SPECIAL STORY FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE June 2023 47 occurrence, we must recognize there’s plenty of opportunity to reduce the intensity of methane, which still accounts for nearly half of the carbon footprint of meat and milk. The feed industry can accelerate progress in the right direction by improving feed conversion rates, optimizing animal health, and innovating new additives and nutrition solutions that reduce methane and nitrogen emissions. METHANE REDUCTION STARTS WITH MANAGING ON-FARM PRODUCTIVITY We must partner with producers to measure and define their efficiency or total output, which is a critical driver of farm and ranch sustainability. By understanding total methane emissions in relation to ruminant product output, producers can start to identify potential efficiencies that can support enhanced on-farm sustainability. The next steps can include diet formulation to optimize nutritional resources, core nutrition solutions to improve feed utilization, or additives to enhance feed efficiency and productivity. At Cargill, our MAX™ system is a valuable solution provides insights to producers, helping them predict and understand enteric methane emissions and efficiency. By identifying reduction opportunities and creating action plans, producers can drive sustainability on their operations and benchmark their progress. The platform also enables validation of predicted performance, allowing farmers to make data-driven decisions for profitability and sustainability – which we believe is a vital part of ensuring that more farmers can adopt sustainability solutions. Farmers can turn to productivity solutions such as Diamond V™ XPC™ which supports immune function, digestive health, and performance in cattle, "Data show that both the dairy and beef industries have made significant strides in production efficiency. Take the U.S. dairy industry for example, where a gallon of milk in 2017 had a 19% smaller carbon footprint than it did in 2007.ii This progress is commendable but, interestingly, those previous efforts were not focused on methane – but instead methane mitigation was a byproduct of increasing production efficiency."
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