Change Cows' Diets, Support the Environment

The Truth About Cows and Sheep

Temperate grazing lands cover 13% of the world’s land area, including farms and rangeland systems in Russia, Europe, China and North America in the northern hemisphere, and South America, southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand in the south.

On these grasslands graze hundreds of millions of cattle, sheep and other ruminants, whose meat or milk are destined for human consumption, and very important both nutritionally and culturally.

The better the quality of their feed, the better the end product.

“The commercial livestock industry has a long history of breeding improved cultivars of temperate forages,” Dodd said. “Traditionally, they’ve bred for qualities that support productivity: forages which grow fast, have high carbohydrate and protein contents, and are high in energy.”

Based on productivity alone, the effort has paid off. Globally, people get more than a quarter of their protein from livestock systems, and demand for livestock products continues to grow.

At the same time, the industry has come under intense scrutiny for its environmental impact. For example, livestock contribute to greenhouse gases emissions through the methane they emit and to contamination of groundwater because of the nitrogen in their urine.

The industry is feeling the heat—both from governments trying to mitigate the damage and from the environment itself.

“The livestock industry is very concerned about climate change. They’re already seeing the impacts of it,” Dodd said. “They’re also dealing with new rules and regulations. They must look at how they can keep producing with ruminants amid these changing conditions and improve sustainability.”

One of the things they’re looking at is forages.

You Are What You Eat

Efforts to breed new varieties of forages with genetic traits that can lead to improved sustainability are already the focus of scientific research, Dodd says.

“For example, some forages have a compound called tannin, which reduces ruminants’ methane emissions. As another example, in New Zealand, we’re working with narrow-leaved plantain, which was formerly considered a weed, but which appears to reduce the nitrogen content of livestock urine,” he said.

This work involves a radical shift in which genetic traits are most valued for breeding new forages. Conventionally, traits related to productivity have been in favor. In the future, the preference is likely to move to less conventional traits that result in lower environmental impact and greater tolerance of climatic changes.

Which means identifying which specific traits are most useful and in which plants they can be found.

But, as Dodd found in consultations with the temperate forage conservation community, it’s not always clear which species hold which traits, or which species are available from where.

“There is a huge range of species of temperate forages, and hundreds of genebanks in dozens of countries are supplying the needs of countless users in the research and development community worldwide,” Dodd said. “So there is a lot of opportunity to find the best diversity, but they’ll need to work together better.”

The next step is to develop a clearer picture of the full extent of the genetic diversity available, and then build networks between collections to help them share information and seed samples.

“One thing I observed was that this community has real passion, real goodwill and a real desire for collaboration and connection,” Dodd said. “And that kind of goodwill can drive change, first in the genebanks, and, ultimately, in the livestock sector as a whole.”