Canada approves Bovaer as first feed ingredient to reduce methane emissions from cattle

Feb 02, 2024

Canadian authorities grant market authorization for Bovaer, a methane reducing feed ingredient for cattle, which enables dairy and beef farmers to substantially lower their carbon footprint.

OTTAWA — A leading innovator in nutrition, dsm-firmenich, has received market authorization for Bovaer in Canada for use with dairy and beef cattle. Bovaer is a feed ingredient which immediately and effectively reduces methane emissions from cattle.

This feed ingredient is an important tool for the nearly 10,000 dairy farmers in Canada, and will enable them to make a substantial step forward towards their net zero ambitions. Bovaer reduces methane emissions by 30% on average for dairy cows, and thereby lowers the overall greenhouse gas footprint per liter of milk by 10-15%.

Likewise, Canadian cattle feeders can reduce methane emissions by 45% on average for the 3.3 million cattle they manage annually. Once Bovaer is included in the Reducing Enteric Methane Emissions (REME) protocol for beef cattle and the Alberta Fed Cattle protocol, cattle feeders will also be able to generate carbon offsets as an additional source of income.

“Canada has been an important part of the development journey of Bovaer. In 2020, dsm-firmenich successfully completed the longest and largest trial with Bovaer, a two-year trial with 15,000 beef cattle in Alberta and supported by ERA (Emission Reduction Alberta), which demonstrated methane reductions of up to 82%, resulting in savings of 1,473 tons of CO2e during this study alone. We are therefore excited today to receive the market authorization and appreciate the diligent and timely review by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency” says Mark van Nieuwland, Vice President Bovaer. “This will benefit Canadian farmers, sustainability efforts of the sector, and support Canada in delivering on its international emissions reduction commitments such as the Global Methane Pledge”.

dsm-firmenich aims to make Bovaer available to the Canadian dairy and beef sector in the upcoming weeks, and will work closely with the feed, dairy and beef sector to introduce Bovaer in the market.

Source : Farmersforum

Video: Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

A new peer reviewed study looks at the generally unrecognized risk of heat waves surpassing the threshold for enzyme damage in wheat.

Most studies that look at crop failure in the main food growing regions (breadbaskets of the planet) look at temperatures and droughts in the historical records to assess present day risk. Since the climate system has changed, these historical based risk analysis studies underestimate the present-day risks.

What this new research study does is generate an ensemble of plausible scenarios for the present climate in terms of temperatures and precipitation, and looks at how many of these plausible scenarios exceed the enzyme-breaking temperature of 32.8 C for wheat, and exceed the high stress yield reducing temperature of 27.8 C for wheat. Also, the study considers the possibility of a compounded failure with heat waves in both regions simultaneously, this greatly reducing global wheat supply and causing severe shortages.

Results show that the likelihood (risk) of wheat crop failure with a one-in-hundred likelihood in 1981 has in today’s climate become increased by 16x in the USA winter wheat crop (to one-in-six) and by 6x in northeast China (to one-in-sixteen).

The risks determined in this new paper are much greater than that obtained in previous work that determines risk by analyzing historical climate patterns.

Clearly, since the climate system is rapidly changing, we cannot assume stationarity and calculate risk probabilities like we did traditionally before.

We are essentially on a new planet, with a new climate regime, and have to understand that everything is different now.