At the recent Cattlemen’s Conference, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, talked with Dr. Frank Mitloehner of the University of California, Davis, about the concept of upcycling.
About 70 percent of all agricultural land in the United States is marginal land, Mitloehner said, which is land where crops cannot be grown.
“What grows there is forages containing cellulose,” Mitloehner said. “Cellulose is the world’s most important biomass.”
The only animals we eat that can digest cellulose, Mitloehner said, are ruminants because of their unique digestive nature and the fact that they have microbes that help digest that cellulose.
“The unintended consequences of these microbes is that they produce methane gas and that methane gas must come out, and it does come out through the mouth,” Mitloehner said.
This entire system, Mitloehner said, is nothing short of a miracle. As photosynthesis creates cellulose, Mitloehner said, the animals consume that cellulose and convert it into foods we can enjoy.
“It is nothing short of a miracle because we are upcycling something nobody else can eat into a product that is highly desirable,” Mitloehner said.
Dr. Mitloehner has led the battle in recent years over telling the cattle industry story when it comes to methane recycling and the entire concept of a low carbon footprint, especially for the cattle industry in the U.S.
“The future is that farmers have to pull their head out of the sand,” Mitloehner said.
The days of refusing to listen are over, Mitloehner said, as the discussion is not going away. Companies and consumers are going to continue to ask questions about the carbon footprint of a product, he added.
“If you are the one who says, ‘I don’t know,’ please know there are other producers who know what theirs is, and these companies can buy it anywhere they want in the world, and they will,” Mitloehner said.
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