Cattle Country: The role of cattle in sustainable food systems
By Peter Frohlich, National Centre for Livestock and the Environment, University of Manitoba. It was originally published in Cattle Country in June 2025.
Sara Place from Colorado State University was the featured speaker at the Annual T.K. Lecture hosted by the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences where she shared her expertise in livestock systems sustainability. The T.K. Cheung lecture is held annually at the University of Manitoba (UM) in honor of Dr. Tsang Kay Cheung, an alumnus who has made numerous contributions to education and research at UM.
Place grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York and received her Bachelor of Science in Animal Science from Cornell University and a PhD in Animal Biology from the University of California. She is a part of AgNext, a research collaborative at Colorado State University that is focused on exploring sustainable animal agriculture including feedlot and dairy production, with an emphasis on the environmental and economic benefits.
According to Place, all economic, social and environmental domains within the value chain need to be considered to create a sustainable food system; one that provides food security and meets present needs without sacrificing needs of future generations. The food system must consider producers, consumers and the entire food production value chain.
How do cattle fit into sustainable food systems?
Place highlighted the role of cattle production as an integral component of sustainable food systems. Cattle have the unique ability to utilize human inedible ingredients including perennial forages and by-products while producing high quality protein, as well as producing many non-edible products that we use in our everyday lives. Their research team is working to build and strengthen the connections cattle have in a circular bioeconomy, including manure management and its impact on soil health as well as crop yield and quality.
Mitigating inefficiencies in our food system
According to Place, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions including methane from cattle production are considered “leakage” or an inefficiency of the food system. To mitigate this inefficiency, Place and the AgNext team are studying methane emissions from enteric fermentation, the single largest source of emissions from cattle resulting from microbial fermentation of feed in the rumen. The AgNext team uses innovative feeding technology to capture individual feed intake data and to measure methane, hydrogen and oxygen emissions from cattle in order to understand factors that effect enteric methane production. These factors can include type of feed, feed additives, cattle genetics and production-enhancing technologies like implants. By collecting large amounts of data, the team is establishing emission baselines for use in modeling software. Exploring the rumen microbiome to improve efficiency and sustainability
Future research at AgNext will explore the effect of rumen microbiome manipulation on enteric methane production. The research aligns well with a new project at the UM led by Hooman Derakhshani, a researcher at the Department of Animal Science and a team of scientists from universities of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Guelph, and from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC). This research team has launched a groundbreaking project that will address enteric methane emissions from cattle by developing a database to characterize microbes in the rumen that are linked to low methane emissions and by exploring novel microbial feed additives that reduce methane emissions. The team will also use genomic research technology to identify heritable traits in cattle linked to methane emissions and feed efficiency. The outcomes of this research will assist in the development of Precision Management Strategies focused on the “3R” approach – Right genetics, Right feed, and Right production systems. More information on this project can be found in the February 2025 issue of Cattle Country.
Unique role of cattle in utilizing by-products from feed and food processing
As described by Place, the microbial community in the rumen give cattle a distinct advantage to utilize human-inedible ingredients, as well as those that may not meet consumer standards or are discarded after processing. Researchers at the UM are continuing to strengthen the connection of cattle to a circular bioeconomy by studying the use of food processing by-products and food waste. Although livestock operations may already use these by-products to meet nutrient requirements and reduce waste, there has been limited work conducted to explore the environmental sustainability of this practice. Janine Hansen, a graduate student at the Department of Animal Science has completed a research project that further demonstrates benefits of using these by-products in backgrounding and finishing cattle diets. Hansen, along with a team including UM researchers Kim Ominski and Marcos Cordeiro and researchers from AAFC and the University of Lethbridge (UL) have used data from a study in which a by-product from the bakery industry was substituted for corn in feedlot diets to examine the environmental footprint of cattle. Using modeling software, Hansen examined the environmental benefits of adding bread waste to cattle feed. Using these by-products reduced land, water and fertilizer resources needed to grow feed crops. When bread waste was included in backgrounding diets, land use was reduced by 45%, water use was reduced by 37% and GHG and ammonia emissions were both reduced by 14% and 4%, respectively. In finishing diets land use was reduced by 63%, water use was reduced by 61% and GHG emissions were reduced by 19%. Since the bread waste was diverted away from the landfill, GHG emissions into the environment were also reduced by 24% when the bread waste was used in the backgrounding diet and by 53% when used in the finishing diet further improving the sustainability of the food system and reducing the environmental footprint of cattle.
Imperfect potatoes are perfect for cattle feed
Researchers including Ominski, Cordeiro, Genet Mengistu and their partners at AAFC and UL have also examined the environmental benefits of using cull potatoes in feedlot diets. Cull potatoes may be discarded during storage or processing and if diverted to a landfill they provide no additional value and decompose, resulting in GHG emissions. Previous research has shown that cull potatoes are palatable, of high nutritive value and can partially replace cereal grains in cattle feed. Results from this project have shown that the use of cull potatoes also reduced land requirements (to grow feed crops) and GHG emissions into the environment by diverting the potatoes away from the landfill, by up to 30% and 22%, respectively. In addition to nutritive, environmental and economic benefits of adding these materials to feed, bread waste and cull potatoes can also serve as alternative feedstuffs during feed shortages resulting from flood or drought.
The T.K. Cheung Lecture featuring Sara Place together with podcasts and infographics highlighting research at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences can be found on the Manitoba Agriculture Knowledge Exchange website, an information sharing initiative between University of Manitoba and Manitoba Agriculture.