Innovative technology helps farmers to reduce environmental footprint of livestock production through reduced emissions and natural resource usage
Syngenta Seeds, in partnership with the University of Arkansas Resiliency Centre (UARC), unveiled newly published research highlighting the potential for beef producers to reduce their environmental footprint by using Enogen® corn for feed from Syngenta Seeds. Agriculture alone is responsible for 12 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the whole food value chain accounts for 25 per cent of emissions.
Enogen corn for feed, fed to cattle as grain or silage, helps convert starch to sugar more efficiently, resulting in more readily available energy for livestock. The purpose of the UARC study was to evaluate the performance of Enogen corn for feed – compared to conventional feed corn – when used as an ingredient in their operations. The life cycle assessment was conducted by Drs Greg Thoma, Marty Matlock and Martin Christy at the UARC.
“To your average person, small percentages like 5 percent might not seem significant when feeding cattle. But improving sustainability indicators across a complex system like beef production with tens of millions of cattle starts with understanding where the impacts occur in the life cycle of the product. Technological innovations like Enogen corn from Syngenta Seeds have the potential to enhance the sustainability of agricultural production, especially reducing greenhouse gas emissions”, said Marty Matlock, Ph.D., Executive Director of UARC.
The UARC findings indicate that an improvement in feed efficiency – as demonstrated in University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) feeding trials2 – results in approximately 6 per cent improvement in the four key environmental performance metrics of beef production. The observed environmental performance improvement during the backgrounding phase – as seen in Kansas State University (KSU) trials2 – was in the 3.5-5 per cent range, which suggests Enogen corn for feed is an important potential technology for mitigation of environmental impact in this phase of beef production, as well.
“We’re thrilled with this new data from the UARC study that supports earlier research showing clear environmental benefits when using Enogen corn for feed,” said Chris Cook, Head, Enogen at Syngenta Seeds.