Students and researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville are pushing the agriculture industry toward greener pastures with an aptly named program: Pioneer Farm.
The 430-acre, hands-on teaching site has recently deployed a couple of contraptions to manage its cattle better, according to the school. The latest innovation is called the GreenFeed machine, and it measures cattle burps, which are notoriously bad for the environment.
The bovines and other ruminants release methane as they digest grass and hay, and the quantity is startling. The belching accounts for 27.4% of anthropogenic methane pollution in the United States and 3% of gross pollution, according to Earth.org.
Methane leaves the atmosphere after about 12 years but has 84 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide over 20 years, so it's responsible for about one-third of the rapidly rising global temperature.
The GreenFeed box is a machine with an RFID system that can detect individual cows. As the cows eat, it uses a stovepipe system to measure the gases they produce via regurgitation and burping. This helps the farmers optimize feed formulas and work toward solutions that can mitigate the warming effect of raising cattle.
"The GreenFeed machine offers a unique opportunity to directly measure the microbial activity within the cow's digestive system," said Dr. Ryan Pralle, assistant professor of animal, dairy, and veterinary sciences. "This capability not only aids in improving cattle nutrition but also contributes to more sustainable farming practices by monitoring and potentially reducing methane emissions."
Coupled with another recent addition to the program — RIC2Discover feed intake machines — the cattle can be fed custom diets, and changes can be analyzed individually, which also helps improve herd health.
The workings on the farm are part of a larger movement to reduce methane pollution caused by cattle. The University of California, Davis, is driving a $30 million, seven-year project to engineer the cattle microbiome, and NASA is involved in a similar effort.
"Now, we can do everything that a top-tier university can," Pralle said. "... In the four years I've been here, the past six months have been the most exciting because of these major upgrades. We're looking forward to doing some amazing work."
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