Chronicle Online e-News
Milk goes green: Cows fed biotech product reduce agriculture's
environmental impact
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July08/CarbonHoofprin
t.html
July 2, 2008
Producing milk uses large quantities of land, energy and feed. But
cows that receive a biotech product called rbST give more milk,
easing natural resource pressure and reducing environmental impact,
according to a Cornell study.
The carbon hoofprint is being reduced by a biotech product used on
American farms for nearly 15 years called recombinant bovine
somatotropin.
The Cornell-funded research found that giving rbST to one million
cows would enable the same amount of milk to be produced using
157,000 fewer cows than in a non-supplemented population. This would
conserve 491,000 metric tons of corn, 158,000 metric tons of soybeans
and reduce total feedstuffs by 2.3 million metric tons. Producers
could reduce cropland use by 219,000 hectares and reduce soil erosion
by 2.3 million tons annually.
"Supplementing cows with rbST on an industrywide scale would improve
sustainability and reduce the dairy industry's contribution to water
acidification, algal growth and global warming," said Judith L.
Capper, Cornell postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the
research paper, published in the June 30 issue of the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.
In 2007 there were 9.2 million cows in the United States. For every
one million cows supplemented with rbST, the world would see an
environmental saving of 824 million kilograms of carbon dioxide, 41
million kilograms of methane and 96,000 kilograms of nitrous oxide.
This reduction in the carbon footprint is equivalent to removing
approximately 400,000 cars from the road or planting 300 million
trees, Capper wrote.
Her co-authors are Dale E. Bauman, Cornell professor of animal
science and the corresponding author; Euridice Castaneda-Gutierrez,
former Cornell postdoctoral researcher; and Roger A. Cady, of
Monsanto Co., St. Louis.
"Sustainability is important in agricultural production, with an
emphasis placed upon meeting human food requirements while mitigating
environmental impact," said Bauman. "This study demonstrates that use
of rbST markedly improves the efficiency of milk production,
mitigates environmental impact including greenhouse gas emissions and
reduces natural resource requirements, such as fossil fuel, water and
land use."
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