Environmental Footprint of Beef Production

Dr. Galen Erickson Author

08/29/2022 Added

11 Plays

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Dr. Erickson talks about the impact that beef production has on the environment.

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[00:00:00.460](upbeat music)
[00:00:07.020]Our next speaker is Dr. Galen Erickson.
[00:00:09.780]He is the UNL feedlot extension specialist,
[00:00:12.974]teaches research,
[00:00:14.848]has some administrative responsibilities now
[00:00:17.790]with our Beef Innovation Hub,
[00:00:20.880]but he's gonna be talking today about
[00:00:22.650]environmental footprint of livestock production.
[00:00:25.620]So I will turn the floor over to Dr. Erickson.
[00:00:28.260]It's good to be here.
[00:00:30.780]Obviously I focus some in the feedlot cattle area,
[00:00:33.930]but first time I came here,
[00:00:36.349]this building wasn't here 25 years ago.
[00:00:38.580]So spent a number of times and days out here at the ranch.
[00:00:42.390]So it's good to be in this part of the state.
[00:00:45.311]There's a large team that I wanna recognize
[00:00:48.180]that's working in this space, which I will comment on.
[00:00:50.970]But before I do, obviously,
[00:00:52.260]if you don't get our beef report,
[00:00:54.090]we do a lot of other work besides some environmental things.
[00:00:56.978]But over the years,
[00:00:58.440]we've probably spent at least 10 or 20% of our program
[00:01:01.893]research wise to try and help solve some environmental
[00:01:06.090]things that that we're worried about.
[00:01:08.010]And that people are concerned with.
[00:01:09.969]More lately, we've been focused on carbon.
[00:01:13.421]And really what that means is we have to raise money
[00:01:16.625]to then work on things and solve some of those problems
[00:01:19.890]that require research to do that.
[00:01:21.990]So the two I wanna recognize would be LTAR,
[00:01:24.810]Long Term Agroecosystem Research.
[00:01:26.550]There's 18 sites across the US.
[00:01:28.590]We're one of them.
[00:01:29.820]And so we are partnered with ARS on campus and ARD
[00:01:35.258]on our side and have a group of people working on that.
[00:01:39.870]And then more recently foundation for food and agri research
[00:01:43.740]has supported some of the cow systems work I'm gonna show.
[00:01:46.920]So there's a team of people because I'm gonna show you some
[00:01:49.886]things that are not normally what we talk about
[00:01:53.010]when we do cattle research and performance things.
[00:01:55.816]So you're gonna see things about air quality and fluxes
[00:01:59.070]and air emissions that I'm gonna share.
[00:02:00.816]I can't do those things, right?
[00:02:02.820]So there's a team that Andy Suyker in
[00:02:04.860]school natural resources and others that are involved.
[00:02:07.260]So I wanna recognize them.
[00:02:09.240]Okay, when you talk about sustainability,
[00:02:12.776]carbon's just one of 'em.
[00:02:14.820]And actually in my opinion,
[00:02:16.350]carbon might be the one that's gonna be the easiest
[00:02:18.822]for us to resolve
[00:02:21.084]and "address" from a beef industry perspective.
[00:02:25.740]Nitrogen's actually an issue I'm probably more worried
[00:02:28.530]about, but I'm not gonna talk about that today.
[00:02:30.180]I do wanna highlight it though, that we are,
[00:02:32.496]we need to do a better job managing nitrogen in agriculture.
[00:02:35.465]So that's something we're gonna focus on in the future.
[00:02:38.430]Phosphorus, everybody's heard about manure,
[00:02:40.110]we've done a better job, high fertilizer prices,
[00:02:42.570]help manure movement.
[00:02:44.220]And I think we probably do a better job
[00:02:46.230]of spreading manure today,
[00:02:47.610]but that's still a large effort.
[00:02:49.230]It's primarily a feedlot issue.
[00:02:51.035]Water use, gets a lot of attention.
[00:02:53.970]We're in the middle of that space,
[00:02:55.552]but we've improved in that as well over the last 20 years.
[00:02:59.524]Won't talk much about that, but those are certainly,
[00:03:02.152]you know, things we need to be aware of
[00:03:04.500]from an environmental standpoint.
[00:03:06.120]Today I wanna talk primarily about carbon
[00:03:08.004]and greenhouse gases.
[00:03:10.560]Okay?
[00:03:11.393]So there's a cycle that happens.
[00:03:13.020]And this is what people talk about,
[00:03:14.605]where carbon is being recycled around in the atmosphere
[00:03:20.010]and into land and so on.
[00:03:22.380]What's really of interest is how do cattle influence
[00:03:26.147]this cycle in the form of carbon.
[00:03:29.220]And that's gotten a lot of attention, mostly negative.
[00:03:32.392]And I think we want to talk about that
[00:03:35.010]and why that's happened.
[00:03:36.761]One thing you have to remember,
[00:03:39.390]the carbon issue is primarily driven by fossil fuel use.
[00:03:44.850]And when we burn fossil fuels,
[00:03:46.259]it becomes CO2 in the atmosphere
[00:03:48.461]and it's around for a thousand years.
[00:03:51.840]So anybody that's concerned about CO2 in the atmosphere,
[00:03:55.904]stop driving fossil fuel based vehicles,
[00:03:59.415]probably turn off your lights
[00:04:01.800]and we need to change our power grid.
[00:04:03.570]Until we do that, the carbon issue's not gonna go away.
[00:04:06.500]The question isn't that most people forget about that,
[00:04:09.870]'cause they want electricity and they wanna drive.
[00:04:13.260]The issue then people raise is with cattle
[00:04:16.020]and how agriculture contributes to that problem.
[00:04:18.660]But I'm telling you the big issues is fossil fuels.
[00:04:21.960]We're not gonna solve that today for sure.
[00:04:25.110]We're not working on that space.
[00:04:26.940]Okay. So when people say greenhouse gas is what they mean.
[00:04:29.700]They mean carbon dioxide, CO2, we're all breathing today.
[00:04:34.260]You're all contributing to greenhouse gases today, right?
[00:04:37.650]When you breathe out,
[00:04:38.483]you're producing CO2.
[00:04:39.990]Good thing is plants take that up,
[00:04:42.360]make it into usable feed and food and fiber.
[00:04:45.408]And that's a cycle that's been going on forever.
[00:04:50.520]What usually gets attention for cattle is methane.
[00:04:54.343]Methane is naturally produced by cattle.
[00:04:56.944]It's enteric.
[00:04:58.402]That just means it's in their GI tract.
[00:05:00.887]And because they're ruminant,
[00:05:02.820]which allows them to graze all of this grassland.
[00:05:05.836]We need 'em to be a ruminant.
[00:05:08.550]So there's bacteria in the rumen
[00:05:10.230]that turn grass into beef.
[00:05:14.400]But to do that there's
[00:05:16.653]an energetic advantage that requires them to have a certain
[00:05:22.470]number of microbes in the rumen called archaea
[00:05:25.260]that produce methane.
[00:05:26.430]So it's a natural process.
[00:05:27.930]All ruminants produce it.
[00:05:29.610]So do swamp lands.
[00:05:30.930]So does anything that's got anaerobic,
[00:05:32.970]meaning no oxygen and bacteria in it
[00:05:35.428]is likely producing methane.
[00:05:36.657]So cattle is just one piece of that.
[00:05:38.820]That's the one that everybody talks about.
[00:05:40.972]Okay.
[00:05:43.110]Everybody's heard,
[00:05:44.070]well, that's even worse than CO2.
[00:05:46.530]23 to 28 times worse.
[00:05:49.560]That is true.
[00:05:51.300]Except I said before,
[00:05:53.621]that CO2 has been around in the atmosphere
[00:05:56.790]for a thousand years once we release it.
[00:06:00.180]More recently, atmospheric chemists have talked about this,
[00:06:04.413]that we should not be near as worried about methane
[00:06:07.440]as we are CO2 because it's only around for 10 to 12 years.
[00:06:11.133]And then, you know what it becomes?
[00:06:13.500]It becomes CO2.
[00:06:15.180]So if cattle consume grass that took CO2
[00:06:18.420]outta the atmosphere, then they produce methane
[00:06:22.290]it is worse than CO2,
[00:06:24.450]but in 10 years it becomes CO2 again
[00:06:26.910]and goes back into a plant.
[00:06:28.500]That's the carbon cycle,
[00:06:30.180]which by the way has been happening forever.
[00:06:32.280]What has not been happening forever is taking fossil fuel
[00:06:36.210]outta the ground and putting it into the atmosphere.
[00:06:39.510]Does everybody follow the concern?
[00:06:42.090]So methane is worse,
[00:06:43.470]but you can't really say it's 28 times worse than CO2,
[00:06:45.660]'cause doesn't lasts very long.
[00:06:47.640]So more recently those atmospheric chemists and others
[00:06:51.120]have said, we need to use a different approach.
[00:06:53.250]That's what that is.
[00:06:54.150]I'll come back to that later.
[00:06:55.500]Nitrous oxide is a bad one.
[00:06:57.270]Luckily we don't produce a lot of it.
[00:06:59.040]It's naturally produced again, usually in soils,
[00:07:03.930]but it is potent.
[00:07:05.250]So a little bit of this creates some havoc
[00:07:07.860]if you wanna worry about the whole system.
[00:07:10.890]Okay beef and agriculture in general
[00:07:15.180]may or may not be part of
[00:07:16.560]the problem or part of the solution.
[00:07:18.450]That's what I think I want to get across to you today.
[00:07:21.480]So I'm gonna focus on that.
[00:07:22.950]I'm gonna go through some of the carbon work we've been
[00:07:25.230]doing and compare that a little bit elsewhere.
[00:07:27.960]I've talked about this producing methane is normal
[00:07:30.769]and it's therefore a little bit hard to get rid of,
[00:07:33.930]but it's being worked on.
[00:07:35.490]Generally methane is produced
[00:07:37.980]at a greater rate in forage based diets.
[00:07:41.250]So cattle on pasture and in forage do produce more methane
[00:07:44.535]per unit of energy than cattle in the feed lot system,
[00:07:48.060]but still cattle produce it in feed lots as well.
[00:07:51.972]There are arguments against, well,
[00:07:55.260]why do we feed grain and byproducts to these cattle
[00:07:58.260]and finishing in feed lots.
[00:08:00.300]One thing to remember,
[00:08:01.650]we have about 90 million head of cattle in our herd
[00:08:04.860]on January 1st, Brazil's got 220 million.
[00:08:08.310]We produce more beef in a year.
[00:08:10.200]Does anybody know why?
[00:08:11.940]It's 'cause you do a better job on the ranching sector.
[00:08:14.430]We're more efficient at exposing cows
[00:08:16.497]and getting wean cows from them.
[00:08:18.600]But we also make 'em bigger and faster,
[00:08:21.227]bigger, faster by feeding 'em in feed lots.
[00:08:25.560]Okay?
[00:08:26.640]That has a big impact on this 'cause
[00:08:28.440]a cow in Brazil is gonna be producing more methane
[00:08:32.279]throughout its lifetime than a cow here.
[00:08:34.811]When I say cow, I'm using the media term,
[00:08:37.328]we all know that as a feed lot steer right?
[00:08:40.050]A market steer.
[00:08:40.920]But anyway.
[00:08:42.900]This is very tough work and I believe we need to focus on
[00:08:48.630]what are the emissions from the whole system.
[00:08:50.820]And I'll explain why here in a minute
[00:08:53.070]of why we can't just focus on will cattle produce methane,
[00:08:56.700]let's cut methane and then we're done.
[00:08:58.980]I don't believe that's what we should do.
[00:09:00.150]I think we should be looking at what's the effect
[00:09:01.710]of the whole system, but it's tough to do that.
[00:09:03.900]And I'll explain why.
[00:09:05.190]So we've been measuring flux that comes in and out of soil
[00:09:08.757]and cattle and trying to figure out what's the effect
[00:09:13.080]of the whole system.
[00:09:13.913]And I think you'll see why that's important.
[00:09:15.990]So I'm gonna talk about two things.
[00:09:18.240]First, I'm gonna talk a little bit about methane
[00:09:19.741]'cause we do need to focus on cutting it,
[00:09:22.290]if we wanna say yes,
[00:09:23.310]we're doing better and so on.
[00:09:25.110]Then I'm gonna focus on the system that everybody's normally
[00:09:27.870]a little more excited about the system stuff, so.
[00:09:30.390]But I wanted to bore you first with the methane.
[00:09:33.069]There are different ways of measuring this.
[00:09:35.771]So this has been done for 50 years.
[00:09:40.320]Cattle stick their head in a box.
[00:09:42.135]The air's controlled.
[00:09:43.590]We sample that throughout the whole day and we can tell you
[00:09:46.830]exactly how much methane and CO2 they're producing.
[00:09:50.137]You think cattle enjoy that process.
[00:09:53.014]That's not normal, right?
[00:09:55.080]They don't like sticking their head in there.
[00:09:56.549]And after about two days of it,
[00:09:58.410]they stop eating as much
[00:09:59.640]and they're certainly no longer normal.
[00:10:01.595]Now the other thing you've noticed is that we're measuring
[00:10:04.530]it from the head and everybody sees the media things
[00:10:06.810]and say, it's cattle farts.
[00:10:08.070]I'm sorry for using that language.
[00:10:10.140]It's not.
[00:10:11.310]92 to 95% comes out the front.
[00:10:14.070]Doesn't come out the back end.
[00:10:15.960]Okay.
[00:10:16.793]So when we measure methane, you can measure it.
[00:10:19.080]It's what comes out naturally when they eruct it out.
[00:10:22.860]We can test certain things that if you say I've got this
[00:10:26.850]great compound or this great feed,
[00:10:29.065]I wanna see what it does to methane.
[00:10:30.955]This will work,
[00:10:32.187]but remember it's a little bit artificial
[00:10:34.427]and we can only do so many head.
[00:10:36.858]And so we gotta repeat it and so on.
[00:10:39.300]We do use this effectively
[00:10:40.982]when we want to test something new
[00:10:42.859]and especially if it's not approved.
[00:10:45.210]So we are testing things right now that are not approved
[00:10:48.360]to be fed to cattle.
[00:10:49.590]So when we test it,
[00:10:50.670]those cattle can't go to slaughter and enter the food chain.
[00:10:54.018]Everybody knows cattle prices.
[00:10:55.500]We don't wanna do that on very many cattle.
[00:10:57.570]So we do use it a lot to test new
[00:10:59.820]and emerging things that you can't use yet,
[00:11:02.100]which I'll share a couple of those
[00:11:03.945]that are quite effective, but you can't use 'em yet.
[00:11:07.469]The other approach is you put 'em in a bigger head box
[00:11:12.277]instead of just being the head you got 'em
[00:11:14.280]all in there.
[00:11:15.120]University of California, Davis has got a system
[00:11:17.296]they've termed it bovine bubbles,
[00:11:20.160]'cause there's literally a bubble.
[00:11:22.419]Airflows controlled in and out very effective.
[00:11:25.500]Michigan state has another one.
[00:11:27.030]It's more on concrete and barns and we have a more
[00:11:32.010]economical version, but yet just as effective.
[00:11:34.811]This was a sheep barn for 20, 30 years
[00:11:38.100]at the University of Nebraska.
[00:11:38.933]We no longer have a sheep program.
[00:11:40.890]Cattle operations took that facility
[00:11:43.687]and it was pretty well enclosed.
[00:11:46.151]So we put garage doors on these openings.
[00:11:48.964]You can see there's an open air inlet.
[00:11:51.420]So we pull air into this barn and right about here
[00:11:54.770]there are fans that are continuously pulling air through.
[00:11:58.065]All I've gotta know is airflow and what the concentration is
[00:12:02.755]of methane and CO2 coming out.
[00:12:04.920]Does everybody follow?
[00:12:06.240]And it works really well and it was quite economical
[00:12:09.630]actually for us to build.
[00:12:12.300]So once a day hit the garage door opener, feed the cattle,
[00:12:16.710]close the garage, 24 hours, 23 hours and 45 minutes
[00:12:21.300]we're measuring excellent CO2 and methane produced by cattle
[00:12:24.300]on a pen basis.
[00:12:29.130]We get lots of data.
[00:12:30.600]So we'll run cattle through that barn
[00:12:33.210]for five days and it's very robust.
[00:12:35.775]We pull the cattle out, we measure the bar and empty.
[00:12:39.090]And then the crew pulls in the skid loaders.
[00:12:41.760]We scrape the manure out and then we measure it clean.
[00:12:44.670]So I can tell if they're on time or not for
[00:12:47.010]when they're supposed to be clean the pen,
[00:12:48.360]'cause we can see it in the sensors.
[00:12:50.040]Right?
[00:12:51.930]It's a good way to check.
[00:12:54.060]All of you may want that. Right?
[00:12:56.730]Okay.
[00:12:57.870]The other system that I didn't highlight is
[00:13:01.159]there's really two,
[00:13:03.032]but the one here in the US, that's really popular
[00:13:06.060]that's used and I'll show you a little bit of data from it
[00:13:08.219]is sea locks, green feed system.
[00:13:11.250]So a little different than the smart feed system
[00:13:13.230]that I saw outside.
[00:13:14.940]But it's a pretty effective way.
[00:13:17.062]It's sort of like a head box,
[00:13:18.750]but you can put it out on pasture
[00:13:20.160]and you convince the cattle to put their head in it.
[00:13:22.560]Okay. But that's the concept.
[00:13:24.120]But you're measuring it for a short period of time
[00:13:25.770]throughout the day not all 24 hours.
[00:13:29.850]Okay.
[00:13:30.683]So I wanna go through a few things to make you experts on
[00:13:33.270]methane and then I'll switch to the system.
[00:13:36.240]First off, two things that we have to know
[00:13:39.590]and then we can pretty accurately predict methane
[00:13:42.480]production by cattle.
[00:13:43.860]If you tell us how much cattle eating and the diet quality,
[00:13:47.515]how much energy's in diet,
[00:13:49.053]there are really good models
[00:13:50.717]because there's been hundreds of studies
[00:13:52.858]looking at how cattle,
[00:13:54.450]how much methane comes from cattle.
[00:13:56.220]So somebody's saying we don't know how much methane is
[00:13:58.410]produced by cattle.
[00:13:59.370]If you tell me intake and diet quality,
[00:14:01.377]I can tell you really close.
[00:14:04.440]So I'm not too concerned about that.
[00:14:06.610]Here's the problem.
[00:14:08.029]How many of you can tell me with some exactness,
[00:14:10.740]how much you're cattle eating when they're out grazing?
[00:14:13.410]That's a harder question.
[00:14:15.510]So I believe one of our biggest challenges
[00:14:17.226]is an extensive grazing systems is
[00:14:19.830]knowing methane production
[00:14:20.970]not because we don't understand diet quality,
[00:14:22.770]although that's also a question, right?
[00:14:25.800]Cattle select different quality
[00:14:27.600]than maybe what's standing out there.
[00:14:29.134]You got a diet sample.
[00:14:30.630]I remember the esophageal officiated cows.
[00:14:32.850]Are they still here?
[00:14:33.701]Right?
[00:14:34.560]That's tough work, but you gotta estimate diet quality.
[00:14:37.621]And they got no intake.
[00:14:39.240]We can predict on pasture then,
[00:14:40.860]but that's tough.
[00:14:42.270]And feed lots pens,
[00:14:43.920]those bovine bubbles, from Davis or our sheet barn,
[00:14:46.680]our methane barn.
[00:14:47.640]It works really well.
[00:14:52.815]One thing that people talk about is we need to add fat
[00:14:55.830]to the diet.
[00:14:56.663]If you add fat to the diet, it'll cut methane.
[00:14:59.199]And there's good work on that.
[00:15:00.990]Both from the meat animal research center here in Nebraska,
[00:15:03.930]as well as from UNL, this is some data on it
[00:15:06.750]showing how many grams per day were produced
[00:15:09.750]in methane for cattle fat,
[00:15:11.220]a finishing diet with no supplemental fat
[00:15:13.540]and a finishing diet with 3% corn oil added.
[00:15:16.740]And it cuts methane by about 15%.
[00:15:21.420]Why?
[00:15:22.253]It's because of how fat works in the rumen
[00:15:24.360]and accepts hydrogens and takes it away
[00:15:26.280]from the methane component.
[00:15:28.453]That's just that on in English units.
[00:15:31.800]Another thing that's been talked a lot about is
[00:15:33.946]everybody's got some unique thing out there in the world
[00:15:37.230]says, well, let's see if it cuts methane.
[00:15:38.914]And sometimes they say it cuts methane
[00:15:41.370]even before they have data to show it does.
[00:15:43.680]Okay. So you're gonna see a lot of things marketed that.
[00:15:45.720]Well, if you feed that, it'll help methane.
[00:15:47.640]A lot of these have been tried in vitro
[00:15:50.910]so we can put it in a test tube
[00:15:52.620]and measure how much methane is produced by the bacteria,
[00:15:55.191]again from the rumen and some of those show benefits.
[00:15:58.732]But then when we take it and put it in the animal,
[00:16:01.170]that just means in vivo in the animal doesn't work.
[00:16:03.793]But some of these may.
[00:16:05.416]And so I've got a long list here of natural ingredients,
[00:16:08.236]tannins and essential oils that are being tried.
[00:16:12.234]Some of those may work, some may not.
[00:16:14.743]I just wanna make you aware of that.
[00:16:16.350]Direct fed microbials.
[00:16:17.760]Another one that's been proposed.
[00:16:19.320]Well, we're gonna get a DFM and if you feed it to cattle,
[00:16:22.260]it'll cut methane.
[00:16:23.123]Again I would challenge that in the absence of good data,
[00:16:26.442]I want to be proven that they work.
[00:16:33.090]Rumensin, Monensin, scientific name.
[00:16:35.609]It does, has been shown to cut methane,
[00:16:38.122]but in the dairy industry,
[00:16:40.099]at least when it was done in dairy cows,
[00:16:42.276]it was transitory, meaning it was effective,
[00:16:45.120]but only for, I think up to six weeks
[00:16:47.292]and then cattle kind of readjusted.
[00:16:49.650]There's some reasons for that.
[00:16:50.850]So if you never have cattle on it,
[00:16:52.680]you put 'em on rumensin for six weeks,
[00:16:54.750]you would expect a small methane reduction
[00:16:56.628]probably after that you won't see, they'll readjust.
[00:16:59.940]But it it's one possibility.
[00:17:02.730]Now there's two others.
[00:17:04.470]I'm gonna show three other things.
[00:17:06.240]Two that work really well.
[00:17:08.310]One that's coming is called 3-NOP.
[00:17:11.267]That's what...
[00:17:12.100]Everybody, no one wants to say this word,
[00:17:14.280]including me.
[00:17:15.630]So people say 3-NOP and the trade name that's gonna be
[00:17:19.140]marketed as is likely gonna be Bovaer.
[00:17:21.840]It is approved for use in the European Union,
[00:17:24.762]Brazil and Chile.
[00:17:28.500]Okay?
[00:17:29.333]It's not approved for use in the US, yet.
[00:17:34.470]It's effective.
[00:17:35.327]It's a 30% reduction in methane for cattle
[00:17:38.007]and forage based diets,
[00:17:39.930]considerably greater for cattle and feed lots.
[00:17:43.590]So that's one that's coming.
[00:17:46.200]That's my prediction.
[00:17:47.280]It's gotta be FDA approved and be proven to be safe.
[00:17:50.100]But once it is, that'll be a tool where we can say, okay,
[00:17:54.090]we want to cut methane feed Bovaer as an example.
[00:18:00.330]One we've been trying,
[00:18:01.590]'cause everybody talks about biochar
[00:18:03.630]and all the great things it can do in agriculture.
[00:18:06.360]One proposed option for biochar is that if you feed biochar
[00:18:10.410]to cattle, it'll cut methane.
[00:18:13.200]We've done numerous sets of studies.
[00:18:15.164]So far, no impact in the animal.
[00:18:19.432]Some of times there was in vitro work
[00:18:21.900]that we did that showed it worked,
[00:18:23.880]didn't work when we took it to the cattle.
[00:18:25.710]That doesn't make sense to me.
[00:18:26.880]So that's why I pointed out to you.
[00:18:28.590]But that's not uncommon.
[00:18:30.240]So we've done a lot of testing on biochar.
[00:18:32.629]And so far...
[00:18:33.588]Now biochar is like saying forage.
[00:18:36.580]There's all kinds of different forages, right?
[00:18:39.150]There's all kinds of different biochar.
[00:18:40.599]So someone could always come back and say,
[00:18:42.840]well, our biochar does.
[00:18:44.524]And I would say it may, but you gotta prove that.
[00:18:47.673]Does that make sense?
[00:18:48.780]So there's lots of different types of biochar.
[00:18:50.769]So far the ones that we've used have shown zero impact
[00:18:54.419]on methane produced by cattle.
[00:18:59.400]The one, the third one that I wanna mention
[00:19:02.400]that's being talked about a lot right now
[00:19:05.040]is ones called red seaweed asparagopsis.
[00:19:08.250]Okay?
[00:19:09.480]That's the one that came out recently in a,
[00:19:11.528]in an article and got a lot of press the University of
[00:19:14.610]California, Davis using a green feed system,
[00:19:18.120]tested feeding 0.25 and 0.5% of this Asparagopsis.
[00:19:25.680]It's effective. Okay?
[00:19:27.746]Really effective at cutting methane in grams per day,
[00:19:31.429]methane per unit of intake.
[00:19:33.570]It does hurt cattle intakes.
[00:19:35.220]Some, so cattle ate less, but even on a per unit of intake,
[00:19:38.460]if I fed something and it cuts intake,
[00:19:40.530]it'll cut methane, but it may also cut performance.
[00:19:43.320]You understand the point?
[00:19:44.220]So if I decrease intake,
[00:19:45.660]I'm gonna cut methane,
[00:19:46.530]but that's maybe not a positive.
[00:19:48.210]In this case when you express it
[00:19:49.950]even per unit of intake, big reduction.
[00:19:52.049]And again, even more effective in feedlot
[00:19:54.360]that diets than forage based diets.
[00:19:56.610]This again is not approved to be fed today in the US.
[00:20:02.730]So the two most effective things, if you were told,
[00:20:05.328]well, you need to do something about methane
[00:20:06.892]you can't do much by feeding a feed additive today.
[00:20:09.524]That's my assessment.
[00:20:11.850]You will be probably in the future, but not today.
[00:20:15.780]Okay.
[00:20:16.613]Second thing I wanna switch to then,
[00:20:18.086]and then wrap up is now what about, that's all fine.
[00:20:22.058]That's in the room and that's for the animal.
[00:20:24.660]That's just methane.
[00:20:25.920]And by the way, that's only focused
[00:20:27.660]on how much they're producing.
[00:20:29.220]So up till today,
[00:20:30.870]everybody that worries about greenhouse gases
[00:20:34.110]and beef cattle production worry about two things,
[00:20:37.191]how much methane is coming out of our system
[00:20:40.199]and how much nitrous oxides coming out of our system.
[00:20:43.560]Nobody has worried about how much CO2
[00:20:46.460]is coming back into the system.
[00:20:48.094]At least when they talk about beef cattle production.
[00:20:51.330]Okay?
[00:20:52.800]And so what we wanted to do was we wanted to measure
[00:20:55.860]nitrous oxide coming off,
[00:20:57.396]methane coming out of our system
[00:20:59.601]from the cattle or anything else,
[00:21:01.980]but also how much carbon's coming back into the system,
[00:21:05.422]based on the land management.
[00:21:08.490]Here's the key assumption.
[00:21:10.290]Everybody that does modeling,
[00:21:12.330]including the federal government about what agriculture
[00:21:15.024]contributes makes one key assumption, plants grow
[00:21:19.226]and when they grow, they take up CO2.
[00:21:23.280]When cattle eat the grass that's grown, they produce CO2.
[00:21:27.660]The assumption has been is that those two things are equal.
[00:21:30.271]Does that make sense?
[00:21:31.740]That the plant takes up CO2 at the same amount
[00:21:34.320]that the cattle release it.
[00:21:35.700]In most models, that's an assumption.
[00:21:37.501]So you assume that then you measure methane coming out
[00:21:41.100]and nitrous oxide coming out.
[00:21:42.840]I would argue and challenge
[00:21:44.310]that that's not a fair assumption, which I'll prove to you.
[00:21:47.640]Okay, to do that,
[00:21:49.058]to measure that carbon uptake
[00:21:51.188]or flux from the system,
[00:21:53.496]there are a couple ways we've chosen to use Eddy covariance.
[00:21:57.480]That's been done for 25 years in lots of different field
[00:22:01.620]applications in agriculture.
[00:22:03.354]It's a well-established method for plants,
[00:22:06.131]for something that's uniformly grown
[00:22:08.840]that's on a flat area and a big enough field.
[00:22:13.110]That's the assumptions that go into that.
[00:22:14.860]And it's fairly accurate,
[00:22:16.830]but it takes some measurements
[00:22:18.330]and a lot of physics and air turbulence discussion.
[00:22:21.780]So these towers take measurements 10 times a second,
[00:22:24.692]measure a footprint.
[00:22:26.105]Now, apply that to a cattle situation.
[00:22:28.948]If cattle are in this footprint,
[00:22:32.072]they're reractating methane and CO2 breathing out CO2.
[00:22:36.720]So you gotta know when they're in the footprint
[00:22:38.340]and when they're not.
[00:22:39.690]So we might measure a pasture when cattle are not in this,
[00:22:42.931]we might...
[00:22:44.010]The cattle might be over here.
[00:22:45.450]There might be other times when they are in that footprint
[00:22:47.730]and you gotta sort that out.
[00:22:49.110]That's been part of the challenge
[00:22:50.670]and what we've been focused on.
[00:22:53.640]So this is an example.
[00:22:54.720]To do that, you have to know where the cattle are.
[00:22:56.580]So we've used GPS.
[00:22:57.841]I would say we had
[00:22:59.220]a version one that didn't work so great.
[00:23:02.650]It worked about 80% of the time.
[00:23:05.520]But with some extrapolation
[00:23:07.890]that we had a measurement here,
[00:23:09.570]we had a measurement here and we missed the one
[00:23:11.430]in the middle.
[00:23:12.510]Well, we assumed the animal was walking
[00:23:14.340]from point A to point B.
[00:23:15.870]That's what we mean by gap filling.
[00:23:17.700]It got better.
[00:23:18.570]But now EG and some of the things
[00:23:20.310]that they're working on in the precision animal management,
[00:23:22.601]that's gotten better to where it's 95% plus always.
[00:23:27.180]So I feel better about our GPS location,
[00:23:29.447]but these blue dots are a cow herd of gyms
[00:23:32.849]that was on this project.
[00:23:35.190]And the blue is where the cattle were on a cornfield
[00:23:38.790]in the wintertime,
[00:23:40.080]grazing cornstalk.
[00:23:41.610]The water tanks here, you can see,
[00:23:43.260]they hung out by the water tank some,
[00:23:45.210]the Eddy covariance towers here,
[00:23:47.430]those cows enjoyed spending more time in these two areas.
[00:23:51.900]Why do I point this out?
[00:23:53.190]Because some of the previous work that others have done
[00:23:55.920]on Eddy covariance with cattle
[00:23:57.930]is they made another assumption.
[00:23:59.760]They said the cattle are always uniformly distributed.
[00:24:02.941]So it doesn't matter where they're at.
[00:24:05.610]This field is a very typical,
[00:24:07.925]nice Eastern Nebraska flat cornfield.
[00:24:12.839]I looked that field and I wouldn't say that there was any
[00:24:15.150]reason why those cows were hanging out here
[00:24:17.190]until you look really closely.
[00:24:18.570]And these two spots were the lowest spots in the field
[00:24:20.970]and the cows are out there grazing in the winter.
[00:24:22.950]Cows are smart, right?
[00:24:24.450]They found the lowest spots.
[00:24:26.220]So I do think knowing in the cattle location is important
[00:24:29.400]for this Eddy covariance approach.
[00:24:31.050]Some would disagree with that.
[00:24:33.900]This is an Oat forage cover crop grazed in the fall.
[00:24:37.723]Again, you can see the distribution.
[00:24:39.851]So I'm gonna wrap up
[00:24:42.150]and share just some summary of two systems
[00:24:44.640]that we've measured.
[00:24:45.960]Again, this is more on Jim's project
[00:24:48.240]that he got funding for,
[00:24:50.054]where it's a conventional system.
[00:24:52.147]Calves are born in the spring.
[00:24:54.129]Calves graze in the summer on pasture.
[00:24:57.022]Calves are weaned in the fall.
[00:24:58.939]Cows are running on cornstalks and then dry lotted
[00:25:02.520]for a short period before they go back out the grass.
[00:25:05.250]Pretty conventional, especially for Eastern Nebraska.
[00:25:08.910]That was compared to a less conventional system
[00:25:12.846]where cows are dry lotted dry in the summer.
[00:25:17.392]They calve in the late summer August.
[00:25:20.880]And then they go to fall cover crops with calves.
[00:25:24.021]Calves are weened in the same day of age,
[00:25:26.370]but in the wintertime in January,
[00:25:27.923]then the cows are grazing cornstalk dry.
[00:25:30.870]So cows are grazing roughly 85 days
[00:25:33.707]from what I remember uncover crop in the fall.
[00:25:37.080]In this system,
[00:25:37.913]they're grazing 175 or 185 days somewhere
[00:25:41.220]in that ballpark in this conventional system.
[00:25:43.830]I point that out because in a little bit,
[00:25:46.050]I'm gonna show you data from these two systems.
[00:25:48.076]Number of days grazing is really important
[00:25:51.072]and where they're grazing.
[00:25:53.100]So point out, these are grazing less than these guys
[00:25:56.111]in the conventional system.
[00:25:58.080]Okay.
[00:25:59.400]The Eddy covariance system, this is net ecosystem exchange.
[00:26:03.600]It's actually net carbon exchange and it's expressed as CO2
[00:26:07.230]not carbon.
[00:26:08.160]None of you care about that,
[00:26:09.420]but it is important when you compare it to other literature.
[00:26:12.008]So this is the pasture that the cows were grazing
[00:26:15.630]in the summer from January 1 in 2020 to December.
[00:26:20.106]Well to January 1, 2021.
[00:26:23.670]So what happens is there's a little bit of carbon lost
[00:26:26.180]from the pasture and then the pasture greens up
[00:26:29.177]and that's accumulating carbon,
[00:26:31.887]and then the cows are removed.
[00:26:33.713]And then the pasture's losing a little bit of carbon
[00:26:36.325]after that process.
[00:26:38.149]Now here's the challenge.
[00:26:39.853]The cows are out grazing that pasture,
[00:26:42.219]but this is actually when the cows were not
[00:26:44.790]in the footprint.
[00:26:45.960]Does that make sense?
[00:26:47.010]So this is ignoring the cow's CO2 and methane
[00:26:50.520]that it's producing, but the pasture's taking up carbon.
[00:26:53.618]That's an important component.
[00:26:55.380]Notice this is pretty rapid grass growth
[00:26:57.751]than not much more growth,
[00:27:00.713]but the cows are still out there grazing.
[00:27:05.403]Okay.
[00:27:06.870]So the net result of our measurements on the left
[00:27:11.610]is it doesn't matter,
[00:27:13.860]it happens to be in metric,
[00:27:14.910]but this is in an amount of kilograms produced
[00:27:18.043]on a carbon equivalent basis of nitrous oxide,
[00:27:22.801]CO2 respired by the cattle and methane.
[00:27:27.270]And the assumption here
[00:27:28.530]is that the methane is 23 times worse than CO2.
[00:27:32.826]That's an important assumption.
[00:27:34.440]Remember what I said before?
[00:27:36.179]Because over here,
[00:27:37.404]this is the amount of CO2 equivalent
[00:27:41.492]taken up by that pasture for that 185 day grazing.
[00:27:46.385]Those are about the same, 97%.
[00:27:51.360]So if you have the assumption
[00:27:53.160]of methane being 23 times worse than CO2
[00:27:57.965]and our Eastern Nebraska system for 2020 only
[00:28:02.233]the amount of pasture carbon uptake was about the same
[00:28:06.524]as the total greenhouse gas emissions emitted
[00:28:09.810]from our cow system.
[00:28:11.550]Now, one thing I've gotta add that is for the cows
[00:28:15.120]when they were on pasture and had the calf,
[00:28:17.790]that is for the cows through the winter,
[00:28:19.950]when they didn't have the calf.
[00:28:21.660]That is for the calf while it was grown and finished
[00:28:25.140]in the feed lot.
[00:28:27.270]So did you hear what I just said?
[00:28:29.370]That in this example for 2020, in Eastern Nebraska,
[00:28:33.240]this pasture took up more carbon to offset
[00:28:36.090]all of the greenhouse gas carbon equivalents
[00:28:38.487]produced for the whole system from birth to slaughter.
[00:28:43.196]This line is if you use what we think is probably going to
[00:28:48.630]be a more accepted methane adjustment to CO2
[00:28:52.860]that's debatable.
[00:28:56.070]Well, then it took up more carbon for that year.
[00:28:58.680]I'll show you what happened across some other years.
[00:29:01.230]Now I added in the other system, right?
[00:29:03.570]These two alt systems notice,
[00:29:05.820]and then here's the sequestration or the uptake for that
[00:29:08.492]flux that we measured on cover crop
[00:29:11.040]and it didn't offset those emissions.
[00:29:12.818]So I believe day's grazing and grazing systems is our saving
[00:29:17.760]grace for carbon uptake in the beef system.
[00:29:22.020]But there's a few things I'm nervous about.
[00:29:23.940]We need more years, we need more locations.
[00:29:26.302]We need to go west from Eastern Nebraska.
[00:29:28.839]So there's a whole lot of things I want to measure
[00:29:31.204]and have a lot more data on which we're trying to get
[00:29:33.954]before we conclude this.
[00:29:36.201]But I'm telling you for 2020, pretty exciting.
[00:29:40.530]And even a feedlot person,
[00:29:42.090]grazing systems is our saving grace for carbon.
[00:29:45.289]Now that was with a conventionally grazed summer pasture.
[00:29:49.350]Now I get questions
[00:29:50.280]what if we change stocking rates
[00:29:51.990]or change our grazing system?
[00:29:53.910]You understand all those questions are good questions.
[00:29:55.824]We don't date on.
[00:29:58.080]There are some other measurements
[00:29:59.430]that are done with those systems,
[00:30:00.930]but we don't have measurement for total flux
[00:30:02.970]from the whole system.
[00:30:04.320]How does this compare to other work?
[00:30:06.150]This is looking at carbon.
[00:30:07.533]Now it is net ecosystem exchange.
[00:30:10.551]Notice before I said we're using net carbon exchange.
[00:30:13.818]So the convention for this is normally it gets negative.
[00:30:17.340]That means carbon uptake.
[00:30:18.667]This was done in Switzerland,
[00:30:20.387]published in 2016 from a January to January's timeframe.
[00:30:24.693]Some carbon lost, carbon coming into that pasture.
[00:30:28.217]That's this line.
[00:30:29.975]And then wasn't lost again after
[00:30:32.221](indistinct)
[00:30:33.900]But the purple line is when the cows CO2 respiration
[00:30:37.920]was accounted for.
[00:30:39.030]Does that make sense?
[00:30:40.590]So what we're saying, isn't out there,
[00:30:43.102]but the question will be is will we always be able to retain
[00:30:46.920]about 200 grams of carbon per meter squared
[00:30:50.880]or not in our grazing system,
[00:30:52.230]because that's what was needed to do this.
[00:30:54.390]That may not happen.
[00:30:56.130]So summarizing and wrapping up.
[00:30:58.657]To put this in perspective, we had 282 grams.
[00:31:02.970]That's about a half a pound,
[00:31:04.435]taken up in a three foot by three foot section
[00:31:08.053]in this pasture from summer grazing.
[00:31:11.160]If that happens every year,
[00:31:12.840]it was enough to offset emissions from the whole system.
[00:31:15.900]We do have some other work going on.
[00:31:17.880]Oh, sorry.
[00:31:18.713]And if it was only 85 day grazing,
[00:31:20.610]it was only 138 grams.
[00:31:22.290]That was not enough to offset all those emissions.
[00:31:25.230]Did everybody follow?
[00:31:26.280]So these little numbers matter a lot.
[00:31:28.627]On whether it offsets and how much it offsets.
[00:31:32.625]I have a little confidence in this number that it's not bad,
[00:31:36.870]but it's the same type of area
[00:31:38.430]because it's less than a mile away.
[00:31:40.320]Two other pastures that we've monitored in 2019 and 2020
[00:31:43.976]had 269 grams uptake and 178.
[00:31:47.580]So in Eastern Nebraska at our research station near me,
[00:31:50.565]for Brome cool season pastures, we're seeing good uptake,
[00:31:54.999]but it'd be nice to know that number in all these different
[00:31:58.530]areas, in all different grazing systems.
[00:32:02.280]There are other places that have measured CO2.
[00:32:04.710]I showed you that work from Switzerland.
[00:32:06.660]There's some work in Oklahoma for a short period of time
[00:32:09.150]measuring this on pasture.
[00:32:10.649]And some of the LTR sites have been measuring CO2.
[00:32:14.158]I believe we've gotta measure all greenhouse gases
[00:32:16.464]and get a total cumulative greenhouse gas intensity
[00:32:19.709]if you will,
[00:32:20.750]if we're gonna do this and have a good conclusion.
[00:32:25.250]Okay. Wrapping up.
[00:32:27.420]Methane is not as potent as we thought.
[00:32:29.280]That's from the atmospheric folks.
[00:32:30.870]That's not from Galen,
[00:32:31.920]but I think that's correct.
[00:32:33.810]Beef is using this recycled carbon
[00:32:36.210]sometimes called biogenic.
[00:32:37.920]So it's not the same thing is putting CO2 out
[00:32:40.440]when you burn fossil fuel, that's missed often.
[00:32:43.561]Respirations, how much cattle breathe out
[00:32:46.740]has mostly been ignored and not accounted for.
[00:32:49.350]And I think that's a mistake
[00:32:50.490]if we wanna know total system flux.
[00:32:52.820]And I talked about that assumed balance
[00:32:54.990]that we made the assumption that cattle breathe out CO2,
[00:32:57.456]that the plant took up.
[00:32:59.130]And so the only thing we gotta worry about is methane
[00:33:00.870]and nitrous oxide.
[00:33:01.920]I don't think that's a fair assumption
[00:33:03.630]and needs to be challenged.
[00:33:05.160]Pastures, at least for what I've shown you right now
[00:33:07.530]for that one year in Eastern Nebraska
[00:33:09.330]did offset all the emissions.
[00:33:10.652]I believe we need to test this now in all kinds of systems.
[00:33:14.610]And that's what we're trying to do.
[00:33:16.044]I will just share that it took about a million dollars
[00:33:19.506]in four years to show you what I just showed you today.
[00:33:22.367]So you see it's not cheap work.
[00:33:24.201]We can do a lot of cattle feeding studies
[00:33:26.370]for that amount of money and a lot faster.
[00:33:29.010]So it's expensive, but I don't know how else
[00:33:31.200]to get the system.
[00:33:32.502]In the meantime, the methane can be done
[00:33:35.533]in lots of different approaches
[00:33:37.770]and using those other methods
[00:33:39.090]like I've talked about including
[00:33:40.593]green feed system and grazing systems and some of the
[00:33:44.100]methane barn work.
[00:33:45.872]We'll still have to cut methane.
[00:33:48.270]I don't want you to go away from here and say,
[00:33:49.830]oh, now I don't have to worry about methane.
[00:33:51.300]We still will.
[00:33:52.133]If we cut methane now, we're not just part of the problem.
[00:33:54.690]We're actually now becoming solutions.
[00:33:56.275]Does that make sense?
[00:33:57.300]So I don't want you to lose focus that this is all just
[00:34:00.495]hogwash and we don't have to worry about it.
[00:34:02.730]We should still be focused on cutting methane.
[00:34:05.740]That'd be a positive.
[00:34:06.573]Last comment I'd make,
[00:34:07.440]government's not gonna drive this.
[00:34:08.790]This is now Galen's opinion,
[00:34:09.990]not the University of Nebraska, Archie,
[00:34:11.850]but the government will not drive this issue.
[00:34:14.839]Food companies will.
[00:34:16.961]So if a meat packing plant gets pressure from a food company
[00:34:20.877]and who's the packing plant gonna pressure?
[00:34:24.840]Feedlot.
[00:34:25.673]Feedlot gets pressure. What happens?
[00:34:28.340]So I'm suggesting that the beef industry will be driving
[00:34:32.460]this issue and it'll be mostly
[00:34:34.170]consumer/ food company driven,
[00:34:36.390]and that we need more options and more work on grazing
[00:34:39.540]systems to know what is the effect of that.
[00:34:42.240]Okay I know I have plenty of summary slides,
[00:34:44.070]but my last one is we need to work on efficiency
[00:34:47.490]of our system, 'cause that's only gonna help.
[00:34:49.710]That's my Brazil, US.
[00:34:51.300]I picked on Brazil.
[00:34:52.170]I'm sorry, but that's our efficiency
[00:34:54.270]in why we're gonna be better off
[00:34:55.650]in the long run is because we have an efficient system
[00:34:58.380]that includes work you're doing.
[00:34:59.767]at the ranch level all the way through finishing.
[00:35:03.300]I do think there's gonna be limited options right now
[00:35:06.030]on reducing methane.
[00:35:07.650]But I think there's a couple that are coming.
[00:35:09.316]And anything else that you hear about just make sure it's
[00:35:12.300]based on good sound data.
[00:35:14.008]We need more grazing land work.
[00:35:15.836]My last comments are, so if you go away from here,
[00:35:19.025]I would be very careful when people are talking about carbon
[00:35:22.710]credit programs, there are really two kinds of approaches.
[00:35:25.860]One is based on outcome based.
[00:35:28.140]So you'll get paid money at the ranch.
[00:35:29.881]And in 10 years you just gotta
[00:35:31.980]prove that you increase carbon.
[00:35:34.200]If you have a drought on your nine,
[00:35:35.670]you're gonna lose carbon.
[00:35:36.660]Droughts, do a good job of releasing some carbon
[00:35:39.240]from that system.
[00:35:40.560]So then what happens in year 10 when you didn't accumulate
[00:35:43.440]the carbon, that's an outcome based carbon credit program.
[00:35:46.950]I'm much more excited about
[00:35:48.780]if you want to join a carbon credit program
[00:35:51.000]than it's focused on process based.
[00:35:52.710]What that means is they say,
[00:35:53.808]if you feed X or you graze your land this way,
[00:35:58.867]we've shown that that improves, it will pay you.
[00:36:02.520]You can prove that you did that.
[00:36:04.110]You understand my point?
[00:36:05.340]That's a better system.
[00:36:06.600]But if you sell carbon credit,
[00:36:08.340]it won't help beef's footprint
[00:36:09.930]'cause they won't be able to double count that.
[00:36:11.670]So I think we gotta sort out,
[00:36:12.930]when do you sell your credits?
[00:36:14.250]Which might be good for you.
[00:36:15.720]When do we capitalize on it
[00:36:17.190]and decrease beef's footprint?
[00:36:18.810]That's a thing that's not resolved in my opinion.
[00:36:22.414]Research and data are behind on this,
[00:36:24.840]but we'll try and catch up.
[00:36:27.369]I think that's all I have.
[00:36:29.040]So I'm taking questions, if there's any time.
[00:36:32.308](audience clapping)

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Environmental Footprint of Beef Production

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