Livestock Project

The Technical Working Group on Agriculture and Greenhouse Gases (T-AGG) is developing a report to summarize strategies for managing GHG emissions from livestock (cattle and swine) systems and to review options for quantification and accounting for farm-scale implementation of such strategies. The project is starting summer 2011 and will be completed by summer 2012.

Report authors:

Dr. Shawn Archibeque is an assistant professor in the department of animal sciences at Colorado State University. He is a ruminant nutritionist.

Dr. Kristen Johnson is a professor and animal scientist at Washington State University who conducts research on ruminant nutrition and beef cattle energetics.

Dr. Ermias Kebreab is a professor and Senson Endowed Chair in the department of animal sciences at the University of California-Davis. His research includes whole-system and modeling approaches to quantifying greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture.

Karen Haugen-Kozyra, MSc, PAg has been working in the field of carbon quantification and policy development since 1997. Karen has over thirteen years of experience in greenhouse gas measurement and modeling (six years) and climate change and environmental policy (seven years).

Dr. Lydia Olander directs the ecosystem services program at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University. She works on climate mitigation and ecosystem services policy design and was trained as a biogeochemist.

Dr. Wendy Powers is a professor in the Departments of Animal Science and Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering at MSU where she serves as the Director of Environmental Stewardship for Animal Agriculture and the Director of the Institute for Enhancing Michigan's First Green Industry: Agriculture and Agribusiness. Her research looks at diet modification as a mitigation strategy for gaseous emissions and manure nutrient excretions.

Advisors for the project include Erin Fitzgerald of the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy and Ying Wang, their LCA expert; Marty Matlock from the Center for Agricultural and Rural Sustainability at the University of Arkansas, who is a technical lead for The Sustainability Consortium; and Garth Boyd, who is currently with Camco and who previously worked as director of environmental technology for Smithfield Foods and on the animal science faculty at Colorado State University.