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Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

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Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#41

Post by ghostDancer »

fiblye wrote: post #12
leipert wrote: post #8

Discussed last year hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711498 I was very skeptical whether this is scalable as up to two percent of the cows feed needs to be replaced with the sea weed and we simply do not produce sea weed at scale yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20713552 The TL;DR was: in order to supply 1.5 billion cows with the seaweed we might need up to 291.000 metric tons of algae per…

Seems like if we can manufacture the active chemical (bromoform) without seaweed, it'll be much more scalable. Then there's also an even crazier idea: create a massive sea in the middle of Australia and use that for seaweed farming.

And at the same time we retire a lot of CO2 from atmosphere.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#42

Post by glangdale »

seanwilson wrote: post #11

How much could this reduce the total environmental food print of cattle? I.e. including all the energy used to grow the crops they eat, the deforestation to make room for the crops + cattle, the waste the cows produce. Animal farming creates vast damage because of how inefficient it is and seaweed won't address how much feed cows need or that the world is eating more and more meat as countries get richer: > The energ…

Cow burps and farts are methane, which is a enormously potent greenhouse gas. The energy- (and water-) intensiveness of eating beef is significant too, no argument there.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#43

Post by p1mrx »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #36
barry-cotter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of the day this is signalling. We all know that the best thing we can do is eat a local, veg-friendly (vegetarian/vegan) diet. Local doesn’t belong in there. As a reductio ad absurdum would it be better to eat a diet of nothing but imported NZ lamb or to grow all food locally at McMurdo Base in Antarctica? Grass is next to free. Ocean shipping is the most efficient means of transport for bulk freight the…

"What about Antarctica" is the most straw man argument possible when talking about food sourcing.

What about the space station? Shipping is expensive, but the real estate for farming is even more expensive.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#44

Post by pvaldes »

I still think that there is a simple explanation for the 'reduction in methane' effect, and that the plan has some severe loopholes

Raising cattle in a regular diet of seaweed for its entire life and expecting it to grow correctly is still uncharted territory. Are we pushing cow metabolism to the brink of famine?

Wild seaweeds are harvested and sold for several purposes:

1) To make agar-agar. A substance that is used (among other purposes) as a gut filler without calories in slimming diets and treatments for obesity.

2) As source of medical compounds. Seaweed, specially the red ones, have evolved a battery of chemical weapons to survive its many grazers. They are used to make antibiotics

So, the lack of methane emission... is maybe because the gut microorganisms that released methane have been killed after giving the cattle a cocktail of antibiotics?.

The problem is that cattle needs special gut microorganisms for surviving. They can not process cellulose into sugar without it. How can be (competitively) raised a cow that can not eat plants anymore? In a diet of fish or meat?

This is a serious point that should be explored, in my opinion. If this cows don't grow muscle fast enough (and will produce milk with a funny flavor), all the project is doomed from the start.

On the other hand there is an environmental impact to take in mind, seaweed is related with fisheries and marine production. Kelp grows really fast, but I had seen experiments removing other species of brown seaweed in some tidal rocks and it seems that it takes decades to return.

As seaweed has an economical value, either the farmers buy it at a higher price, or import if from the country that cultures million tons of seaweed each year (China). They could have problems to assure enough cheap seaweed for the cattle.

The cow meat raised in seaweed would be more expensive and with more waste and fuel consumption. Would increase also the dependency of third countries and external policies (that sometimes are not specially nature friendly), and wouldn't be so much sustainable as we think.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#45

Post by wodenokoto »

seanwilson wrote: post #11

How much could this reduce the total environmental food print of cattle? I.e. including all the energy used to grow the crops they eat, the deforestation to make room for the crops + cattle, the waste the cows produce. Animal farming creates vast damage because of how inefficient it is and seaweed won't address how much feed cows need or that the world is eating more and more meat as countries get richer: > The energ…

> Whole milk: 24%

That is a crazy high efficiency, when you think about it. A quarter of all food this animal receives through its entire life ends up as milk. The rest is used for growing cells, keeping it alive and warm, moving around.

Back of the napkin says that I've eaten my bodyweight in food in less than 2 months.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#46

Post by fidrelity »

1234fdsazxcv wrote: post #21
cesnja wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the "classic" option, discovered some 200 years before synthetic fertilizers - crop rotation that includes some form of legumes. IMO with the current state of agriculture and food production we went into a local maximum that is very unsustainable and bad for the environment.

There's a reason we had to switch away from that. The crop rotation cycle isn't an efficient use of land. Synthetic fertilizers exist for a reason -- the human race wants and needs an excess of food. No one wants to switch to a model of food scarcity.

citation needed.

This is an all too easy narrative. Synthetic fertilisers might simply have caused an arms race for short term, higher efficiency which destroyed less efficient production techniques.

That does not make it long term efficient, see research on sustainable farming[0].

[0] https://rodaleinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/RI-FST-Brochu...

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#47

Post by wodenokoto »

davegardner wrote: post #14
leipert wrote: post #8

Discussed last year hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711498 I was very skeptical whether this is scalable as up to two percent of the cows feed needs to be replaced with the sea weed and we simply do not produce sea weed at scale yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20713552 The TL;DR was: in order to supply 1.5 billion cows with the seaweed we might need up to 291.000 metric tons of algae per…

This is partially addressed in CSIRO's FAQ: https://research.csiro.au/futurefeed/faq/ In summary, FutureFeed is working with several external suppliers to establish production. They expect to be able to improve the crop production over time. One thing of note is significant reductions can be achieved with quite a low ratio of seaweed in the feed. Specifically they report that recent feedlot trials demonstrated over 9…

What happens to that methane? Or maybe more accurately, what happens to the building blocks of that methane.

Those numbers do not show that we are reducing the output of methane by reducing the input of methane, but that the process itself is generating less methane from basically the same input.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#48

Post by czottmann »

That's great and all, but it's fighting symptoms, not the underlying problem.

The underlying problem isn't cows emitting methane, the problem is too many people indoctrinated with the idea of eating all the animals, all the time. The amount of land, energy and ressources in general spent on producing way too many animals for eating is unreasonable.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#49

Post by tchalla »

czottmann wrote: post #48

That's great and all, but it's fighting symptoms , not the underlying problem. The underlying problem isn't cows emitting methane, the problem is too many people indoctrinated with the idea of eating all the animals, all the time. The amount of land, energy and ressources in general spent on producing way too many animals for eating is unreasonable.

What's the process to come up with the number for the right amount of animal eating?

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#50

Post by jl6 »

awerawerawrjhui wrote: post #10
leipert wrote: post #8

Discussed last year hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711498 I was very skeptical whether this is scalable as up to two percent of the cows feed needs to be replaced with the sea weed and we simply do not produce sea weed at scale yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20713552 The TL;DR was: in order to supply 1.5 billion cows with the seaweed we might need up to 291.000 metric tons of algae per…

> I would argue that the most effective way to reduce cattle emissions is to get rid of cattle. I agree, but as a former vegan I'm aware that there's an approximately 0% chance of getting a majority of the world's population to give up beef and dairy. The future has to be with lab-grown meat. I know the technology is still nascent, but if we ever get it right then it has the potential to be one of the most transforma…

The great thing about adopting a more plant-based diet is that you don’t have to go 100% plant-based to still make a difference.

90% plant-based gives you 90% of the benefit.

As long as people are on a path to reducing animal product consumption, we might just be OK.

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