Calculating YOUR CARBON Footprint Calculating ... - ClimateCHECK

ISSUESUPDATE
By Bill Dimmick
When it comes to reducing
greenhouse gas emissions
on your farm, the hard
part has just begun. While
Canadian dairy farmers have
already reduced emissions dramatically
in the past two decades, the
industry isn’t content to sit on its
laurels as public awareness and
concern about global warming
continue to grow.
“The industry in Canada is committed to decreasing
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with milk
production,” says Dr. Robert Janzen, a scientist employed
by ClimateCHECK, a consulting firm providing practical
climate change services to its clients. However, most of the
easy GHG emission reductions have already been accomplished.
“This means further decreases will require greater
innovation,” he says.
That’s where Janzen comes in. He heads a project to
develop a protocol and computerized GHG calculator for
dairy farms. “The protocol and calculator will provide
dairy farmers with a means to predict the potential environmental
benefits associated with changes in management
practices,” he says.
The dairy calculator project is managed by the Atlantic
Dairy and Forage Institute, in partnership with Dairy
Farmers of Canada (DFC), using $450,000 in funds provided
by the Advancing Canadian Agriculture and Agri-
Food Program. Project plans call for a working calculator
by early next year. Instructional workshops for dairy
farmers across Canada would be completed by March
2009.
“This will enable farmers to determine and track GHG
emissions associated with the practices used on their
farms,” says Janzen, ClimateCheck’s vice-president of
Western Canada operations. “Farmers can also predict the
GHG reduction credits they could generate by implementing
GHG-mitigating practices.”
Dairy farms by nature emit GHG. Emissions originate
from feed production, cows, and manure storage and
spreading. According to 2001 data, the most recent year
for which complete GHG numbers are available for
Canadian dairy farms, emissions break down like this:
• fertilizing, growing, harvesting and providing feed, 15
to 20 per cent;
• cows burping methane, 40 to 45 per cent;
• storing and spreading manure, 35 to 45 per cent.
Much of the media and public attention when it comes
to GHG from cows has focused on the methane they and
other ruminants exhale as they digest their feed. Methane
is rated 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2)
as a GHG.
However, Canadian cows burp far less methane and our
dairy farms emit far less GHG than they did only a few
decades ago. From 1981 to 2001, Janzen notes, GHG
emissions from all the nation’s dairy cows decreased 49
per cent. Emissions per kg of milk decreased by 35 per
cent.
“These emissions have decreased as milk production
efficiency on dairy farms has increased,” he says.
In 2001, dairy farm emissions comprised about 1.5 per
cent of total GHG in Canada. Producers, meanwhile, have
continued to implement efficiencies since then, estimated
to reduce GHG by one per cent per year, says Émie
Désilets, DFC’s GHG coordinator.
“The last data I have show dairy production represented
less than one per cent of total Canadian GHG emissions,”
she says. “I would say it is a meaningful contribution
from the dairy sector toward combating GHG. Dairy
farmers are doing their share.”
A 2006 report published by the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization puts the Canadian numbers
in perspective. It concludes livestock, measured in CO2
equivalent, account for 18 per cent of GHG emissions
worldwide, more than the transportation industry.
The situation in this country is reversed, according to
Désilets. “The transportation sector creates nearly six
times more GHG emissions than cattle,” she says.
MilkPRODUCER | July 2008 | 21