Large, global companies in the food industry face sustainability challenges, that are significantly different from those experienced by small-scale farmers. Of course, large producers also need to figure out how they can grow sustainably. In addition, however, they face the challenge of how to transform an existing production, that has huge environmental impacts. Together with transport, agriculture was one of the major activities, that was not integrated into the quota system of the Kyoto Protocol. Thus, many of the initiatives directed towards a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions have not focused on agriculture. In Denmark, the agricultural sector is responsible for about 20% of the total Danish emissions of greenhouse gasses. Most of these emissions come from livestock, with 63% from cows and 32% from pig production. These staggering numbers are not primarily due to CO2-emissions from machinery but, instead, two other greenhouse gases: nitrous oxide and methane. Nitrous oxide has a greenhouse effect which is almost 300 times stronger than CO2, and it is released primarily from manure and fertilizers. The greenhouse effect of methane is 25 times stronger than CO2, and this gas is also emitted from manure. In addition, burps from ruminant, that is to say cud-chewing animals, such as cows and sheep, release methane to the atmosphere. Handling these different kinds of emissions is essential in order to achieve both the Paris Agreement on climate change and the SDGs. In Denmark, the livestock industry has set some ambitious goals for the future: Europe’s largest pork producer, Danish Crown, intends to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by half before 2030 and to become C02-neutral in 2050. At the same time, Scandinavia’s largest producer of dairy products, Arla, is aiming for a 30% emission reduction for every liter of milk in 2030 and an achievement of net zero emissions in 2050. Both companies acknowledge, that while they know how to get half of the way, the second half requires further technological progress, and they hope to be able to put pressure on their suppliers of machinery and robotics. Both companies have already begun their transformation, and we meet pig farmer Jonas Würtz, who supplies pork through the chain of Danish Crown: My name is Jonas Würtz and I'm 38 years old. I have been a farmer for 11 years. I run my company Go-Gris with my two friends Mads and Martin. We have an integrated production. That means that we keep all the pigs from birth to butchering. This production comes from the 1000 sows on this farm. In addition, we have 670 hectares of plant production. Mainly to feed the pigs, but also for rapeseed oil production. Then we have nine employees of different nationalities. An then we are also doing forestry on the side, with 75 hectares of forestry. We sell some of it as timber and use the rest for heating. For Jonas output per sow, is essential for reducing the environmental and climate impacts of his farm. The first leg of the production is the mother animals. This takes up a great deal of my attention. It is important that the sows have a high life performance, meaning that every sow delivers many piglets. This requires that the sows need to have a long durability, low mortality and high efficiency. Via genetics we have an increase in efficiency, and we produce more pigs in the same system. Efficiency also means that we use less resources per produced pig. We have also reduced our electricity use over the last five years from 18 kWh to 12 kWh per pig. We have reduced our water use significantly, because the size of the area we have to clean remains the same, and also a sow doesn't drink significantly larger amounts, just because she produces more piglets. A more individualized treatment of every pig, not only increase lifespans of the mother pigs, but can also lead to a more sustainable use of antibiotics. The massive use of antibiotics worldwide in agriculture encourages the development of multiresistant bacteria. In the US, for example, 80% of total antibiotic use is in agriculture. Today, around 700 thousand people die annually, from drug-resistant infections. Antibiotic use is linked to the development of drug resistence and is projected to increase in the future, especially in low- and middle-income countries. This excessive use of antibiotics is propelling us into a global health crisis, where the use of biocides in food systems - as disinfectants, as food and feed preservatives, or as decontaminants - is a major contributor. Some studies suggest, that by the year 2050, 10 million deaths every year will be due to antibiotic resistance. That would surpass cancer as a dominant cause of mortality worldwide. In Europe, the use of antibiotics in food production is on the way down. From 2011 to 2016 sales of veterinary antimicrobials decreased by 20%. Jonas’ farm is a part of this trend. On these sites where we are standing, we have individual treatment of sows. This means, if the sows get sick when they farrow, this will require a single animal treatment, which is then registered. Instead of treating with antibiotics right away, as would be the case before, the temperature of the sows is taken. And in many cases today, we can actually treat a farrow fever with pain-relievers. Leaving out antibiotics. We have created more robust pigs through breeding. The feeding of the piglet is now with raw milk from the mother, which gives some immunity. And the piglets get good nutrition, which strengthens their intestines. The biggest challenge with the use of antibiotics, is when you move the piglets away from the mother. We have solved this challenge by making sure that we breed a strong, healthy piglet, also after it is taken away from the sow and moved to the production. We have also started to use some supplementary milk, which also is in favor of sustainability, because it is a spill product from the infant formula milk production. I'm convinced that this protects the pig's intestines even more and that it's ready to learn to eat dry feed. All of this means that the flock treatment, which is normally used in piglet stables aren't used here anymore. Another challenge for farmers like Jonas is the origin of fodder for their animals. Each year, the EU imports soybeans for 3,8 billion euros. These beans come primarily from the US and Brazil and many of them are used in the livestock industry. In Brazil, this soy production is a major contributor to deforestation and destruction of important habitats for biodiversity. Only commodity driven deforestation for wood is a more central driver than shifting agriculture in this trend. Global Forest Watch estimates that from 2001 to 2017, Brazil has lost around 51 million hectares of tree cover. This is equivalent to 4,2 giga tons of CO2-emissions – the same amount of emissions as all airline flights in the world over a 5 year period. A third of the entire Amazon is headed toward or has crossed a threshold of forest cover, which scientists believe accelerates biodiversity loss. The loss of known and unknown species from these reduced forest areas, can be up to four times faster than in less impacted forests. Thus, it can matter on the other side of the globe, what a Danish farmer feeds his pigs. On the fodder side, we have a goal of producing as much of our own fodder as possible. And at the moment, we are almost 80% self-sufficient. And the rest of our fodder, we buy from our neighbors. This is important to us. Then we have the challenge of protein supply - we have tried with fava beans and it changes from year to year how sensible it is. Then, there is this new idea about grass protein and since Denmark is a grass country, and we already have grass seeds, it would be great for our production if we could extract protein from this. Of course, to reach the Danish Crown’s ambitious emission goals, it is not enough to simply change the way the pigs are treated. Slaughterhouses must also be a part of this transformation. Astrid Gade Nielsen, the communications director of Danish Crown, puts focus on changes being implemented in energy and water consumption in the slaughterhouse. On of the greatest challenges of pig production is the energy supply, its a heavy machinery which requires a lot of energy and water. In regard to the energy consumption we have worked a lot with the use of renewable energy sources. We will continue this work to meet our 2030 goal. Then we have some parts of the butchering where we need natural gas and we don't have the technical solutions to avoid this. So how can we develop new singeing furnaces? this is one of the questions we need to answer. When it comes to water, we have become very good at reusing it. 30 years ago we used 600 liters per slaughtered pig. Today we use around 100 liters of water. This is a huge achievement and it shows that when you set a goal you can make great progress. The water we use is heated with the energy from the the slaughterhouse, so the production makes it own hot water. These kinds of solutions need to be found all over the company to reach the set goal. The message from Danish Crown is, that even though they are a part of an emission heavy industry, they are trying to do their part and participate in the broader transformation of food systems: As a consumer you have some considerations on how you can live more sustainability. Some look into transportation and vacations destinations. And of course some think about what they eat and there is an attentiveness on meat and the bigger climate impact it has than vegetables. There are many ways to go and every one must make their own mind up. What we have taken upon us as a meat producing company is to not leave the consumer alone in this but the best we can do is to our products as sustainable as possible. This is what we have set out to do, so if you like to eat meat, we have tried to make this piece of meat as little damaging as possible. I think the best advice is to eat less meat but of better quality. That is good for the farmer and good for the consumer. The dairy producer, Arla, is confronting some of the same challenges as the meat industry. Manures is a common challenge for the meat and dairy industries. A common solution is biogas plants. These have become economically feasible through government subsidies and Danish biogas production doubled from 2014 to 2017. It now represents about 7% of all sustainable energy production in the country. Michael Kuhr is one of the Danish farmers from Arla who has been a part of this movement towards biogas. Some numbers: Now with data about how the gas is produced. Our facility is sanitized so it can take 100 cubic meters of fluent bio mass through the plant every day. 80% of this is manure directly from the cows pumped underground. The last 20% is second generation materials and spill products like plant litter, waste straws and waste food, which is not good enough for the animals. We fill it every day or every second day. And then the control systems injects a small package of material every hour. We have two main tanks. A primary reactor of 24 cubic meters and a secondary reactor of 5000 cubic meters. The manure in the two tanks is 52 degrees celsius and this is where we have been told we get the fastest turnover of the biomass. We get as much through as possible with these temperatures. In the primary tank 65-70% of the gas is made and the last part in the secondary tank. We have heating pumps to keep the temperatures up, which absorbs the heat of the warm manure, compresses it, and sends it up the system to be reused. The energy use here is circular and we don't have to supplement with oil or wood chips. So here as well we keep the energy in rotation. When Michael and his partners considered the benefits of establishing a biogas plant, the decision to go this way was pretty clear. Although they have a solution for and can use manure at Michael’s farm, they still have a long way to go in order to bring the farm to net-zero emissions. This is due to the emission of methane gas from the cows´digestion and it is the digestive systems of cows that make the transformation more challenging for the dairy industry than for the pork producers. When looking at the full value chain, this internal fermentation process carries a special significance in the eyes of the Arla management. Kristian Eriknauer, the vice president of corporate social responsibility at Arla Foods elaborates. Arla Foods have a vision on becoming carbon net zero by 2050 and we have set a goal to reduce our emissions with 30% in 2030. We need to work with all of our value chain. From the cow to the operations to the logistics and to the packaging material. We need to make a huge effort. In operations and logistics we can become totally fossil free. But in regard to the cows its something different, because we can never be completely free from the emissions the cows make. But we can do a lot to reduce it. We can change the management practices they use on the farms so we try to reduce the farm impact. This means that we optimize yields on the fields and yields from the cow. We look in to the fodder the cow gets. There are different kinds of fodder with lesser impacts. We look into additives in the fodder with will reduce the emissions from the fermentation. We look into how we manage manure and how to get as little impact as possible. It is to cover the manure tank and to make sure that it is stired into the ground. We can also install scrapers in the stable so the manure gets into the tank. There is a lot of practical solutions to these issues. And then there is some other possibilities in the future to solve the fermentation emissions. We can try to get the bacteria which produces methane to reduce the production. We will probably never reach zero, but perhaps we can get it reduced by 30%. We believe we can reduce our CO2 impact significantly on the farms and in addition reduce methane emission from the cow even though we will never be able to fully remove it. In the future, both changes in the genetics of cows and technical solutions for carbon sequestration will be important for achieving Arla’s ambitions. In regard to what can be done at the farms, the genetics are also of great importance. It has been found that some cows produce less methane than others and we can select the cows with the genetics resulting in the least impact. We believe that we can actually get a 10% reduction in methane per cow over 10 years. And if we do this evenly we can get very good results. It is very exciting and a bit 'emerging'. The other aspect is carbon sequestration where we try to get carbon into the ground. We can do this by growing more lasting grass and by making the farmers planting more trees. And in that way capture some of the GHGs, than we can't eliminate. Back at the farm, Michael’s brother and partner, Heine, finds optimism in the progress already made. In the last 20 years we have done a lot to try to reduce ammonia evaporation. We needed to get the cows' faeces collected so it doesn't lie to evaporate so easily. We have done this by scraping systems and we have tried to cool down the manure with cooling tubes in the manure canals. We have invested in robots which scrapes the manure between the cows in the stable. All this makes sure that the surface of the manure is as small as possible so the evaporation is lessened. Now we are trying to manage the methane with fodder and I know of research where you try to suck out the methane with ventilation systems. Maybe in the future this will be one way to extract the methane.
