Reinventing the old for sustainable agriculture (Healthy hay)

[nosmokes]

cows that fart less.not by changing the cow, simply by giving them a more efficient grass to munch on. good news for free ranged grass fed milkers.
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original-scenta

Reinventing the old for sustainable agriculture
Source: scenta

Ruminants, particularly dairy cows, are major contributors to environmental pollution, but by eating sainfoin, an almost forgotten traditional fodder legume, the animals' polluting emissions could be cut significantly.

Now the University of Reading's agriculture department, in collaboration with other EU and Armenian colleagues, is part of a new Marie Curie research training network called 'HealthyHay', which will investigate the benefits of feeding sainfoin to livestock.

Dr Irene Mueller-Harvey, project leader at Reading, said: "Ruminants utilise sainfoin protein very efficiently. They also make better use of the energy in sainfoin compared to grass of equal metabolisable energy content.

"This is important because more efficient nutrient utilisation of protein and energy leads to less environmental pollution in terms of nitrogen and methane emissions.
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complete story here

[Kali]

1. only in our insane world is nitrogen a polutant

cow shit = FERTILIZER - organic, natural easily utilized by plants and soil organisms.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Too much nitrogen leads to NOx being produced by bacteria.

If that manure were ALL mixed into crop soil, that would be fine. But much of it is not, and gives off small amounts of NOx which add to both acid rain and GHGs. (The amount is small, but N2O is a tremendously potenet GHG, IIRC.)

from Wikipedia:

Control of nitrous oxide is thus part of efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, such as the Kyoto Protocol. Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas in contribution to global warming, ranking behind carbon dioxide and methane. (The other nitrogen oxides contribute to global warming indirectly, by contributing to tropospheric ozone production during smog formation).

Nitrous oxide also attacks ozone in the stratosphere, aggravating the excess amount of UV light striking the earth's surface in recent decades, in a manner similar to various freons and related halogenated organics. Nitrous oxide is the main naturally-occurring regulator of stratospheric ozone.

Nitrous oxide is naturally emitted by bacteria in soils and oceans. Agriculture is the main source of human-produced nitrous oxide: cultivating soil, the use of nitrogen fertilizers, and animal waste handling can all stimulate naturally occurring bacteria to produce more nitrous oxide. The livestock sector (primarily cows, chickens, and pigs) produces 65% of human-related nitrous oxide <3>. Industrial sources make up only about 20% of all anthropogenic sources, and include the production of nylon and nitric acid and the burning of fossil fuel in internal combustion engines.

[Kali]

3. what was the proportion of "naturally" emitted vs. anthropogenic sources?

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Well, according to Wiki ...

Human activity is thought to account for somewhat less than 2 teragrams (this is multiplied by about 300 when calculated as a ratio to carbon dioxide) of nitrogen oxides per year, nature for over 15 teragrams <4>.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N2O

The meaning of that first sentence isn't too clear, IMHO.