How Now Green Cow
How Now Green Cow is examining how farms and food are shaping and being shaped by the climate crisis. Got a food and climate question? Send it to kma@greatwest.ca so it can be addressed in a future story.
When it comes to food and global heating, most of the carbon on our plates comes from cows. Cows account for some 62 per cent of the 12 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization reports. If we want to address global heating, we have to green the cow.
As previously discussed in this column, one way to do this is with less cow, such as by eating less meat and switching to plant-based alternatives.
Another is to create better cows. University of Alberta beef cattle geneticist John Basarab has been working on such cows for decades. He and his team were at Farmfair International on Nov. 8 to discuss their latest research.
Less burps, more bucks
Most farmers today don’t pay much attention to methane production when it comes to picking breeding stock, said Jeff Nonay of Lakeside Dairy in Sturgeon County. Instead, they focus on other traits such as lifespan or milk production, with some simply sticking with whatever cows they’ve always used.
Cows are a climate issue because of the planet-heating methane their stomachs produce, Basarab explained. Farmers have for decades searched for ways to reduce these emissions for environmental and economic reasons.
“About two-to-12 per cent of the energy an animal consumes is lost as methane,” Basarab said.
“That’s an inefficiency that costs money.”
A food-efficient cow would produce less methane and require less food, which would cut costs and emissions across the entire beef/dairy production chain, Basarab said. To find those cows, he and his team are now testing about 2,000 Canadian cows as part of a five-year research project that involves what amounts to a bovine breathalyzer.
“It’s like a fume hood on wheels,” he explained.
The cow sticks its head inside the machine’s cone, which contains a set amount of food pellets, Basarab explained. As the cow eats, burps, and breathes, the machine sucks in air and analyzes its methane content. (Most of a cow’s methane comes out the nose and mouth, not the butt, as the rumen, which is the bit of the stomach where the methane gets made, is closer to the head than the tail.) His team records the results and removes a bit of the cow’s ear for genetic analysis. By studying thousands of cows this way, the team hopes to identify which genetic sequences are linked to low methane production — information farmers can use to breed low-emission cows.
It's no good to just breed cows for low methane production, Basarab said — doing so might select for other undesirable traits such as slow growth or aggression. His team plans to combine this methane data with a genetic index of about 17 other important traits (such as growth and productivity) to create an overall score farmers can use to pick the best cows.
It's also impractical to test all cows this way, as the testing machine costs about $175,000 and needs about 30 days of readings to be accurate. Basarab said his team plans to see if infrared pictures of cow poop (at about $5 per shot) can act as a faster, cheaper way to spot low-emission cows.
Better cows through genetics?
Genetic testing is expensive at about $52 a cow, which is why less than 20 per cent of Canadian cow/calf producers use it, Basarab noted. His team is working on carbon offsets and discounts to encourage more people to get their cows tested.
While it’s probably impossible to create a methane-free cow — too many genes are involved — Basarab said widespread genetic screening for low methane cows could reduce beef cattle emissions intensity by about 30 per cent. Combined with other steps, such as changes to cattle feed and carbon offsets from grasslands, Canada could potentially get the cattle sector to net-zero emissions.
Nonay said this methane research could help farmers pick between cows that are otherwise equal when it comes to productive traits. Greener cows could help the dairy industry reach net-zero without having to shrink the size of their herds.
Genetic indexes are starting to catch on in the farm community as a simple way to breed better cows, Nonay said. He started using them 15 years ago, and has seen his milk’s butterfat content grow 30 per cent as a result.
“The market demands it, and genetics help us meet that goal,” he said.
“Methane is no different.”