Carbon

There are Many “Wheys” to Feed Dairy Cows

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 21:05:06 GMT

It’s the ultimate recycling story -- one that could boost a dairy farm’s sustainability and possibly even carbon credits, while maintaining excellent nutrition and production. Feeding liquid whey could be the way to bundle these multiple benefits in one package.

Whey is a co-product from cheese and yogurt production, and it’s often readily available in dairy-concentrated regions where dairy manufacturing is centered among the cows. It was once considered a total waste product, until value-added processing techniques converted and stabilized it to capture its nutritive merits in more portable and storable forms.

Now, dried whey powder, permeate, and whey protein concentrate are widely used in everything from pet food to calf milk replacer and baked goods to bodybuilding supplements.

But due to logistics and storage challenges, an estimated 40-50% of whey produced in the U.S. is still discarded – often discharged as sewage. In addition to wasting nutrients, this practice can create a high biological oxygen demand that must be managed carefully to prevent water pollution.

Enter the humble dairy cow. She produced the original foundations of whey, and she can consume and recycle the elements that remain. In terms of dairy nutrition, whey is a highly concentrated energy source because it is made up of 60-70% lactose. It also provides a moderate amount of protein (6-8%) and is rich in calcium, phosphorus, sodium, and potassium.

Liquid whey typically contains about 15-30% solids, which means it adds a good deal of moisture to a TMR. It’s also a rumen-friendly feedstuff in that its lactose is readily fermented and can enhance microbial protein synthesis – as long as it is balanced in the TMR to prevent acidosis. Its sodium and potassium levels also need to be monitored to maintain DCAD balance.

Dairy nutritionist Paul Dyk, MSc, PAS, owner of Forward Dairy Consulting, LLC, Fond du Lac, Wis. and partner with GPS Dairy Consultants, works with several clients who successfully feed fresh whey. “It’s an excellent and economic source of sugar that can replace higher-cost ingredients,” said Dyk.

He shared the two largest challenges with feeding whey are constancy and storage. “There can be a lot of variability in whey, so you definitely want a supply that comes from a single cheese type to ensure a relatively consistent product batch-to-batch,” Dyk advised.

Sweet whey, with a pH of about 6.0-6.7, is a co-product of hard cheeses like cheddar, Swiss, and mozzarella that are produced with a rennet-based coagulant. Acid whey is the result of lactic-acid-based coagulation of products like Greek yogurt, cottage, and ricotta cheese, with a substantially lower pH ranging from about 4.0-5.1, plus higher mineral content.While straight whey is usually not shipped directly to the dairy, whey permeate (less protein) and delactosed permeate (DLP -- some lactose removed) are common liquid products being delivered to dairies.

Dyk said the perishable nature of whey is the other factor that can make it difficult to feed. “A dairy feeding liquid whey will need bulk-tank storage agitate it, and at least 7 days’ worth of storage capacity,” he advised. “The source plant will generally want to move it out as quickly as possible, so you’ve got to be equipped to manage it on your end.Turning the whey over weekly while agitating can keep the product fresh.”

He has seen dairies successfully embrace fresh-whey feeding, generally at about 1-4% total dry matter in the TMR. “Depending on the circumstances, a cheese plant might even be willing to give it away, but there is the investment in trucking and storage that have to be factored in,” Dyk stated.

For lactating rations, dried whey is an alternative that can still make sense in the commodity mix, with advantages in storage, shelf life, and precision in the ration.

Researchers are also looking at alternative strategies to maximize the value of whey. Among the innovative projects in progress are utilizing whey as a fermentation and moisture substrate for silage; using new methods like ion exchange to process and purify condensed whey products; and extracting the water from weigh for drinking and wash water on dairies as an antidote to water scarcity.

Your Next Read: Beware of these Forages for Dairy Cattle

Climate and Tech Expected to Affect Ag Most This Year

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 19:43:28 GMT

Farm Journal’s Smart Farming Week is an annual week-long emphasis on innovation in agriculture. The goal is to encourage you to explore and prioritize the technology, tools and practices that will help you farm smarter. Innovation today ensures an efficient, productive and sustainable tomorrow.

Every year before the ball drops in Times Square, it seems everyone wants to pull out a crystal ball and prophesize what the new year will bring. And the ag industry loves a good prophet.

Before 2023 became history, Forbes Magazine took its shot at predicting agriculture’s highlights for 2024. So before Father Time turns the predictions stale, I thought it might be insightful, or at least entertaining, to provide some color commentary on the article, which focused on the following five areas where change in agriculture could be the greatest.

1. Farmland Holds the Key to Carbon Management
No different from last year or the prior year, agriculture has a bull’s-eye on its back when it comes to carbon intensity. According to the USDA Economic Research Service, U.S. agricultural operations are responsible for 10.6% of the nation’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. Climate scientists and Al Gore have told us this for years now. Expect the barrage of white papers and warnings to continue in 2024.

The good news, according to the pundits, is it will become increasingly clear this year that farmland is the key to carbon management. By default, nature has been seen as the most scalable way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. What is becoming more obvious to those outside the sphere of agriculture is that farmland is the best place to store it.

Look to see more announcements at the consumer packaged goods level regarding programs and collaboration across industries and sectors to foster regenerative practices at the production level. Companies such as Walmart, PepsiCo and General Mills are seeking programs able to scale such practices across millions of acres.

2. Alternative Proteins Will Recover From Their Sophomore Slump
Last year, the stock market and the population’s tastes soured on meatless burgers and chickpea chicken nuggets. Beyond Meat’s market cap plummeted from an all-time high of $14.2 billion to just more than $500 million at the turn of this year.

But don’t count out the alternative protein industry yet. Those quoted in the Forbes article anticipate 2024 to be a renaissance year for animal-based product substitutes.

The reason for such renewed hope is a tactical marketing change adopted by the second wave of alternative protein startups. Instead of taking full-blown consumer-ready products direct to the grocery store shelf and the fast food drive-through lane, they are focusing on selling alternative protein products as ingredients.

For example, the Every Company is touting that “the world’s first liquid egg made without the hen” could replace real eggs in thousands of processed food items. Rue the day these eggs find their way into my favorite lemon meringue pie.

3. Forget Counting Calories. Count Carbon
A new diet seems to be on the table every new year. This year, paring down the amount of carbon in your life may be as important as limiting your calories. Just like requirements for disclosing calories through food labels, the social, political and regulatory environment is forcing food companies to be fully transparent about their carbon footprints.

Instead of carbon credits, experts say carbon insets are needed to move the climate needle. With recently passed climate disclosure legislation, such as California’s SB 253, expect more food companies looking to measure, report and reduce their carbon emissions.

This switch will put pressure on producers as food companies off-load the burden of carbon reduction on them. Look for additional emphasis on cutting methane emissions from livestock through innovative feeds and carbon-capture techniques and improving soil health through biotech innovation, data and artificial intelligence.

4. Technology Will Make Ag More Hip and Exciting
Agriculture has long been characterized in literature, and even nursery rhymes, as boring and depressing—think Grapes of Wrath and Old MacDonald Had a Farm. Well, technology is continuing to turn this industry on its head.

Specialty crop operations’ use of automation will grow quickly as ag labor shortages persist. Meanwhile, the food prep industry is transforming as food- and medicine-focused companies take root. Think HelloFresh and Blue Apron meet your medical dietician. Companies such as ModifyHealth are tailoring chef-inspired medical meals to support consumers’ specific health needs, and companies such as Farmer’s Fridge allow you to select a green goddess salad or Thai noodle bowl instead of a Snickers bar from a vending machine.

5. Capital Investment in Ag Will Be Even More Deliberate and Disciplined
Once viewed as the hot new space for disruption, the ag tech sector is now weeding out the venture capital investors who entered it with hopes of quick wins. That culling really started in earnest two years ago and is predicted to continue this year.

But all is not gloom and doom in the ag startup arena. Investors see the market stabilizing and valuations returning to more realistic levels. Quality companies that are scaling, have good economic fundamentals and growing customer demand will likely find the capital they are seeking in 2024, but expect no more free lunches.

So there you have it. This recaps the Forbes take on agriculture in the new year: climate, carbon, technology, money and a world with eggs but no chickens.

If you think that’s weird, then just wait. The year has only begun. In agriculture, nearly anything can happen. Just wait a day.

4 Things To Know About Cattle And Their Impact on Sustainability

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 21:05:17 GMT

Sara Place likes to say that beef is the original plant-based meat. “I think it’s important for us to remember the power of ruminants and how amazing these critters are,” says Place, Ph.D., chief sustainability officer at Elanco.

(Farm Journal)

During a presentation at the 2021 Alltech ONE Ideas Conference, Place addressed sustainability and beef production. She says the topic is complex, and one reason for that is because people have different values.

“One person may prioritize animal welfare above an environmental footprint; another may prioritize the affordability of food above all other issues,” she explains. “It’s not that one person is right or wrong, it’s just the reality that this is the challenge we’re dealing with in a pluralistic society when it comes to sustainability.”

With that perspective in mind, Place addressed four common questions she hears from consumers.

1. With regard to resource competition, are livestock eating what could be food for humans?

She says yes, in part, but not as much of the total global feed ration as many people think.

According to analysis of research by The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), about 14% of what livestock consume globally, mainly in the form of grains, could be eaten by humans directly. However, 86% of feedstuffs livestock eat are made up primarily of forages that cannot be consumed in a direct manner by people.

(Farm Journal)

“That’s really the headline—ruminants are able to upcycle, taking something with little or no value and upgrading those plants into higher value products,” she says. “That’s what livestock in general, and especially ruminants, excel at in the food system.”

Because the majority of the feed resources used to generate grain-finished beef in the United States is not in competition with the human food supply, and the protein value of beef to humans is 2.63 times greater than corn grain, the U.S. grain-finished beef system is generating more high-quality protein for the human populace than it is using.

“Cattle only need 0.6 kilograms of human edible protein in feed to make 1 kilogram of human animal protein and meat,” she says.

2. Is meat production taking place on land that should be used to grow crops?

Very little. The vast majority of land used for beef production is on land unsuitable for crop production.

“These are landscapes that are too arid, too rocky, and too steep for us to cultivate crops on directly,” she says.

While some groups and individuals would recommend pulling that land out of any agricultural use whatsoever, that move would likely be counterproductive.

Keeping a continuous cover of some type on highly erodible soils is a key to keeping erosion at bay, Place says.

“When ruminant animals are kept on those (fields), they allow for use of rotations and forage crops that can help improve soil health and water retention,” Place says.

Multifunctionality of land is another important consideration.

Place references the southern Great Plains as an area where multifunctionality works well. “Stocker cattle commonly graze winter wheat there until March or April. They are then removed, and the wheat is allowed to grow and be harvested for human food. In the milling process wheat provides byproducts that are then fed back to cattle, which are (then harvested for beef),” she says.

California almond “milk” and orange juice production are two other examples. Both provide byproducts that Place says are fed to dairy cattle that then produce milk and meat.

“For every 100 lb. of human food that comes from crops, 37 lb. of byproducts get generated,” she says. “That’s a global average, and a lot of those byproducts can be fed back to livestock.”

3. What is the impact of U.S. agriculture on greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs)?

About 9% to 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, Place says. She notes that animal agriculture contributes about 4%, and crop production contributes about 5%.

“The single-largest source of emissions in the United States would be burning fossil fuels,” she says. “Somewhere around 75% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are because we are burning fossil fuels, and releasing CO2 (carbon dioxide) that was locked in the Earth’s crust for a long time.”

4. How big an issue is methane production in the beef industry, and how do we address it?

Place says cattlemen are creating more beef today with fewer emissions.

(Farm Journal)

“When cattle go to feedyards and eat a diet containing more fermentable carbohydrates like corn, they tend to reduce their methane emissions,” Place says.

“They’re more feed efficient. And part of that efficiency is a result of not losing as many feed calories to methane; we’re capturing more of them in the animal,” she adds. “Essentially, we’re producing the same amount of beef today as in the mid-1970s, with a third fewer cattle.”

Livestock: A Powerful Tool

I’m a Drover: Preserving a Legacy

A Brittle Environment
Feed Sustainability: Moving the Animal Protein Industry Forward

2021 Trust In Food Symposium to Highlight Trends in Carbon and Climate, Animal Ag and Innovation

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 18:49:46 GMT

Trust In Food , a Farm Journal initiative, hosts this week the annual Trust In Food Symposium . This year’s event – themed Regenerative Reset – will bring together farmers, sustainability executives and conservation leaders to learn from one another and position their businesses to improve environmental stewardship, unlock economic opportunities and advance innovation. A record-setting audience of leaders from across the food value chain, the conservation community and public agencies are registered for the event

The Symposium – this year held entirely online – is set for midday hours on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, February 23-25, 2021. The program emphasizes key industry priorities, including carbon and climate change, sustainability in animal agriculture and regenerative farming through innovation. Keynote speakers will include iconic thought leaders, such as Dr. Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown; Dr. Temple Grandin of Colorado State University; Dr. Frank Mitloehner of the University of California-Davis and Rachel Stroer and Tim Crews of The Land Institute.

“Now is a moment unlike any in recent memory,” said Amy Skoczlas Cole, executive vice president of Trust In Food. “Against this backdrop, our country’s food system – from producers to consumers – are rapidly evolving. How are U.S. farmers and ranchers responding, and what’s ahead for agriculture? Out of the disruption of 2020, can a new system emerge that helps farmers move toward more regenerative practices and add revenue streams from carbon markets and other ecosystem services? Those are the questions our speakers will address, and we look forward to engaging a broad cohort of leaders in farming, agribusiness, environmental stewardship, agencies and food manufacturers and retail in the conversation.”

To register for the Trust In Food Symposium, go to www.trustinfood.com/symposium .