{"id":12488,"date":"2023-08-08T08:28:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T12:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=12488"},"modified":"2023-08-03T20:26:58","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T00:26:58","slug":"reducing-the-climate-change-impact-caused-by-dairy-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2023\/08\/08\/reducing-the-climate-change-impact-caused-by-dairy-farming\/","title":{"rendered":"Reducing the Climate Change Impact Caused By Dairy Farming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ann Radil \u201999 is decarbonizing American agriculture one glass of milk at a time.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"woman
Illustration by Matthew Twombly <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There are few topics that get Ann Radil \u201999 fired up as much as decarbonizing agriculture. As the head of carbon reduction at Neutral, the start-up behind the world\u2019s first carbon-neutral milk, Radil spends a lot of her time thinking about ways to reduce the climate impact of dairy farming. And at the end of the day, this requires Radil and her team to carefully analyze what goes into a cow \u2014 and what comes out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCows contribute around 10% of all global greenhouse gas emissions, which is largely a by-product of their digestion,\u201d Radil says. \u201cI get super nerdy on stuff like manure management because if we can decarbonize cows, that will have a bigger climate impact than decarbonizing cement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020 the U.S. dairy industry committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, an ambitious goal that will require solving some vexing challenges. Most of the dairy industry\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions come in the form of methane produced when cows fart and burp, but changing the diet of America\u2019s dairy cows will only solve part of the problem. Nearly a quarter of the dairy industry\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions result from carbon- intensive agricultural practices used to grow feed crops, with the remainder attributable to the methane released by giant ponds of manure slurry found on most dairy farms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMethane is active in the atmosphere for about 12 years before it tapers off, but during that 12 years, it traps 85 times more heat than carbon dioxide,\u201d Radil says. \u201cMethane mitigation is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet for climate change because it can give us more time to build solutions for more difficult to decarbonize industries like energy and transportation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America\u2019s dairy farmers know they have a greenhouse gas problem. But tackling this issue requires them to make significant investments in changing the way their farms are run, from the types of feed crops they grow to the way they manage manure. Around half of all of America\u2019s dairy farms are small- or medium-sized operations (managing fewer than 500 cows), and most of them simply can\u2019t afford to implement holistic emission reduction programs on their farms. That\u2019s where Radil and her colleagues at Neutral believe they can make a big difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Radil joined Neutral as its third employee in 2020 after nearly two decades of helping some of the world\u2019s largest organizations in the world, including Coca-Cola and Nike, implement their first climate and sustainability programs. As the daughter of a farmer and a rancher whose agricultural lineage goes back generations, Radil\u2019s decision to join Neutral was, in many ways, a return to her roots. For the past three years, she\u2019s been leading a small team at Neutral that works directly with dairy farmers to implement a broad range of emission reduction solutions. Radil and her team advise farmers on how to decarbonize feed production by strategically planting trees, they make direct investments into dairy farms so farmers can build infrastructure for reducing the amount of manure that runs off into slurry ponds, and they\u2019ve even launched a study to investigate how incorporating red seaweed into a cow\u2019s diet can dramatically reduce the amount of methane produced by its digestive system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Radil\u2019s perspective, decarbonizing the dairy industry requires holistic solutions that are developed in partnership with America\u2019s dairy farmers. It will be a long and uphill battle, but for now, at least, Neutral\u2019s approach seems to be working. In 2021 the company announced it was rolling out the carbon-neutral milk produced at its partner dairy farms in hundreds of Whole Foods locations and other grocery stores across the U.S. But this, says Radil, is just the beginning. The company has ambitions to decarbonize beef and other sectors of the food supply chain in a bid to make American agriculture not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAgriculture is the only sector that is both a heavy emitter, but also has the opportunity to be managed as a net emissions sink,\u201d says Radil, referring to the potential for farms to absorb more greenhouse gasses than they produce. \u201cWe really hope that Neutral provides a demand signal that encourages producers to adopt sustainable practices. I know the farmers are smart, capable, and willing to do the hard work if we can give them the resources and show [them] that there\u2019s a viable business here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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