Farmscape for March 5, 2019
Research being conducted by the University of Saskatchewan's College of Agriculture and Bioresources is examining the carbon footprint left by using high fibre feed ingredients.
The University of Saskatchewan's College of Agriculture and Bioresources is looking at the environmental implications of including alternative feed ingredients in swine rations.
Dr. Denise Beaulieu, an Assistant Professor Monogastric Nutrition with the University of Saskatchewan's College of Agriculture and Bioresources, explains the motivation is to allow pork producers to increase the inclusion of byproducts in swine rations and lower their feed costs.
Clip-Dr. Denise Beaulieu-University of Saskatchewan:
As we know, most of these byproducts are high in fibre and so we could imagine that this would increase methane and CO2 being produced by the pig as these fibres are fermented by the pig.
While the pig or pork production is not a major cause of greenhouse gas production we certainly don't want it to be going in the wrong direction so I just wanted to look at how much concern could be the increased fibre content in the ration in terms of greenhouse gas output from the pig.
The main objective is to look at using lifecycle analysis to look at greenhouse gas production from these high fibre byproducts if we include the entire life cycle of that feed production, so going all the way back to crop production where we're making use of the byproducts from these grains growing on a farm and so we take the byproducts and turn those poor quality byproducts into high quality protein so, if we take this entire lifecycle analysis, then what is the implications for overall greenhouse gas output.
Dr. Beaulieu says, in the event carbon pricing comes into play and we have to put a cost on high fibre ingredients, this data could allow us to accurately determine their cost and the overall carbon footprint of pork production.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.
*Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork
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