The ‘S’ word. A word that has been used in the agricultural industry for years but has not always had a positive response. A word with multiple paths that lead to one destination.
Sustainability.
As part of a presentation series at World Pork Expo, Dr. Frank Mitloehner, professor and air quality specialist in the Department of Animal Science at UC Davis, broke down the word ‘sustainability.’
“Sustainability rests on five pillars. Those five pillars are the environmental pillar, the animal welfare pillar, food safety, workers and financial viability,” Mitloehner explains. “It’s not just about environmental sustainability. It’s not just about clean air, good water and low impacts on climate. It’s the other things too. If you have a problem with an employee mishandling animals, then that is a problem that impacts the sustainability of your farm. If you have any kind of outbreak on your farm, then the entire industry has a problem with sustainability.”
Opportunity Knocks
Mitloehner describes environmental sustainability as “the greatest Achilles heel for animal agriculture and in particular, the impact livestock has on climate.”
Though often viewed as being a problem, Mitloehner suggests an opportunity lies with methane gas.
Methane is simply a form of energy that escapes into the atmosphere, much like leaving the door open during the cold winter and letting the heat escape.
Becoming more widely used in the pork and dairy sectors, farms cover their lagoons and trap the biogas formed underneath the manure, 60% of which is methane gas, Mitloehner explains. The biogas is then converted to be used as a form of energy or fuel.
“Our dairy sector has reduced its methane by 30% over the last few years. Not just have they reduced it, but they are making a lot of money with it. They are receiving low carbon fuel standard credits for it. The fuel type they are producing is the most carbon-negative fuel type there is, and that’s a good thing,” Mitloehner notes.
In terms of pork production, Mitloehner describes the U.S. as being world leading. However, in terms of environmental sustainability, the U.S. lags behind European countries.
“Up until, I would say, five years ago, there were only 100 digesters in the United States. Germany, which is 30 times smaller than the United States, had 9,000 digesters,” Mitloehner says.
Operations in the U.S. primarily use covered lagoons, a low-tech methane collector, while the standard in European countries is an anaerobic digester tank. The tank-type technology, also used in colder parts of the U.S., allows for more efficient methane collection, due to temperature control and the ability to heat the manure to the optimal temperature to create the most biogas.
Some farms have been able to sell biogas for extra income, while others have used it on their farm to fuel vehicles to cut down transportation costs or burn to power their farm and neighboring communities.
“Sustainability is not a curse word. It is a word you should own as a farm. Nobody should be telling you how to run your farm sustainably. You should be proud of running all areas of sustainability the best we know. That includes the welfare of your animals, the health of the environment, the health of the products you produce, the people who work for you on your farm and, of course, that you can run a financially healthy farm. You should be that person. This should be your work, and this should be your mission,” Mitloehner says.
After all, sustainability is interchangeable with the term stewardship, he adds, which means taking care of something.
“There’s really no greater experts out there than themselves,” says Mitloehner, describing producers in the industry. “They have to figure out how to use that knowledge and how to communicate the things they do in a way that people outside the farm understand. They should do that, and they should be proud of doing it.”
