Will Dairy and Seaweed Industries Work Together To Reach Net-Zero?

Will the Dairy and Seaweed Industries in the Northeast Work Together to Reach Net-Zero?

Studies show feeding seaweed to cattle reduces their methane emissions, but can it be implemented? A group of researchers in the Northeast aims to find out.

BY MICHELLE K. TYNAN

“W ho wants to try their hand at sorting the rockweed?” yelled a worker over the sound of machinery. Several graduate students gleefully volunteered, sifting their hands through the seaweed, searching for bycatch. “I found a crab!” “I found a snail!” Mostly, the search was in vain as very little bycatch, which is the unwanted fish and other marine creatures caught during commercial fishing, was present. They watched as the rockweed continued along a conveyor belt to be dried, powdered and packaged into a nutritional supplement for animals.

In July, a team of over 40 researchers made up of scientists, consultants, professors and students, gathered in person in coastal Maine for a meeting of the minds, hosted by Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. This capped off a multi-day, action-packed meeting with a trip to SOURCE Micronutrients Inc., which harvests rockweed and other seaweeds and processes them into nutritional supplements for both human and animal consumption.

The researchers are all teammates on a project called “Coast-Cow-Consumer,” an endeavor funded by the USDA Sustainable Agriculture Systems program to investigate if feeding algae to dairy cows to reduce methane emissions is feasible in the Northeast and beyond. The program director of Coast-Cow-Consumer is Nichole Price, a senior research scientist and the director of the Center for Seafood Solutions at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. She leads a large team of research scientists at Bigelow who are studying aspects of algae production, such as iodine levels and nutritional composition in various species.

Methane, a greenhouse gas, has been linked to climate change and is known to have up to 30 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide. In the United States, an estimated 26.7% of total methane emissions are attributed to enteric fermentation, corresponding to about 2.7% of human-related greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is that recent studies show that algal supplements in dairy cattle diets can reduce enteric methane emissions by 99% in lab studies and 80% in live animal trials – a staggering reduction.

“I think that reducing enteric methane through altering or adding feed supplements is one part of the dairy industry’s commitment to reducing the impact ruminants have on climate change,” explained Professor Emeritus Rick Kersbergen of the University of Maine Extension. Kersbergen is a dairy consultant on the project, facilitating interactions with researchers and dairy farmers.

“Working to find feed supplements that reduce methane emissions from dairy cows is critical given the recent developments in other countries regarding a possible tax on methane emissions. I think finding solutions that are cost effective, improve feeding efficiency and fit into both conventional and organic dairy systems is key to this research,” said Kersbergen.

However, most previous studies fed cattle a red seaweed called asparagopsis taxiformis, which is found in tropical waters in the southern hemisphere – quite a distance from American dairy farms – and is difficult to cultivate at scale to meet demand. Asparagopsis has high levels of bromoform, the methane-reducing bioactive compound identified in algae. Now, researchers from Coast-CowConsumer are wondering if similar results can be replicated with local seaweed species or microalgae and if the algae can be supplied to dairy farmers affordably, without impacting milk yield or quality.

The Northeastern United States is especially suited for this cutting-edge research. Not only is it home to a strong dairy industry and a developing seaweed industry, its proximity to cool coastal waters means the supply chain is shorter than in most regions. The Gulf of Maine alone is home to over 250 species of seaweed and as fisheries in the region have struggled, many have turned to seaweed aquaculture to stabilize and supplement income stream. For rural coastal communities in the region, seaweed aquaculture provides an avenue for job creation and, thus, a sustained quality of life.

Additionally, the Coast-Cow-Consumer research team at Bigelow is looking into microalgae as a possible feed additive – of which there are over 3,000 strains housed in Bigelow’s National Center for Marine Algae and Microbiota – and if growing microalgae on dairy farms would ease the complexities of harvesting, processing and transporting seaweed to farms not located in coastal regions.

It all starts with what the team calls the “bottle herd,” which is a group of glass bottles containing rumen fluids to which Bigelow researchers “feed” various algae and forage. They then measure the methane produced inside the glass bottles. Seaweed species that perform well in the bottle herd move on to animal trials at three partner institutions: the University of New Hampshire, Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment in Maine, and the W.H. Miner Institute in New York. Sarah Morrison, Ph.D., from the W.H. Miner Institute is leading two animal trials of algae-based feed supplements. She explained how they measure the methane emissions of cows using technology called the GreenFeed system. “We are measuring methane through a system that attracts the cows to it with a small amount of pelleted grain and measures the amount of methane she is eructating while at the machine through the sensors that it has. It gives us a snapshot of each cow’s emissions throughout the day and compares the different diets we are feeding during a study,” Morrison explained.

Even if the animal trials find local seaweed species and microalgae that reduce enteric methane emissions with minimal change to milk quality, there are many other pieces of the puzzle to solve.

“Without the dairy farmer and professional dairy nutritionists’ support, this technology cannot be implemented. Learning from and listening to farmers and other dairy professionals is key,” explained Rick Welsh, professor of food studies at Syracuse University.

Welsh and his team at Syracuse University conducted focus group interviews with organic and conventional dairy farmers in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and New York. Their focus groups found that organic dairy farmers often feed rockweed (marketed to them as dried kelp meal) for preventative health care reasons, but that they are concerned about the increasing cost of this input. Conventional dairy farmers interviewed had

heard that seaweed can reduce methane emissions but noted that unless they could afford it and implement it easily into existing feeding regimens, it could not be widely adopted. Both organic and conventional farmers expressed that incentives might be needed to feed seaweed for methane reduction, as they are operating on razor thin margins.

David Connor is an economist on the Cost-Cow-Consumer project and is a professor of economics at the University of Vermont, focusing on the dairy supply chain. “We are starting with those who sell to farmers, like feed suppliers, and moving our way ‘upstream’ to the ocean,” he said.

Connor and his team aim to answer how seaweed supplements move through the supply chain in ways that create value for all supply chain actors, how they can move efficiently and affordably and how this product can create opportunity for community economic development.

Harvesting, processing, and transporting seaweed from the Coast of New England to inland dairies is a complex part of the Coast-Cow-Consumer puzzle. After all, would the energy used in these post-harvest activities nullify the climate benefit of feeding seaweed? Professor Sue Powers and her team at Clarkson University are using a Life Cycle Assessment to find out. “A lifecycle assessment helps to pull together the sometimes disparate understanding of the chain from coast-to-consumer into one overall study of the environmental impacts of the system,” she said. “By identifying the most substantial sources and sinks of greenhouse gas emissions, we can focus our efforts on the most critical aspects. For example, does transportation or kelp processing matter more in the bigger picture? The work of the Coast-Cow-Consumer research team is only just beginning, but the opportunities for dairy farmers - and the climate – are bright.” Coast-Cow-Consumer includes team members from Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, Clarkson University, Colby College, Northeast Dairy Foods Association member Cornell Cooperative Extension, Kansas State University, Syracuse University, University of New Hampshire, University of Vermont, William H. Miner Agricultural Research Institute and Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment. This work is supported by Sustainable Agriculture Systems grant no. 2021-69012-35919 and Organic Agriculture Research & Extension Initiative grant no. 2021-51300-35226 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Michelle Tynan is in her second year of graduate school at Syracuse University, getting her master’s degree in food studies. She is a graduate research assistant for Professor Rick Welsh on the Coast-Cow-Consumer project. Prior to this endeavor, she worked as an organic livestock certification specialist at the Washington State Department of Agriculture for four years and as a cheesemaker/cow milker on a small dairy farm in Massachusetts for three years. She has a soft spot for Jersey cows and likes to spend her free time on long walks with her border collie, Tam.