Asparagopsis may be miracle cure for red meat’s methane problem

With the power to cut livestock methane emissions by up to 95 per cent, this native red seaweed is tipped to become a $1 billion industry in Australia by 2040.

Off the east coast of Tasmania, the future of Australia’s livestock industry may be hanging in the balance.

Or, more accurately, dangling from giant ropes strung beneath sub-surface artificial platforms previously used for mussel farming, where dense clumps of native asparagopsis armata seaweed are being cultivated and harvested.

Asparagopsis is the miracle red seaweed that CSIRO discovered could naturally cut the amount of damaging methane gas emitted by cattle by 80-95 per cent, when a small amount of the algae extract – about 30 grams – is included in their food as a supplement or additive every day.

The $20 billion Australian livestock industry is responsible for a massive 10.5 per cent of this country’s total greenhouse gas emissions, making the burps and farts of the nation’s 30 million beef and dairy cattle one of the biggest single contributors to warming atmospheric temperatures and accelerating climate change.

CSIRO estimates about 10 kilograms of damaging methane gas is emitted for every kilogram of liveweight gained on-farm by a grass-fed steer or cow. This equates to a worrying 25kg of carbon dioxide-equivalent gas emissions embedded in every kilogram of retail beef sold; a previously unavoidable consequence of livestock farming that is now turning thousands of young and environmentally conscious consumers away from eating red meat and fleeing to plant-protein alternatives.

Sea Forest chief executive Sam Elsom farms seaweed at Triabunna, in Tasmania.

Asparagopsis is the miracle red seaweed that CSIRO discovered could naturally cut the amount of damaging methane gas emitted by cattle by 80-95 per cent.

But the nascent $3 million seaweed industry in Australia may hold the answer to addressing the red meat industry’s biggest environmental Achilles heel and helping livestock producers convert to carbon-neutral production systems by 2030, as the sector has publicly committed to achieving.

It also links the aquaculture industry to land-based agriculture in a way it never has been before.

In the process, the commercial farming of asparagopsis seaweed for animal feed purposes is set to grow from virtually nothing now to become a major new Australian marine farming activity.

Last year’s Australian Seaweed Industry Blueprint for Growth, published by AgriFutures Australia, predicted the farming of native asparagopsis, to produce low-carbon meat and dairy products, would be valued at $90-$200 million by 2025, and become a $1 billion-plus Australian industry by 2040.

Off to a flying start in this radical new farming field is the small $5 million company Sea Forest, based in the Tasmanian fishing town of Triabunna.

Using the factory, research facilities and expansive 1800-hectare marine lease in Mercury Passage between Triabunna harbour and Maria Island previously home to the well-known Spring Bay Mussel company, Sea Forest this year became the first company in the world to grow and commercial harvest asparagopsis seaweed grown offshore.

In another first, it has started to commercially sell its seaweed as an animal feed additive to farmers and major companies, such as dairy giant Fonterra, which are looking to produce and market zero-carbon food products.

One kilogram of seaweed extract, sold suspended in oil with the consistency of a smoothie, currently costs $35. It is enough to feed 33 dairy cows or beef steers with their needed 30g daily asparagopsis ration or dose, at a cost to farmers of about $1 a day per animal.

It’s a cost that may only prove affordable for farmers and beef producers if they become eligible for carbon abatement credits or payments from the government and private sector as a result of feeding red algae to their livestock.

How practical and affordable such a solution is – especially on outback cattle stations where beef cattle are often only mustered once a year – remains to be seen. The potential of paddock “lick” blocks containing the algae extract are also being investigated.

But for dairy farms where cows come into the shed to be milked daily and often receive grain-based feed in troughs, or on southern cattle and sheep properties with smaller herds and paddocks, or at beef feedlots where cattle are held in yards and fed daily, adding an algae feed supplement to cattle rations is certainly feasible.

At the helm of Sea Forest is dynamic chief executive and part-owner Sam Elsom, a highly successful Sydney-based entrepreneur well known for his brand of ethical and sustainable clothing, who is determined to take action to stop irreversible and catastrophic climate change. Now he farms seaweed at Triabunna to make meat production more sustainable, cattle farming less harmful to the environment, and to tackle global climate change head on.

Elsom is passionate about the unparalleled ability of fast-growing seaweed to extract massive amounts of harmful carbon from the air via photosynthesis and to turn it into “good” oxygen, potentially offering an ocean-based solution to halting and even reversing climate change.

He was first alerted to the huge potential of low-impact seaweed farms in the oceans to store and convert carbon and even be the climate change game-changer – along with soil carbon sequestration by award-winning environmentalist and Australian of the Year, Dr Tim Flannery.

With further research, Elsom quickly grasped the huge double climate-change benefit discovered by CSIRO that asparagopsis offered, with its unique ability as a feed supplement to almost eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by cattle that eat it daily, as well as the seaweed’s own cellular makeup of a high 30-40 per cent carbon content.

“We can’t grow enough trees to reverse climate change but it was Tim (Flannery) who alerted me to the huge potential of growing seaweed in our expanse of oceans to sequester carbon,” Elsom explains.

“He talked about the urgency of action on climate change and said we can’t wait for governments; that it was going to be up to people with commercial nous and an appetite for risk to take it on – that’s when I did my research and discovered asparagopsis.”

Sam Elsom with on-land tanks where asparagopsis growing is being trialled.

Harvesting asparagopsis seaweed offshore.

With the help of some of Tasmania’s leading seaweed experts, Elsom has now planted more than 800 hectares of existing floating mussel-farming platforms offshore from Triabunna with seaweed spores cultivated in Sea Forest’s laboratory, seeded on to hundreds of kilometres of thick ropes that extend to a depth of 100 metres.

Asparagopsis takes just eight weeks to grow into the long red seaweed strands large enough for harvest, before the ropes can be seeded again.

Just four tonnes of feed supplement had been harvested and sold by Sea Forest to the end of 2020, mainly to innovative dairy, beef and wool farmers keen to trial the revolutionary feed additive.

But with the full 1800 hectares of its marine lease ready for cultivation by August, Sea Forest is expecting 1000 tonnes of seaweed (dry weight) to be available annually from July next year.

FutureFeed, the joint venture CSIRO company that holds the intellectual property rights and licence that allows asparagopsis growers like Elsom to sell their product as a methane-reduction livestock feed, estimates 1000 hectares of farmed asparagopsis will feed one million cattle a year.

The special red seaweed – it has two species that occur naturally in either Australia’s cold southern or tropical warm waters – contains bromoform, which CSIRO has shown prevents methane production in cattle by reacting with vitamin B12 and associated methane-producing enzymes at the last stage of digestion.

“So many farmers are keen to be involved with this; it gives them a social licence to operate because every food retailer and manufacturer – and increasingly consumers – is looking for sustainable, zero carbon food products,” says an excited Elsom.

“But this isn’t just a feel-good thing. We could also see farmers also being paid (carbon credits) for their methane abatement when their herds are fed the supplement, while the enzyme disruption caused by asparagopsis causes everything eaten by the cattle to be converted to meat rather than methane, so there is a big productivity gain for producers too.”

Several Tasmanian farmers are already trialling the early use of asparagopsis supplements with their livestock.

Dairy farmer Richard Gardner, who operates his family farm near Tunbridge in Tasmania’s midlands, is conducting a large-scale trial of asparagopsis seaweed to his 1250 dairy cows, co-ordinated by major dairy processor Fonterra.

“We have done a lot of work on carbon auditing and found that our farm business is a significant emitter of greenhouse gases, particularly methane from livestock,” Gardner says. “Asparagopsis seaweed looks like the first viable option we have had to achieve major emission reductions, and it could represent the future of a sustainable dairy industry.

“My family was interested in doing what we can for global sustainability, and this is a great opportunity to do something meaningful in the fight against climate change. It’s not often you get to be this close to such a big transformation, which I believe (asparagopsis) is.”

Fonterra’s sustainability strategy manager Jack Holden says the company has a role to play in finding ways to reduce the environmental impact of dairy farms and its dairy products such as cheese, butter and infant formula. In New Zealand, Fonterra has just released its first zero carbon butter.

“We’re not seaweed experts, but we’re very good at dairy food safety,” Holden says, who now has trials on four other Tasmanian dairy farms with more than 2000 cows being fed asparagopsis daily. “We are not looking for niche solutions; we want broadly available solutions that make commercial sense.

“We’ve got milk that we source from 10,000 farmers across the world – if we can find a solution here in Australia (using red seaweed) that works for us, then it’s probably replicable at large scale.

“For this to work, it’s got to be useful for farmers commercially, it’s got to be easy to do, be safe for our products and consumers, and be able to happen at scale.”

Tasmanian wool grower Simon Cameron is feeding seaweed extract to his Merinos as he aims to produce zero-carbon wool.

Cameron in the wool shed with stock feed that includes seaweed extract.

Simon Cameron, a fourth-generation Tasmanian superfine wool grower at Midlands, has long been committed to protecting endangered native Kangaroo Grass grasslands on his farm and sustainable sheep production and conservation land management.

Cameron is now part of a trial with the M.J. Bale luxury wool suit firm, which plans to go 100 per cent carbon neutral as a brand by the end of 2022, and has been feeding the seaweed extract to his paddock-grazing Merino sheep for more than two months in an attempt to produce zero-carbon wool.

“The Merinos seemingly love the seaweed supplement, and internally we’re now discussing what kind of product we should make from the wool if all goes well. It’s crazy … potentially such a quick turnaround to produce carbon-neutral wool,” says M.J. Bale head of brand Jonathan Lobban.

Sam Elsom has watched as Cameron has fed his flock the seaweed daily in a paddock trough system as part of the 300-day trial. CSIRO research has found sheep need just 72 days for the asparagopsis supplements to take effect, reducing methane emissions to undetectable levels.

Elsom has already noticed the trial Merinos eat their feed containing the algae supplement faster than the control (non-seaweed) sheep. “They just gobble it up. We also believe – and it’s just a working hypothesis – that their fleece might be longer and finer as a result because the sheep don’t spend energy generating methane, instead using the extra energy to concentrate on fibre growth.”

Sea Forest is also busy developing big tanks on coastal land at Triabunna where the commercial growing of cold-water red seaweed away from the open sea is being trialled.

Elsom is keen to find an aquaculture model that allows asparagopsis to be grown anywhere including in other countries with big livestock farming operations. The transport and export sale of his seaweed extract overseas is not on the agenda as it runs counter to the whole carbon emissions reduction purpose of the Sea Forest business. International flights are big emission generators.

“We still have a long way to go but this has been an amazing journey,” Elsom says. “I love that we are developing a new industry, helping farmers and impacting on climate change in a serious way – it makes me feel better about the future and my part in it that we are doing something that has a fundamental good.”

MORE

TOP 10 AGRICULTURE TRENDS OF THE NEXT DECADE

GRAINCORP TESTS ASPARAGOPSIS SEAWEED FOR BROMOFORM LEVELS

TASMANIAN DAIRY FARMER RICHARD GARDNER TESTS ASPARAGOPSIS