Time flies! It doesn’t feel like it was a year ago when I wrote about my experience at the 2023 Cornell Nutrition Conference (CNC), and here I am sharing my feedback from the 2024 CNC that was held from October 22-24 at East Syracuse, NY. This conference afforded me the opportunity to meet with dairy experts from within and outside the US, and to learn from the seasoned speakers and panelists that shared some insightful information. Most of the sessions focused on transition cow health and management, nutrient use and efficiency in lactating cows, pre- and postnatal calf nutrition, and greenhouse gas emissions from dairy production. One of the panel sessions was titled “Sustainable dairy plans to reduce livestock methane: How do we moo’ve in the right direction to achieve positive global impact?” It involved representatives from the consumer-packaged goods industry (Anshuman Bhatia from Mars Inc, Guillermo Schroeder from Cargill, Ryan Smith from Danone North America, and Rebecca Manning from Ben and Jerry’s) who shared the various strategies and investments they are making to ensure sustainability in agricultural production. These include provision of funding to conduct research on farms to reduce methane, providing more education to farmers on reducing greenhouse gases, creating more partnerships to address this concern, and including this environmental aspect in their decision-making process. This session was informative, and it would be great for both small, medium, and large-scale industry players to incorporate and prioritize sustainability in their overall goals and mission.
The panel discussion tagged “Dairy farming and greenhouse gas emissions: How do we get started?” was also enlightening. The panelists were Kirsten Workman (Cornell CALS PRO-DAIRY), Lauren Ray (Cornell CALS PRO-DAIRY), Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (Cornell University), and Dr. Olivia Godber (Cornell University). The session was moderated by Karl Czymmek (Cornell CALS PRO-DAIRY). The key points I noted from the panelists include the need for farmers to get the footprint data of their farms as soon as possible (i.e. knowing the environmental footprint of their farm operations) which can serve as baseline data so that as new technologies are evolving to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they can determine if these technologies are effective. The panelists mentioned some current progress with the use of the Cool Farm Tool as an inventory tool, and with time they anticipate more adoption of the tool by farmers to determine their footprint. It’s important for stakeholders like milk cooperatives, policy makers, financial institutions, and other key players to be included in the discussions involving strategies to improve the environmental footprint of the dairy industry. This is because the activities of the various sectors in the industry contribute to the total environmental footprint, hence, every actor in the value chain should be involved in proffering solutions.
The panelists affirmed that they’re currently having discussions with these stakeholders. With time and as more collaborations are made these discussions will become more robust and fruitful. The panelists also suggested that dairy nutritionists should work more synergistically with agronomists on farms to make the best use of the forage resources available on these farms. The panelists noted that there is still a gap in communication between nutritionists and agronomists, but they hoped that this gap would close with time. Finally, the process of data collection from farmers to develop and improve inventory tools should be easy and more streamlined, and the integrity of such data should always be guaranteed. The status quo is that there is no compromise with the farmers’ data that the panelists are working with, and they pledged to maintain this data integrity. Farmers and nutritionists should aim for feed efficiency, i.e. feeding and managing cows to get the best out of them, knowing that most of our cows have the potential to produce more than they are currently doing. Over the years, we have observed an increase in the milk fat content and milk yield of dairy cows, and there is still room for more increase as we enhance feed efficiency.
The highlight of the conference for me was my presentation as the recipient of the 2024 Dr. Charlie Sniffen Graduate Student Award sponsored by Kemin Animal Nutrition and Health. I presented on the effect of feeding cold extracted cashew nutshell extract with varying concentrations of starch and sugar to post-peak lactating Holstein cows. We conducted this study at Miner Institute, and our reason for including cashew nutshell extract as a feed additive is due to previous studies that have shown its potential to reduce enteric methane emissions and increase propionate production. However, the results from this study did not corroborate previous studies as the feed additive showed a reduction in propionate production and no effect on methane (CH4) emissions [production in g/day; intensity in g CH4/kg of energy corrected milk (ECM); and yield in g CH4/kg of dry matter intake (DMI)], but it had a positive effect on body weight and body condition score. We also used two concentrations of starch and sugar as the base diets in this study, a high sugar diet with low starch (5.9% sugar and 23.5% starch), and a low sugar diet with high starch (3.6% sugar and 26.8% starch). Previous studies have shown an increase in DMI, milk fat, milk protein, milk yield, and butyrate production when high sugar diets were fed, but from this study, we only saw a positive effect of the high sugar diet (5.9%) on milk fat and dry matter intake. Our results demonstrate the need for more investigation into the efficacy of cashew nutshell extract in reducing enteric methane from dairy cows.
In a nutshell, my take-home from the various sessions is that while we are working to improve the health and productivity of dairy cows, we should also keep paying attention to the environmental impact of our endeavors and keep making more connections across the supply chain to collectively mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from the dairy industry. This conference was a worthwhile experience, and hopefully the time flies by as fast again for us to have the 2025 CNC.
— Gift Omoruyi