Unpacking Methane and Animal Nutrition
Podcast Dialogue with a Microbiologist turned Agritech Entrepreneur
If you want to understand how significant cows are in feudal cultures like India, investiture rituals that anointed kings of the yore are curious artifacts worth studying. A recent article beautifully elaborated on this process, much to the merriment of this agritech analyst exploring the relationship between culture and agriculture.
“The King of Travancore was twice-born through a Vedic ritual called Hiranyagharba. When the priests chanted the Vedas, the king would descend into a golden trough filled with panchagavya—a mixture of five ingredients derived from the cow, namely dung, urine, milk, ghee and curd—only to emerge on the other side. Thus he symbolically entered the womb of the divine cow and was born again.”
Mind you, exploring this linkage between culture and agriculture is more than a sepia-tinted peek of nostalgia. If you pay attention, they can be agritech investors’ favorite tea leaves that could tell you which technology is appropriate and which isn’t.
Is methane-blocker technology appropriate for UK or India? Is lab-produced milk appropriate for UK or India? Is designer milk appropriate for UK or India?
Ofcourse, these are rhetorical questions. These questions are not meriting binary answers as they seem.
I wish I could cherrypick one highlight from the fascinating conversation I had with Saloni Godbole Tewari, a microbiologist turned agritech entrepreneur who also moonlights as a meditation teacher in a spiritual institute.
Thankfully, there were plenty.
In this fun podcast, we explored a variety of questions that have been intriguing me as an agritech analyst observing the animal nutrition space which briefly had its limelight moment among agritech investors in this part of the world.
Few weeks back, Economist ran a story with a popcorn-style clickbait headline.
“Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions”.
Whether you respond to this headline with ludicrousness or excitement (Take your Pick: “There You Go! Someone said it”/ “What the **** they were thinking?), what it points out underneath in subterranean realms is extremely fascinating.
Studying the complexity of Methane and Animal Nutrition teaches you powerful systems thinking lesson: What happens when you apply linear approaches to cyclical phenomena?
India is currently the world’s third-largest emitter of Methane and studies currently show that 63% of India’s agricultural methane emissions come from livestock, while rice farming contributes nearly 11%.
If you go by current standards, one molecule of methane is as strong as 28 molecules of carbon dioxide. And at the same time, biogenic methane emissions (flow gases) are part of the carbon cycle. When cattle emit methane, it may very well be a net sequestering or net emitting cycle, depending on management, inputs, feed, and a whole variety of parameters.
Should India embrace the norms of the UK, which leads research in methane emission control, and nip the buds of its burgeoning dairy and livestock sector that haven’t yet reached its productive potential?
In a complex domain like livestock and animal nutrition, how does one approach the tricky question of per-animal productivity? What is the balance between improving productivity for the livestock industry in an Indian context vis-a-vis countries like the UK and New Zealand where the issue is of dealing with an overproductive cattle industry metabolically out of sync with the environmental processes?
Why is ninety percent of animal husbandry all about microbiology? Is it a zero-sum game between improving the productivity of milking cows and conserving indigenous varieties?
Why is the business model of dairy farming not viable to the point that farmer has to cut ethical corners to provide the right nutrition to cows? What is the link between understanding cows’ digestion issues and the growing lactose tolerance epidemic in India?
This was a long 97-minute conversation that explored economics, culture, consciousness, technology, agribusiness, behavioral psychology, animal nutrition, methane, microbiology, policy, regulations, and a lot more.
01:24 Pivoting from Cancer Research to Agritech
08:27 Double-clicking the Pivot from Cancer Research to Animal Husbandry
13:27 Harry Potter Connection behind naming "Occamy"
15:43 "Animal Husbandry is 90 % Microbiology"
21:43 The Role of Place in the Composition of Microbes and Linking Methane with Microbes
24:00 Direct Correlation between Productivity and Methane Reduction
27:21 Doubling down on Efficiency and Per-Animal Productivity
30:14 Buffalo Vs Cow
31:17 "We have to go against nature"
32:08 "Our Buffalo Used to Have Six-Seven Pregnancies"
33:17 A standardized approach to Nutrition
34:41 Link Between Agricultural Produce Quality and Animal Nutrition
35:21 Why We Have Not Been Able to Measure Carbon Chart
36:14 India's White Revolution History
37:15 Is there a zero-sum game between improving productivity and losing out indigenous cow varieties?
38:21 Gir Variety of Brazil
39:09 "They Have Reached Their Optimal Potential"
41:00 Australia's Dairy Model
41:54 "When You Have a Dairy Farm, You Cannot Take a Day Off"
42:15 "The Culture is Shifting to Bigger Farms"
43:29 "66% of India's Population is Allergic to Milk"
45:52 Why is India Becoming More Allergic to Milk?
46:31 "The Business Model is Not Viable if The Farmer Does it the Ethical Way"
47:11 Cow's Digestion Issues and Human Digestion Issues
47:51 "Water is Also Nutrition"
48:51 "Not All Metals Are Harmful to the Body"
50:51 Relation Between Grazing Lands and Cows' Nutrition.
53:10 Why Grazing is Really Important?
55:10 The Role of Exercise in Cows
57:55 Limits of Treating Cow as a Cow
01:00:34 Stages of Growth for Cows
01:03:41 Shift in Cow's Reproductive Cycles
01:04:31 Limiting Nutrition
01:06:3 "The Job is done. In Animal's Mind, it is not Conceived"
01:07:36 Treating Post-Partum Issues for Cows
01:08:03 Veterinary Ecosystem
01:08:29 Rules for Regulating Animal Nutrition in India
01:10:39 Cows getting addicted to their feeds
01:12:08 The Emotional Lives of Gir Cows
01:13:26 My Anti-Productivity Bias
01:14:10 Dairy Model in Arab Countries
01:15:51 Issue of Stray Cows in India
01:17:02 Climate Change Affecting Cows Immunity
01:18:19 Why is India not exporting milk?
01:19:24 Nutrition Paradigms
01:20:29 Methane Blockers in the UK
01:22:12 What happens when you remove methane from cows?
01:24:14 Do we need to optimize?
01:25:21 Policy Recommendations for Regulating Animal Nutrition in India
01:27:40 Standards for feeds 01:28:03 FSSAI's Stance for Animal Nutrition Products
01:29:15 Diversity Trade-off in Regulating Animal Nutrition Products
01:30:14 Need for Research Data in Animal Nutrition Space
01:31:41 "Are we having goat milk or buffalo milk?"
01:32:15 Economics of Dairy Agriculture in India
01:33:15 Designer Milk
01:34:23 Do Consumers Care About Quality?
01:35:51 Animal Nutrition Ecosystem
I hope you enjoy this flavourful conversation as much as I did:)
So, what do you think?
How happy are you with today’s edition? I would love to get your candid feedback. Your feedback will be anonymous. Two questions. 1 Minute. Thanks.🙏
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