinking about to reduce the total environmental impact of food production. I thought that was really good.
Scott (32:08):
Yeah. And Dr. Newbold just, you know, couple Yeah, go ahead.
John (32:12):
Yeah, I was, I was just smiling when Clay was kind of maybe a bit hesitant there about answering your question about what were the key takeaways. 'cause I thought when I was preparing this, I thought there's no real key takeaways in this, but but in a, in a sense, that's also not the objective. I think the objective in preparing this was to try to open up the discussion a little bit and introduce some of these new things and, and yeah, hopefully some, some good food for thought. But just, just to summarize, then completely agree with Bill. Don't focus on one metric in the, in isolation of the rest of them. So, you know, methane is not the Beall and ends all of the environmental impact of, of cows trade-offs. Yeah. unforeseen consequences. If you, if you're setting off in a particular direction, whether that's trying to drive methane down or for example, trying to drive milk production up, think about the potential trade offs.
John (32:59):
Think about the unforeseen consequences. And as I mentioned earlier on, if we are trying to drive methane yield down, we are likely to reduce this, this quest, this efficiency of, of human edible food production. And then the other key, key sort of thinking point about this, I think is, yeah, we're not, we're not in isolation. You know, no man is an island. So it's this system's approach. So the field is part of the farm. The farm is part of the neighborhood, the neighborhood is part of the region, et cetera, et cetera.
Scott (33:26):
Yeah. Interesting. It's been a great topic. I've enjoyed spending time with you here today. And Bill, great job with the discussion here.
John (33:35):
Looking forward to hearing the talk as well.
Scott (33:36):
Yeah, absolutely.
John (33:38):
No pressure that then.
Scott (33:39):
Yeah. So yeah, I want to thank everybody for joining us today. I also wanna thank our loyal audience for coming along once again on this discussion. We hope you learn something. I hope you had some fun and we hope to see you next time here at the Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
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