Minnesota's Swine & U

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Hello, and welcome to Minnesota's Swine and U Podcast Series, a University of Minnesota Extension Swine Program. Today's podcast is navigating the science and communication related to environmental sustainability initiatives in the swine industry and elsewhere in agriculture. My name is Sarah Schieck Boelke, your host, and I'm a Swine Extension Educator with the University of Minnesota. Joining me today is Erin Cortus, who is Associate Professor and Extension Engineer in the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Ingenuity. Thank you so much, Erin, for your willingness to be on the podcast today.

And to get us started, would you share a little bit about yourself, including how you started working in the area of sustainability?

Erin Cortus:
Thanks, Sarah. I'm happy to be here. My research background is in measuring and estimating gas emissions from livestock farms. This work over time has exposed me to barns and farms across the country, including swine barns, but also dairy, poultry and beef cattle barns. Greenhouse gas measurements, you know, are one of those gases that come from barns.

And so it's been part of this work. But I don't think we're I don't think I'll ever truly be done that research work of measuring and estimating gas emissions because farms are living things. They grow and change and react to their surroundings. So as the farms change, so do their emissions. We can measure emissions from one farm, but we need to do further digging.

We need to understand the why in order to be able to translate those results to other farms, and that's the modeling aspect of the work I do. This environmental work morphed further into the sustainability sphere, probably coming up close to a decade now. When I was first exposed to the pig production environmental footprint calculator, one of the first edition footprint calculators that came out of the National Pork Board, you know, the science behind the calculator and its intent were right up my alley, but but more so I I was and I remain fascinated to this day with that the user aspect and how environmental decisions are are a piece of a much larger system, a much larger need.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Thank you. I know, yeah, several years ago, I worked with you on an environmental footprint calculator, and now we're talking about the on-farm sustainability reports. And that calculator was kind of early, I don't know if you want to say like an early program leading into those on farm sustainability reports and is still being used. Is that correct?

Erin Cortus:
Parts of it. Yes, parts of it. We're learning more and going beyond just the footprint calculator. Farm sustainability reports are bigger than that. But what we learned from that has been a stepping stone, and we're going to continue to build on that knowledge.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
So sustainability is a big buzzword that we're hearing a lot about. How do you define sustainability?

Erin Cortus:
There are some broad definitions that I think most of us can relate to. First, though, I like to make sure we use it as an adjective to describe something like development or growth. One of the most quoted goals of sustainable development is to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, and that comes from a frontline Commission report from the 1980s in the 1990 farm 1990 farm bill. It further expanded that definition to agricultural sustainability And it highlights environmental, social and economic aspects in the pursuit of producing food, feed, fiber and fuel from the biosphere. These, the environment, the economics, social aspects, they're common pillars in most descriptions.

And I think that's that's common, a common belief, a common knowledge, and a common approach for a lot of people. I do tend to focus on actions in that environmental pillar because of my background and my priorities. But the sustainability perspective, you know, is about recognizing the implications in these other pillars in what we do. To be honest, though, I try not to focus on a firm, firm definition for myself. I find it more useful to understand what sustainability looks like to the person I'm talking with.

And when I talk about sustainability, sustainability initiatives, I I always turn to the analogy of a road trip. You know, what is that far off destination? What is the sustainability goal? What is the goal of an initiative or program? What are the priorities for the trip?

You know, if we're going on this road trip, what are the priorities? Is it to see every single county museum, or is it to get there the fastest way possible? You know? And so what are those priorities for a sustainability goal? What are the going to be the focus areas?

Because we can't do everything all the time. Who's going to be part of the convoy? You know, not everyone has to take the same path necessarily. Everyone can be free to chart their own course as long as they're heading in the same general direction. And then what are some stopping points, milestones to recognize how that trip is going, and you who's going to report on the progress.

So I like to use that analogy of a road trip when I'm talking about existing sustainability initiatives or putting some ideas or some plans in place, because I think everyone can relate to that and that road trip analogy. We've all been on one at some point or another

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Yeah. Exactly. We talk about, like, reporting on progress, and it makes me think of the poor quality assurance program, which I'm a trainer here in Minnesota. So as I'm delivering that, you know, to farmers constantly talking about it is a tool for continuous improvement. And within that program of quality assurance, I know the environment is one of the “we care” ethical principles for the pork industry, and it has been for many years.

The swine industry has made several commitments related to water use, land use, water quality, and greenhouse gas emissions. Does every farm need to change their practices?

Erin Cortus:
The commitments that you mentioned, they set out some priorities for the industry as a whole, And I think it's important to note that there just isn't, there isn't just one priority. There's multiple priorities because we don't want to change practices to meet one goal without consideration of other impacts. Just like we don't want to make environmental decisions that don't make sense financially or don't support our communities. So I encourage individual farms, individual farmers to think about their own priorities in tandem with industry goals, kind of like that. Can all be taking different paths towards a common endpoint.

Farming practices are very regional and variable, you know, size of farms, different styles of production, weather, and then, of course, local and state policies. Sometimes simply some history in a region, right, is going to dictate existing practices. Midwest farms where we predominantly have deep pit manure systems, we have different opportunities and different challenges than those of our pig industry colleagues in different parts of the country. You know, so I don't think we all have different paths just because of some of those reasons. But, you know, does someone need to change?

Well, I think the first step is just even understanding where you are and where you want to go. And that's valuable. We want to know what we're where we're starting from. We want to know some baselines, you know, for what we're currently doing. What how are we going to evaluate that?

We need to understand what a metric is for our current practices, how a potential change could even influence one of those metrics, and then that gives us something to demonstrate progress moving forward. The Pork Board is providing this type of baseline calculation in their own farm sustainability reports. From my experience, not necessarily solely with just these reports, but just any footprint or any sustainability report, they can be just eye opening in the sense of how many components that how many components of a farm, how many aspects of a farm make up key metrics, and how many of these components are beyond the barn walls. When I, when you and I started working with farmers and the carbon footprint reports many years ago, I think many of us initially felt part of the solution was simply energy conservation on farms. Right.

Energy conservation is important. It has some real economic importance, especially from a greenhouse gas footprint, a carbon footprint. It's a much smaller impact compared to feed production and manure management. So just, you know, having these baseline metrics in our back pocket helps us understand what's in our control, what isn't, and just gives us that power of knowledge. So does every farm need to change their practice?

My quick answer is no, not tomorrow. You know, you can even just be an active participant through this process of starting to learn, doing a footprint, getting an on farm sustainability report, you know, to base some decisions on, that's a form of action. Long term to reach the industry commitments, yes, there will be some changes needed, but that path can look different for everyone. Thanks

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
For explaining that and also kind of how it ties into the on farm system immunity reports and how they're used as that baseline, like you mentioned, going into it, one thing, but once they get those reports, they'll they'll see other things, just like in our experience with working with the the carbon footprint calculator. So you mentioned your experience working with farmers on that carbon footprint reports. Today, hear a lot of talk about reducing our carbon footprint or greenhouse gas emissions. What specifically can farmers do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Erin Cortus:
Well, start with a baseline. I can't say that enough, you know, whether it's the on farm sustainability report or some other calculator, some other tool, just give yourself some a starting point. I'm not a numbers person, even though I'm an engineer. I'm not a numbers person. I'm a I'm more of a picture person, you know, and so the numbers themselves, I don't that's that's not my starting point, but it just gives me something to anchor to more than anything.

A footprint, if we start going into more detail about carbon footprints, a footprint per se is the sum of all the greenhouse gas emissions that are produced or consumed in the production of something. And then that total sum of greenhouse gas emissions, we divide that by the amount of what is produced. That might be the number of pigs. It might be the mass of pork. So you have a numerator, sum of emissions, and you have a denominator, which is the production unit.

To reduce a footprint, we can either reduce that numerator, the sum of all the sum of those greenhouse gas emissions, or we can increase the denominator, the amount of pork produced, for example. So we have just therein, we recognize we have a couple different means of changing these footprints. When we look at most reports or models of greenhouse gas emissions in a what we call a cradle to gate perspective, which means all of the resources that are needed to raise a pig, you know, from when it enters a farm to when it leaves. The majority of greenhouse gas emissions come from the production of feed and mineral management. Changing feed ingredients obviously has more, has more than environmental effects.

It affects our pig growth, affects our economics. Definitely. I'm not a nutritionist, so I don't tend to dive too far into this category other than to say rations make a difference. But, you know, when within those rations, the majority of the feed comes from our cash crops, corn, soybeans in some form or fashion. So, you know, how do we reduce emissions in the production of those?

Well, we have soil conservation practices, cover crops, even manure application as an offset to commercial fertilizer. You know, they can alter carbon storage and losses. Again, I'm not an agronomist, so I tend to stop at that level, but just recognize that feed production part of it feeds into a footprint. So, are practices can be employed there if we want to reduce something. On the manure side, the emission estimates, methane emission in particular from manure, our methane emission estimates rely heavily on temperature and storage interval.

Cooler temperatures can reduce methane production, but, you know, in our deep pit systems, I don't think we really have any immediate current ways to reduce those manure temperatures very well. Our manure temperatures are going to fairly closely follow our barn temperatures, but methane production also increases with storage time. The more frequently we remove the manure, we're essentially stopping some of that methane generation rate and resetting it. Then in the process, you know, even just going from one time annual renewables to two time annual renewables of our manure, those annual emissions can be reduced. There are some more advanced technologies like digesters, but I'm at the moment just focusing on those tools we currently have at our disposal.

None of these options come without drawbacks. Right? And this, again, is that bigger sustainability picture where we have to recognize the implications in one of our little bubbles or one of our little pillars and how they can impact other other aspects, economically, socially, but even other aspects of our environment.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Thank you for explaining that. It's more than what we may think at first.

Erin Cortus:
It makes it daunting, unfortunately. Right? Oh, darn. I have to think about that now. It does widen this perspective, but at the same time, I think with some of these reports, on farm sustainability reports and other other aspects and just even having these conversations, we're not we're not in this alone.

Right? We have, as an industry, you know, working together, there are specialists that, you know, are keen on this topic too. So we're not all doing this alone, and we can definitely learn from one another.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
So what research are you currently working on as it relates to this topic that we're talking about today?

Erin Cortus:
I am particularly interested in greenhouse gas emissions from manure, both how much is being produced, but also how we estimate it. Right? We can't go around spending thousands and thousands and millions of dollars measuring emissions from every single farm. So how but yet how can we account for the practices that individual farms use? Right.

So it's kind of back to my comment about farms being living things. I think we can do better to account for different practices between farms. So what I'm currently looking at is whether there are some more on-farm measurements we can use to better anchor a greenhouse gas emission estimate to a specific farm in the manure in particular. This may be more frequent manure or feed sampling or adding on or tacking on a different type of manure analysis to our annual manure manure sampling. None of this is going to come without cost or time, but part of this research is to figure out how we can minimize both of those in this process.

So with the help of some great students and colleagues, we're looking at some options. We can always use some more cooperating farms willing to help us test these methods out in the real world. So a bit of a shameless plug there for those that want to get involved in this research.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Yeah, thank you. Like you mentioned, always looking forward for folks that are willing to help on our research, whether it's being involved in it or also funding. Exactly. So to wrap up our discussion today, are there any closing comments that you would like to make?

Erin Cortus:
I think for many of the reasons we've already discussed, sustainability related conversations can be hard. On the environmental side, there's often blame thrown around. Right? Or we have different definitions of what sustainable growth looks like because we have different perspectives or different priorities. But even joining or starting these conversations is an important first step.

It sometimes feels like perhaps more so when we're talking within the ag industry and talking outside of the ag industry that there can be some different languages. There is a whole science related to sustainability and the methods and the approaches that go into a lot of these metrics that people use. So, you know, it can be daunting to enter into these conversations, learning another language. But I think it's also important that within the ag industry, recognize that while we might be daunted by the language that others use about the ag industry, others might be just as confused or just as daunted by some of the language that we use within the ag industry about animals or farms or practices. And so I know the ag industry, the pork industry, they have so many efforts out there to to increase these conversations, and we just need to make sure that they keep going and and recognize that asking questions to understand commonalities, differences in vision and priorities and metrics helps make a conversation a learning experience for all.

We don't have to all have the same definition of sustainable development or sustainable growth, but even just recognizing what everyone's each of our definition is, then we can then we can move on and start focusing on understanding each other a little better. Having some baseline calculations like a non farm sustainability report, for example, in your back pocket, having some of those numbers, some of those actions, I think, are very valuable talking points as we enter into these conversations. These types of numbers demonstrate the impact of current practices, but I think even more importantly, they demonstrate engagement.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Thank you. Yeah, like we mentioned, those baseline calculations are important, and they can provide us with talking points. I guess the way that I see it, those on farm sustainability reports, that's kind of the main goal for the pork industry as a whole, is so farmers kind of know where they're at. And really the only way that the industry is able to make continuous improvements and meet some of the, let's say, goals or metrics of some of our consumers, whether they be retail locations or the general public, yeah, we have to have that baseline to create those talking points so we can help share our story of where we are and how we plan to get to some of our goals. Exactly.

So thank you, Erin, for sharing the science as well as the communication related to environmental sustainability initiatives in the swine industry and elsewhere in agriculture. And I'd like to thank all of those listening to the University of Minnesota Swine and U podcast. This has been Sarah Sheet Bunkie, Swine Extension Educator, along with Erin Portis, Associate Professor and Extension Engineer in the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering. To further connect with the University of Minnesota Swine Extension, please visit the Swine specific web pages on the University of Minnesota Extension's website at www.extension.umn.edu/swine. And on those pages, you'll find connections to our blog as well as our Facebook page.

To learn more about research being done by our swine faculty in veterinary medicine, please visit their Swine in Minnesota blog at www.umnswinenews.com.