Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s Cool Sheep® Programme Manager Dr Cynthia Lawrence highlighted the genetic tools available to help sheep farmers reduce their methane emissions at a recent Climate Change conference in Wellington.
Speaking on a panel discussing climate change mitigation in action at the New Zealand Agriculture and Climate Change Conference, Dr Lawrence talked about the three-year Cool Sheep® programme and how low-emitting genetics were a tool commercial sheep farmers could use to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions while still increasing productivity.
“Sheep farmers still have to buy rams, so we encourage them to pick the best rams and then put a methane lens over them.”
She says irrespective of the politics around climate change, methane is a global issue and could become a market access or regulatory issue in the future.
As an exporter, NZ sits within a global community and will likely need to demonstrate the measures being taken to reduce methane emissions and the use of low-emitting genetics could be one of them.
Through the Cool Sheep® programme, sheep breeders can apply to have their flocks’ methane emissions measured through AgResearch’s Portable Accumulation Chambers (PAC). Now going into its third season of PAC measurements, Dr Lawrence says they were once again over-subscribed by breeders wanting to take objective methane emission measurements of their stud animals.
While funding is available to help with the costs of the measurements, in what is a co-funding model, breeders also are required to make a financial contribution.
“Even in this tough financial environment, breeders are still seeing the value in these measurements. This speaks volumes to the long-term potential financial value they see in breeding for low emitting genetics,” says Dr Lawrence.
Between February and October, around 30 flocks will be run through the chambers as part of the Cool Sheep® programme, with the South Island flocks being measured in the first part of the year.
Dr Lawrence says factors such as feed availability, facial eczema and pregnancy all need to be considered when scheduling the measurements, so South Island flocks are typically measured earlier than North Island flocks.
One of the challenges for the industry is creating market value for lamb produced from a low-methane flock.
“There is a disconnect in that respect. We need to ensure that farmers using low methane genetics are rewarded and the challenge for the market is to create that value."
“We are providing credibility to an attribute that could underpin value-added products while rewarding farmers.
“Our farmers need to be empowered to make the decision to select the genetics that will work for them while contributing to the collective goal of emissions reductions.”