NZ turns to microbes to fight methane levels

New Zealand's pastoral sector is planning to pool its resources in a new bid to reduce the amount of methane gas emissions from the country's livestock.

Fonterra Cooperative Group, a recently formed company owned by New Zealand Dairy Farmers, has initiated discussions with various organisations including Meat New Zealand, the Wool Board, the Game Industry Board, AgResearch and the Fertilisers Manufacturers Research Association as well as Wrightson, a listed company that supplies the agricultural sector.

Dr Jim Barnett, general manger of Fonterra's environment R&D, said the plan was to form a research consortium that would focus on reducing the methane gas emissions, and attract further government funding.

New Zealand's 43 million sheep and 9.7 million cattle currently account for 44 per cent of the country's methane gas emissions, and the figure was heading for 50 per cent, according to Fonterra's research.

Barnett said an issue was dairy cow emissions, because of the growth of the dairy industry over the past decade. By contrast, New Zealand's sheep population has declined, but currently methane emissions from sheep were still far greater than from dairy cattle.

Barnett said the researchers aimed to come up with a solution by 2008, the time that the next Kyoto agreement comes into force. "We have an obligation to get the emissions down to what they were in 1990," he said.

The Kyoto protocol holds that carbon dioxide has a global warming potential of 1, methane has a global warming potential of 21 and nitrous oxide has a potential of 300.

Barnett said methane was far more damaging than carbon dioxide, but nitrous oxide, derived from the animal's urine after it reacts with soil, was the most potent.

Barnett said attempts had been made to reduce the animals' methane emissions by altering grass feed for dairy cattle. The researchers were surprised to discover that when they altered their feed, the methane emission stayed the same but the milk solid yield went up.

The consortium will focus on reducing the methane emission from cattle and sheep by altering the microbes in the animal's rumen. Researchers hope to use a microbe bred in France, which absorbs the hydrogen produced when cows digest grass.