There’s room for improvement in production systems to help reduce GHG emissions
Green house gas (GHG) emissions are highly variable between and within production systems and the optimisation, or management, of animal production systems has not yet been considered so there is room for possible improvement.
This was just some of the positive news for delegates attending the British Society of Animal Science’s Livestock and Global Climate Change meeting, held in Tunisia, from INRA France, Jean-Yves Dourmad.
“Many mitigation strategies are already available and these focus on improving animal efficiency, changing feeding strategies and improving manure management. And they require a whole system evaluation,” he said.
“In the future, on-farm evaluation tools and new technologies, based on farm modelling, will be developed to assist decision making.
“But more research is needed to better evaluate GHG emissions, particularly N2O, in alternative production systems.”
Presented to the British Society of Animal Science’s Livestock and Global Climate Change meeting, May 17 to 20, 2008, Hammamet, Tunisia.
Full details: J Dourmad, C Rigolot and H van der Werf: “Emission of green house gas, developing management and animal farming systems to assist mitigation.”
summary (pdf) Presentation_08_12_dourmad1 (pdf)
http://www.bsas.org.uk/Meetings_&_Workshops/Past_Meetings/
For further information contact: BSAS on 0131 445 4508 or bsas@sac.ac.uk
