You Could Soon Be Wearing Cow Burps and Farts

The United States is one of the largest food producers in the world. But as the nation is increasingly battered by heatwaves, droughts and tropical storms, many are beginning to worry about our ability to maintain this high level of agricultural productivity. The question is, what can be done to future-proof the American food system?

From autonomous robots to clothing made from cow burps, innovators are rising to the challenge of growing a more resilient, sustainable food system. Newsweek spoke to the U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and the U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security, Cary Fowler, about what the U.S. government was doing to support this transition.

"The challenges that we face relative to food security are two-fold," Vilsack told Newsweek. "One, obviously, is the impact of changing climate on our ability to produce: we've got megadroughts, we've got horrific wildfires, we have incredibly dangerous storms. They all have an impact and effect on our ability to be productive."

These environmental threats are set against a backdrop of other issues, Fowler said. "It is a historically unprecedented moment for agriculture because we have the confluence of a number of different really serious challenges, any one of which would be quite problematic," he said.

"One obviously is climate change, but climate change has so many different facets...it means a whole host of sub-crises. We have water issues, we have fertilizer problems, and of course, right now, you're also seeing historically low grain stockpiles."

As well as being a major casualty of climate change, farming is also a major cause. Over a quarter of man-made greenhouse gas emissions come from the production and distribution of food, and agriculture already covers over 50 percent of the habitable land on Earth.

"The key here is for us to continue to look for ways in which we can innovate in ways in which we can encourage farmers to produce what they need to produce to feed our families, but to do it in a sustainable and regenerative way," Vilsack said.

"The American farmer and rancher producer is one who has been open to innovation. And I think there are endless opportunities for us to innovate, to adapt and to mitigate to a changing climate, and by innovating continue to have a wide array of great food."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has put $2.8 billion on the table to fund 70 climate-smart projects, involving over 50,000 farmers and 25 million acres of land.

"There's so much going on here," Vilsack said. "I'll give you a couple of examples: one is sensor technology, the ability to be able to determine what part of a farm needs to be fertilized and what part of that farm doesn't need fertilizer. That's a tremendous opportunity to save maybe 20 to 30 percent of the fertilizer that we're currently placing on land that doesn't need it."

The production of fertilizer alone is responsible for 1.4 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and excess fertilizer can pollute surrounding rivers and lakes. Reducing our reliance on this input clearly has huge benefits for the planet as well as productivity.

Another major problem with agriculture today is livestock farming, particularly cows and sheep, which account for nearly two thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock sector.

Ruminants rely on millions of microbes that live in their stomachs to break down their food. During this process, the microbes produce methane—a potent greenhouse gas—which the animals then burp out.

Technologies and breeding programs are now being developed to reduce the amount of methane produced by livestock, and to capture what is produced and to convert it into a wide variety of products, Vilsack said. "Everything from fuel and energy to materials to fabrics to fiber to bedding...It's a tremendous new opportunity to create a bio economy and to move away from fossil fuels in material and chemical production."

These ideas have gone beyond the drawing board, and a start-up called Mango Materials has actually started to produce bio-based clothing fibers from methane, although so far the methane used in this process has been captured from wastewater plants and landfill rather than cows.

Other companies are experimenting with face masks for cows that catch their burps in an attempt to reduce methane emissions.

At the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, last year, President Joe Biden announced a global drive to increase investment in climate-smart agriculture and food systems innovation called the AIM for Climate initiative, led by the U.S. and United Arab Emirates governments.

"It's an opportunity for us to work with our partners at the UAE to really spur innovation and to promote regenerative and sustainable practices," Vilsack said of the initiative. "I think there's a tremendous opportunity for us to provide global leadership at a time it's desperately needed."

At this month's COP27 conference in Egypt, the AIM for Climate Initiative announced an increased investment of more than $8 billion to support innovation in this sector.

"Agriculture is a terribly complex business, so we need a whole suite of approaches across many different aspects of the agricultural system, starting at the ground level," Fowler told Newsweek. "We need a lot of people working in a lot of different areas...and that's what I've actually seen at this COP27.

"That kind of diversity of approaches with many people working on many different issues is actually what gives me hope."

Of course, there are still barriers to the development and implementation of these innovations. "There are technical barriers, there are institutional barriers and there are funding barriers," Fowler said. "But my sense of it is that those barriers are dropping, and in part they're dropping because we do have an all hands on deck moment with the food security crisis.

"I'm seeing a pretty large revving up of activity in this area which I haven't seen in the past in my whole career...I think it's exciting."

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