Every morning, Breanna Roque goes out to the barn to feed the cows. But this isn’t your typical farm — in fact, it’s a laboratory. The University of California, Davis graduate researcher spends her time among bovines, tweaking their diets so that they burp less. Why? Less burps means less methane. And less methane, on a global scale, could mean slowing down climate change.
Roque is part of a team feeding cows a special diet, one that includes small portions of a sticky, red seaweed called Asparagopsis. It’s not the typical fare for the grass-happy bovines, but the seaweed-infused feed serves a specific purpose — keeping the cows’ prodigious methane production in check.
Yes, cow burps, (not farts, as often believed), release a considerable amount of methane into the atmosphere. The EPA estimates that cows and other ruminating animals, like cows and sheep, produce an estimated one third of U.S. agricultural methane emissions. And although agriculture accounts for a smaller percentage of greenhouse gas production than other sectors like transportation and energy, it produces more methane, which warms the Earth up to 84 times faster than CO2.
“People have been looking for a way to reduce methane for quite some time,” Roque says. It turns out seaweed, particularly in the genus Asparagopsis, can help ruminating animals produce less gas. Curbing animal burps is something researchers around the globe have tried to tackle in different capacities. They’ve proposed feed additives, as well as more far-fetched solutions, like an anti-methane vaccine.
