When asked, “What is exciting in FoodTech right now?” I always have the same answer: Healthy ageing and emission reduction. As we have discussed the former topic recently, let’s focus on emissions. It can be separated into multiple issues, ranging from financing regenerative practices (notably through carbon credits) to bioinputs. However, today, I’d like to focus on something that may look niche but is growing fast: enteric methane emissions.
What is methane, and why should we care about it?
Methane was almost absent from the climate discussion until the last couple of COP summits, where it became central. Indeed, Methane (CH₄) is much more potent (25 times more over 100 years) than CO₂ regarding warming potential. The good news is that its effects decrease over time in only 12 years. The bad news is that methane is already responsible for about 20% of global warming emissions and is still rising.
This short lifespan makes methane an obvious target for achieving climate goals, which has led to a flurry of innovation and investments.
How is methane linked to food?
Food is directly responsible for about 40% of methane emissions. It can vary widely depending on each country’s agriculture, but there are about three sources:
- our focus, enteric fermentation, which is basically ruminant (cows, sheep, goats…) emissions through burping
- manure
- flooded lands: notably in rice cultivation (much higher in South East Asia), a source of methane that is actually relatively easy to solve.
And among ruminants, the main source is obviously cows (due to the sheer number of them). The process is quite simple: naturally-occuring microbes decompose and ferment food, creating methane as a by-product.
How to reduce enteric emissions from cows?
So, now that we better understand the challenge, what are the potential solutions? There are about three of them, with only two being at the core of this emerging ecosystem:
1 – Outlier solution: Putting masks to cows. This idea has been studied by a startup called Zelp (UK) with the help of Cargill, but is now mostly considered as too complicated, in terms of animal welfare, costs, and more efficiency. The idea was quite simple: capture methane from burping, and convert it into CO₂ through a chemical reaction.
2 – Feed supplements: this is where most of innovators are playing now.
Most of them are betting on red algae to create a supplement that acts on the cow’s microbiome and reduce entheric emissions. DSM has already a product on the market with a 30% reduction in methane. As these feed supplements are receiving regulatory approval in many countries, multiple startups have raised significant funding to develop new, more potent solutions.
3 – Vaccines and cow gut microbiome modification: instead of feed supplements that have to be added to cows’ diets for all their lives, vaccines could be a one-off solution. The goal is to be able with a single shot to modify the cow’s microbiome and to cut enteric emissions. This space is also moving really fast, with some startups, such as Lucidome Bio ($13.5M raised in the past month) or ArkeaBio, which has raised $38.5M and says it plans to launch commercially by 2027.
What’s next for methane reduction?
What’s the most exciting about all these innovations, is how quick they have emerged from labs to experiments, and hopefully soon to commercial-scale products. However, they do come with some challenges, notably:
1 – regulation, which is part linked to the need of health impact studies (on the health of animals and humans). Basically, we need to have a good assesment of the benefits before rolling out these solutions.
2 – cost: who will pay? That’s always the question with emission reduction, but here it is a particularly touchy topic as dairy farmers margins are already tight (and consumers don’t seem particularly keep to pay a green premium). Public incentives, more or less linked to some sort of a carbon tax on cows could be required.
3 – the danger of inaction: as we wait for these solutions, there is a temptation to think that these technologies will enable us to “change nothing”. Most of them have not yet been proven at scale, so we should also pursue other solutions, such as alternatives to dairy & meet products.
Now, as explained in the introduction, this is only a part of a much larger picture for emission reduction. Taking all these new technologies and innovation ecosystems from enteric emission reduction to bioinputs into account is a necessity for any agrifood company serious on its climate goals and pledges.
This requires first an understanding of all the innovations in this space (what is happening and it is relevant for us?), a commitment to move forward (with the required means), and then a strategy on how to act on each of them (which to ignore, which to prioritise, and then with which tools, from investment to partnership).
