Manifesto

Mitigating enteric methane emissions is part of the solution to limit climate change

Reducing human-caused methane emissions is one of the most cost-effective strategies to rapidly reduce the rate of warming and contribute significantly to global efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5°C. According to the UN environment program, methane emissions in agriculture need to be reduced by 25% by 2030 (relative to 2020 emissions) if we want to limit warming to 1.5°C at the lowest cost (United Nations Environment Programme and Climate and Clean Air Coalition, 2021¹). Methane emissions from agriculture are largely due to enteric fermentation of ruminants (more than 70%) followed by rice cultivation and manure management.

On this matter, nothing can be done without the farmers. They need to be given the tools to improve the situation on their farms. Among them, a tool to measure their methane emissions and the reduction associated with the solutions implemented on their farms would be very useful. These tools need to be easy-to-use and reliable to encourage the farmers to act. Initiatives already exist with the example of Metha’data, a database that is over 10 years old, connected with an equation that predicts methane intensity using milk fatty acids and milk production. The 300,000+ data points come from more than 7,000 farmers in over 20 countries.

Metha'data: mesuring methane emissions in order to tackle them

Measuring methane emissions on farms provides many benefits:

lt puts the farmer at the centre of everything and positions him as an actor of change
lt allows an accurate understanding of farm emissions and develops a specific baseline against which you can measure progress
lt makes it possible for any farmer in the world to benchmark their methane emissions against other farmers
lt enables the identification of the best practices to reduce emissions in the most economical way
lt encourages farmers to set up a mitigation strategy and measure its impacts

Metha'data ambitions for 2025

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Farmers

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Countries

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Data points

Farmers, but also their entire network (dairy companies, analysis laboratories, feed manufacturers, general or specialist advisors, milk control organisations, etc.) can contribute to this goal.

We commit to spreading the measurements of methane emissions throughout the world to encourage methane mitigation.

Manifesto authors:

1 United Nations Environment Programme and Climate and Clean Air Coalition (2021). Global Methane Assessment: Benefits and Costs of Mitigating Methane Emissions.

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