Project- Seaweed farms

Seaweed needed for australia (article with quote here)

Calculating NZ seaweed farms needed.
 * "Battaglia estimates that to farm enough seaweed to cover Australia's livestock, we'd need to establish roughly 6,000 hectares of seaweed farms"
 * "If we add dried seaweed to 2 percent of sheep and cattle feed, we could cut methane emissions by more than 70 percent"

cbc article states" "Kinley thinks it could take anywhere from three to five years to get a commercial animal feed to market. He says the biggest challenge will be growing enough seaweed." Also from science alert article : Asparagopsis taxiformis)
 * 1) The ratio of livestock. betwen oz and NZ:
 * Oz: cattle-  29.3 Million  sheep- 40.3 million
 * NZ: cattle: 10.4  Sheep- 29.8 million  deer 1 million
 * 1) sheep are not as productive as cows, so let's figure roughly oz is 2.5 times the emmissions as NZ
 * 2) 6000/2.5 = 2400 HA of seaweed farms.
 * describes the mechanism of the 99% seaweed (
 * particular type of seaweed is so effective is because it produces a compound called bromoform (CHBr3), which blocks methane production by reacting with vitamin B12 at the last step. "This disrupts the enzymes used by gut microbes that produce methane gas as waste during digestion," he says.
 * Sheep results already done and very favorable at low percentages of fee (2%).
 * We have results already with whole sheep; we know that if Asparagopsis is fed to sheep at 2 percent of their diet, they produce between 50 and 70 percent less methane over a 72-day period continuously.
 * According to De Nys, seaweed trials with live animals will be ongoing in Queensland farms until mid-next year.  (date of acticle was Oct-2016, so what does this mean?  July-2017?
 * According to De Nys, seaweed trials with live animals will be ongoing in Queensland farms until mid-next year.  (date of acticle was Oct-2016, so what does this mean?  July-2017?

Dalhousie University / OZ research CSIRO
This Canadian CBC story reports on OZ research Robert Kinley who found that "red seaweed Asparagopsis taxiformis he says reduces methane in cows burps and farts to almost nothing."

CSIRO is Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (WP article)

Actual research paper published 2015: a different report on seaweeds published in 2016 by nature states the "more than 99% decrease in methane production" was in vivo, not in rumen (where a broad range of results have been reported).

The science report by Kinley came out in 2015. The claim of 99% reduction applies only to vitro (dishes in lab), and not with typical feed (seaweed was Asparagopsis taxiformis). When used in rumen, the report below reports that this variety produces a broad range of results with methane reduction. So it looks promising, but actual results in Rumen with actual feed may reveal serious problems. For example with some feeds in rumen, particular seaweeds actually increase methane production. It would be nice to get better than 20 or 30% reduction, but no one should be thinking 99% elimination.

Consider Nature report, and look at the table 3 results compared to the control methane production. This is for one particular feed combination but it is indicative. .


 * Control: 0.413 ml methane produced (compare with seaweed specides numbers below:


 * Ulva sp.: 0.308


 * Laminaria ochroleuca 0.472 (increase)


 * Saccharina latissima 0.425 (increase)


 * Gigartina sp. 0.266


 * Gracilaria vermiculophylla 0.255

