Methane Suppressing Supplements: Our Stance
Last week, a large number of our members, particularly dairy farmers, received messages from their customers asking whether they used methane-inhibiting feed additives. This was in response to a press release from Arla, the dairy co-operative, announcing they would be trialling the additive, Bovaer, which generated a lot of publicity in the press and on social media. This statement has been put together to support our members in their responses and provide clarity on the approach we take at Pasture for Life on these issues.
Methane suppressing supplements in the ruminant diet are being widely considered by government bodies and food companies as a solution to reducing methane emissions from cattle, particularly in the dairy sector, and are currently being trialled by a number of UK farms and businesses. For clarity, any farm that is ‘Pasture for Life Certified’ is prohibited from using feed additives, such as Bovaer, and must only be feeding pasture and forage, as defined in our standard.
Pasture for Life recognises the urgent need to decarbonise our economy but we view the use of feed additives as a ‘business as usual’ approach, in that they represent another industrial solution to the problem of industrial farming, and can only be a short-term intervention at best. Furthermore, in providing a supposed solution to only one part of the problem – carbon – feed additives risk causing unintended side effects on other issues such as animal welfare or biodiversity. It is imperative that we take a holistic approach in our assessment of the problem and the design of solutions and the use of feed additives do not meet this criteria.
We see the fundamental challenge facing the farming sector is that it has become disconnected from its primary asset – the land – through the industrialisation of farming processes, typically at the behest of government policy or pressure from powerful actors in the supply chain. It is this disconnect that is driving ecological dysfunction and societal ill-health and therefore addressing these issues requires solutions that restore balance to our management of the land and its ecosystem processes.
In the case of grazing animals, the number of animals on a farmholding must be linked to the carrying capacity of that holding for proper ecological functioning to take place. If the animals cannot be fed solely from that holding and require feed from elsewhere (known as ‘Ghost Acres’) there is a misalignment and there will be a cost somewhere else in the system: an imbalanced carbon cycle, pollution or biodiversity loss, for example. In our view it is this issue that is causing the ‘carbon problem’ associated with grazing animals in the UK, not the production of methane from rumination in and of itself. Pasture for Life certified farms are required to match the number of animals to the carrying capacity of the land that feeds them, ensuring balance in that landscape’s capacity to cycle carbon.
With currently only a minority of our c.1,500 members achieving certified status, we are aware of the challenge this represents. However, the evidence we see from our research and knowledge exchange programmes is that it is only by moving towards balanced ecological functioning that farmers will be able to succeed in delivering not only for themselves, in greater profitability and financial resilience, but also society, in the form of flourishing biodiversity, a restored carbon cycle, and the production of meat and milk that are truly nourishing. Many farmers are realising that this approach is not only achievable but desirable.
We are also conscious that our collective (scientific) understanding of these systems, despite them being age-old, is in its infancy. Many farmers are ahead of the researchers and it is imperative that government and business support more research into low input systems, and farm level emissions of fully pastured systems to ensure that we have a more comprehensive understanding of farm level carbon cycles to ensure sector-level interventions deliver the broadest impact against a set of holistic metrics.
To explore more on the topic, watch our webinar with Professor John Newbold from March 2024:
