Transcript:
Raising cattle seaweed? This may sound strange, but it can help farms reduce their climate impacts.
When animals like cattle, goats, and sheep digest food, they get methane—a very effective planetary warm gas.
When you add up all the farm animals in the world, methane becomes a big problem with the climate.
Meller: “There are 1.5 billion cattle on Earth. And then there are another billion sheep and a billion goats.”
Steve Meller is CEO of CH4 Global. His company has developed a new cattle feed supplement made from asparagus, one of which is a seaweed.
Scientists have found that when cattle eat this seaweed, they produce much less methane.
The company said their supplements can reduce the methane of dairy cows by at least 70%.
Farmers only need to use a little to work.
Meller: “Imagine sprinkling salt on a meal. …It’s an additive, so it’s less than half of the 1% of the daily diet of a cattle.”
The company grows seaweed in Australia in huge ponds on land that are not suitable for cultivation.
And if Meller's team can scale up production in the next decade, it could greatly help limit methane from the world's farm animals.
Report Credit: Ethan Freedman/Chavobart Digital Media
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