What goes well with belching cow? Oregano!
New research out of the Penn State suggests that methane gas emissions could be cut by nearly 40 percent with the simple addition of an oregano-based supplement to livestock feed. While the experiments were conducted with dairy cows, there is significant potential to have broad pollution implications. According to Alexander Hristov, associate professor of dairy nutrition, livestock emit 37 percent of man-made methane worldwide.
Compared to carbon dioxide, methane has 23 times the potential to create global warming, Hristov said. The Environmental Protection Agency bases the global warming potential of methane on the gas's absorption of infrared radiation, the spectral location of its absorbing wavelengths and the length of time methane remains in the atmosphere.
Methane production is a natural part of the digestive process of cows and other ruminants, such as bison, sheep and goats. When the cow digests food, bacteria in the rumen, the largest of the four-chambered stomach, break the material down intro nutrients in a fermentation process. Two of the byproducts of this fermentation are carbon dioxide and methane.
Hristov said that finding a natural solution for methane reduction in cattle has taken him approximately six years. Natural methane reduction measures are preferable to current treatments, such as feed antibiotics. During the experiments, oregano consistently reduced methane without demonstrating any negative effects.
Oregano is also one of the herbs identified by Kansas State University (Manhattan, KS) as a new potential field crop for the midwest. For more information on the commercial potential of growing herbs see, Farming a Few Acres of Herbs: An Herb Grower's Handbook, by Rhonda Janke, Jeanie DeArmond and David Coltrain, Kansas State University, June 2005.
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