Improving the Environmental Impact of Animal Agriculture: A Sustainable Approach

Sustainability is defined as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

It is widely accepted that, like most big industry, animal agriculture is damaging to the environment. Change must happen now to protect outcomes for future generations.

But any attempt to introduce new technology or policy to improve climate impact must be weighed with how it effects the present. Sustaining the livelihoods of farmers, sustaining a level of output that meets the needs of consumers, and of course sustaining the environment on which all agriculture relies.

Ask the Industry

Seven leaders across animal agriculture, each of whom will take the stage at the upcoming Animal AgTech Innovation Summit on October 9-10, shared what they see as the biggest challenge in improving the environmental impact of the industry.

While reducing enteric emissions, introducing green policies, and improving biodiversity was mentioned,  nearly all of them drew focus back to protecting farmers, and achieving sustainability for all.

Each of the stakeholders in the wider food system must be considered or progress will be impossible. Keep reading for valuable insights from EIFO, AgriZeroNZ, Adisseo, C-Lock, FrieslandCampina, First Milk, and Duynie Feed

Shifting Priorities

First Milk is owned by British farms, who work together to produce high quality dairy products following regenerative farming practices. Mark Brooking, Chief Impact Officer at First Milk therefore has a thorough understanding of farmer mindsets.

“As an industry, agriculture has been pushing for greater yields and production and farmers have responded to this, often at the detriment of the environment. One of the biggest challenges is going to be engaging the whole industry in shifting their values” Mark says.

“The most sustainable way of working should also be the most profitable way of working!” insists Michael Warren, Director of Feed UK at Duynie Feed, agreeing that priorities must shift. “When the approach is not coordinated, how far can you really go? When policy promotes the production of sustainable fuel over the production of sustainable food, is it really sustainable?”

Sustainability is intrinsically linked to The Dunyie Group’s circular business model. Dunyie Feed produces high nutrient animal feed using the co-products that remain after primary crops (cereals, vegetables, fruits) have been processed by food manufacturers. The company has been committed to this circular system for more than 50 years, ensuring valuable nutrients from crops do not go to waste.

Methane Reduction

The Export and Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO) is the national promotional bank and export credit agency of Denmark combined in one financial institution. Due to Denmark’s strength in renewables, biotechnology and sustainable farming practices, EIFO has a particular focus on facilitating the global green transition.

Lars Horsholt Jensen, EIFO’s Managing Director of Agriculture & Food, points to livestock emissions as the biggest opportunity for improving the industry’s environmental impact.

“The enteric methane from rumen fermentation is the largest individual challenge that accounts for approximately 35% of total GHG emissions from Danish agriculture” Lars says the key is to “develop, and must importantly deploy, the available solutions to inhibit enteric methane emissions.”

Emissions reduction is also on the mind of David MacDonald, Head of Ventures at AgriZeroNZ, but he can’t forget how change affects farmers first-hand. He says the challenge is “reducing emissions without compromising on profitability & productivity for farmers, whilst meeting the needs of increasing demand for high quality animal products.”

Farmer Livelihoods

AgriZeroNZ has a unique perspective on the major shifts happening in livestock farming. The company was established in early 2023 as the world’s first public-private partnership focused on helping farmers cut emissions and maintain their competitive edge. It is half owned by the New Zealand government and half owned by major agribusiness companies.

“Finding mitigation tools that are practical and will work in the pastoral grazing context is critical, given the fact that the vast majority of enteric methane is emitted in those systems” David explains, adding that “clear communication is needed across broad stakeholder groups – firstly about why reducing emissions from agriculture should be a key focus to help drive investment, innovation, and action, and secondly what opportunities emissions reduction can present to the industry.”

C-Lock is the global leader in measuring and controlling feed intake and emissions for cattle, enabling higher efficiency and productivity for farmers.

Meredith Harrison is CSO of C-Lock and, like David, is keen to give farmers the recognition they deserve, “Over the past 40 years, beef and dairy producers have reduced methane intensity by over 40% through improving production efficiency” she says, “our biggest challenge is developing policies that enable farmers to get paid for their efforts.”

Forgetting the Big Picture

Adisseo is among the world leaders in animal nutrition whose mission is to feed the planet in a high-quality, affordable, safe and sustainable way.

Frank Chmitelin, Executive Vice President of Strategy & Sustainability at Adisseo agrees greenhouse gases (GHG) from cattle farming are an issue, saying “according to a FAO report from December 2023, animal farming represents 12% of GHG anthropic emissions of which ruminants represent 62%”.

However, Frank thinks it would be a mistake to only focus on emissions. He says, “a major challenge for the players in the animal agriculture sector is actually to understand all these levers and to define his priorities according to his position in the chain, and his constraints.”

Pablo Modernel, Programme Manager of Farm Nature at FrieslandCampina, also notes that the challenge is bigger than just emissions or any other individual issue: “Finding the optimal compromise between feeding people in a nutritious and affordable way, securing a decent income for farmers while protecting nature locally and globally (including animal welfare) is a highly complex problem which doesn’t have silver bullets.”

FrieslandCampina is a nutrition company. It supplies milk and dairy products for the professional market and is a dairy cooperative with 14.6K member dairy farmers across Europe. They are focused on helping their farmers produce milk in a way that is good for the planet. Pablo’s focus is on biodiversity.

Solutions to Sustainability Challenges

A recent report from the European Commission details how Europe’s food and farming lobbies have recognised the need to eat less meat after meeting green groups and other stakeholders.

The Guardian reported that the paper says “support is needed to rebalance diets toward plant-based proteins such as better education, stricter marketing and voluntary buyouts of farms in regions that intensively rear livestock”.

But meat and dairy products still provide vital protein and nutrients around the globe, so solutions are needed to improve the impact of the farms still producing.

European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen said “We share the same goal. Only if farmers can live off their land will they invest in more sustainable practices. And only if we achieve our climate and environmental goals together will farmers be able to continue making a living.”

This sentiment links back to One Health, the main theme of the Animal AgTech Innovation Summit this year. All stakeholders must work towards the common good.

Legislation and Regulation

Most agree that widespread change cannot happen without government buy in, as regulation is needed to define parameters, create incentives and support mass adoption of sustainable practices. EUDR is coming, but what do our industry leaders think about the impact policymakers can have?

Meredith (C-Lock) thinks more needs to be done to make the technology that is already available affordable for farmers. “We need government guidelines that outline clear regulatory pathways, standardized methods for validation, and uniform accounting methods” she says, “Defining these standards and incentivizing farmers will improve transparency and facilitate efforts to reduce on farm emissions, which will help food processors and retailers target their scope three emissions.”

Mark (First Milk) is sceptical about the strength of policy changes for environmental impact, saying “Attempting to achieve this via regulations instead of providing support for successful, measurable results would likely slow progress.

“The livestock industry cannot often jump to a quick, radical shift in system; change is more likely to be a gradual journey and there needs to be long term accountability with all stakeholders to provide support to farmers” Mark continue, “As we did after World War 2, we must all work as one.”

Michael (Duynie Feed) agrees, stating simply that it must be “a coordinated effort – supply chain and government to work together.”

An example of regulation fostering cross-sector collaboration is the Danish Carbon Tax which will come into force in 2023, but its conditions are expected to be met in the country much sooner.

Lars (EIFO) explains that “the expected impact is to create an incentive to accelerate the green transition of the agricultural sector by taxing CO2e-missions from animal agriculture. The effective taxation increases from approx. 16 EUR/tCO2e in 2030 to 40 EUR/tCO2e in 2035. The isolated impact of the CO2-tax is expected to be 0,4m tCO2e, increasing to 1,3m tCO2e in 2035.”

To support farmers transitioning to green agriculture, Lars shares two initiatives EIFO have launched – ‘Sustainability-Linked Finance’ and ‘Impact Finance’ – both offering reduced interest rates to farmers and green technologies that have documented better climate practices.

Technology to tackle environmental impact is necessary before any support can happen, so what are the solutions that the Animal AgTech speakers are excited about to tackle Methane emissions?

Methane – the Solutions

For anyone still in doubt that methane reduction is high priority for the agricultural sector, UNEP confirms in this statement: “Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years. This means that even if emissions were immediately and dramatically reduced it would not have an effect on the climate until later in the century. But it takes only about a decade for methane to break down. So, reducing methane emissions now would have an impact in the near term and is critical for helping keep the world on a path to 1.5°C.”

So how do we do it? David (AgriZeroNZ) shares that their ventures fund is investing to accelerate the development of practical solutions for New Zealand farmers to reduce methane and nitrous oxide emissions from livestock.

“We are also working to accelerate progress of solutions by investing to unblock constraints and engaging with farmers to help enable fast uptake, whilst advocating for a streamlined regulatory framework for mitigations” He concludes.

Frank (Adisseo) brings up the efficacy of amino acids to balance dairy cows’ diets, leading to better productivity, longer lifespan, and reduced pollution from manure.

 “We have demonstrated that the impact of such a nutritional approach can reduce by around 15% the environmental footprint per litre of milk” Frank says, “which is equivalent to the impact of the best methane inhibitor on the market.”

Meredith (C-Lock) drills into why accurate, robust data is fundamental for understanding the environmental impacts of enteric methane emissions from ruminants, as we can’t track reduction without knowing where we started.

C-Lock’s GreenFeed technology “has enabled the large-scale collection of globally standardized gas emissions data” she says, “with pending legislation surrounding methane and carbon taxes for farmers, the collection of empirical emissions data will be required to accurately estimate sustainability benchmarks and develop robust methane prediction equations and farm models.”

Lars (EIFO) adds that technology to capture and repurpose existing methane is not to be dismissed: “In the coming years the selection, integration and implementation of mature technologies to capture and utilize methane, ammonia and carbon becomes increasingly important and adopting a coherent approach involving farms, treatment facilities, biogas production and carbon sequestration technologies.”

Achieving a Circular Economy

The success of repurposing methane as a waste product has been proven with biogas. Indeed, the European Biogas Association says replacing fossil fuels with biogas has the potential for a negative carbon footprint.

Connecting each part of the value chain helps re-enforce the idea of circular economy Dunyie is proud to be part of. Michael shares his vision, saying “I understand regenerative agriculture to be a way of farming that brings more to the land than it takes… I see the best version of the circular economy as an economy that creates more than it takes!”

Biodiversity Measurement

Another example of a circular system is the natural one found on farms. Essential biodiversity has been stripped away through intensive farming practices, and now farmers are being supported to encourage the return of wildlife and native plants to their fields.

Pablo shares how FrieslandCampina has been approaching biodiversity measurement to improve regenerative practices: “How to monitor biodiversity is a big challenge, since there is a lag in standards and science compared to climate, where is very clear how to monitor and change to more sustainable animal agricultural systems.”

“In 2018 FrieslandCampina joined forces with Rabobank and WWF to build the ‘Biodiversity Monitor’, a method to measure the impact of dairy on biodiversity comprising 7 KPI’s” he continues, “Since then, all our member farmers have submitted data to calculate those indicators and we reward their efforts on these indicators (among others) through our Foqus planet system. Last year we rewarded our farmers with 245 million euros for sustainability.”

Chirrup.ai is another company that will appear at the Animal AgTech Innovation Summit to speak about biodiversity monitoring and their tracker that specifically captures bird song.

Mitigation Beyond Ruminants

As we have explored, sustainability challenges and solutions are vast and complex when it comes to livestock farming.

Frank (Adisseo) is quick to point out that there are plenty of other ways to mitigate environmental impact on farms that go beyond ruminants: Increasing productivity: “with the help of Adisseo’s 80 years of experience in precision nutrition!”, improving animal resilience: “probiotics, glycerides , botanicals, Energy use: “reduction of energy use in feed mills with the switch from powder to liquid methionine”

Catalysing Sustainable Practices

The Animal AgTech Innovation Summit brings decision-makers together and facilitates conversations and collaborations that will move the animal industry forward.

The future of the meat and dairy sector must be a sustainable one. This meeting in Amsterdam provides a forum to catalyse positive change by sharing success stories, discussing challenges, and presenting new ideas.

From methane reduction and biodiversity to regenerative agriculture and regulation, sustainability tactics are woven throughout the thought leadership programme.

Lars, Mark, Michael, Meredith, David, Frank and Pablo will each contribute to panels and roundtable discussions – browse the agenda to discover the topics they are covering.

Join policy makers, business leaders, senior researchers and start-ups in Amsterdam this October 9-10 and help make the animal agriculture industry better and more sustainable for all. Register for your summit pass or download a brochure to find out more.