Up for the Sustainable Farming Challenge
The challenge:
Wherever you are on the planet, there’s no denying that the climate crisis is here. With the world’s population estimated to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050, the agriculture sector will be forced into hyper-drive to increase food production by 60%. At the same time, aggressive emission reduction targets must be met to offset environmental damage.
The dairy sector happens to be one of Canada’s most important industries, contributing $35B to the country’s GDP. But dairy cows also account for around 36% of Canada’s livestock greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from methane and nitrous oxide.
What are we doing about it:
The Canadian dairy industry has made a pledge to be net-zero by 2050 with the goal of a 30% reduction in their carbon “hoof” print by the end of this decade. And this is where Ontario Genomics comes in. We’re overseeing a $16-million international project using genomic technologies to help the dairy industry reach its critical climate goals.
How it works:
In May 2022, Genome Canada launched a Climate Action Genomics Initiative funding opportunity featuring an Interdisciplinary Challenge Teams (ICT) component. The idea was to bring together researchers with different specialities to solve some serious environmental problems in the agriculture sector.
This has led to the creation of the Leveraging Genomics to Achieve Dairy Net Zero project which is led by Dr. Christine Baes at the University of Guelph and Dr. Filippo Migliori from Lactanet alongside co-leads at the University of Alberta and Université Laval, with support from national and international academic and industry partners.
One of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture comes from methane-filled cow burps, so this team is focused on understanding the feed, herd genomics and gut microbiome of dairy cows to create a diagnostic toolkit to help farmers breed dairy cows with better digestion, which will make them significantly less gassy. The hope is to ultimately also apply this toolkit to the beef cattle industry, which according to Environment and Climate Change Canada, accounts for 71% of greenhouse gas emissions from the country’s agriculture sector.
Meet the Team:
- University of Guelph:
Dr. Christine Baes - Lactanet and University of Guelph:
Dr. Filippo Migliori - University of Alberta:
Dr. Paul Stothard - Université Laval:
Rachel Gervais
Funded by:
Genome Canada and the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. Also supported by Genome Québec, Genome Alberta, Lactanet Canada, Dairy Farmers of Ontario, AAFC Dairy Cluster, Les Producteurs de lait du Québec (PLQ), AFC-Alberta Milk and institutions in Canada, Australia, Italy, Switzerland, USA, Denmark, Spain and Ireland.
