BY SALMINA BARVIN BT MD SAMEENUDEEN
AGRICULTURE sustains humanity and provides livelihoods for over 800 million people—27 percent of the global workforce. But many agricultural practices emit a substantial amount of greenhouse gases, including large amounts of methane, which is many times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming our planet and adds to dangerous air pollution.
Cattle Farming
Cattle farming is the primary source of agricultural methane emissions. The most significant emitters are dairy cows. Methane is produced in the rumen during feed digestion and is primarily expelled by burping.
Methane-reducing feed additives and supplements inhibit methanogens, the microbes that break down food in a cow’s rumen and generate methane as a by-product. Methane-reducing feed additives and supplements are most effective when grain, hay, silage, or seaweed is added to the diet, especially in beef feedlots and dairies.
Rice Cultivation
Agricultural methane doesn’t only come from animals. Paddy rice cultivation, in which flooded fields prevent oxygen from penetrating the soil – creates ideal conditions for methane-emitting bacteria to grow.
A major source of methane emissions is the decomposition of fertilizers and crop residues in flooded rice cultivation. The most effective option to reduce these emissions would be to prevent the submergence of rice fields and to cultivate upland rice or other upland crops.
Crop Residue Burning
Farmers use the crop residue burning method – an inexpensive and effective method to remove excess residue to facilitate timely planting and control pests and weeds. Burning of crop residues emits traces of carbon dioxide and methane along with other air pollutants.
The Happy Seeder is a tractor-mounted device. It cuts and lifts the residue of the previous crop (the rice straw) and sows a new crop (wheat) in its place. The Happy Seeder option will eliminate air pollution by crop burning and reduce GHG emissions from on-farm activities by more than 78%.
