This keynote will provide an overview of current methodologies used to quantify greenhouse gas emissions from grazing livestock systems. The presentation will include micrometeorological approaches highlighting the strengths, limitations, and applicability under field conditions. Emphasis will be on methane emissions from enteric fermentation and nitrous oxide emissions from excreta patches. The talk will discuss methodological challenges related to spatial variability, temporal dynamics, and upscaling from plot to farm and regional scales, and will outline implications for emission inventories and mitigation assessment.
Sustainable pig production begins inside the animal. By optimizing nutrition, we can significantly reduce enteric methane emissions as well as nitrogen and phosphorus excretion. Our research shows that targeted feeding strategies—such as lowering crude protein, improving amino acid supply, and using novel feed ingredients and additives—enhance nutrient utilization while reducing emissions. Nutrition and feed ingredient choices also interact with animal productivity, health, and welfare. Diets based on low carbon‑footprint ingredients often contain high fiber levels, which can increase methane emissions from pigs and slurry. By focusing on the pig’s nutritional requirements as the starting point, we can influence the entire emission chain—from gut processes to manure storage—and contribute to climate‑smart pig production.
Nutrition, health, productivity and welfare interactions with climate and environment
Quantification of enteric methane emissions and N and P excretions in pigs
How do feeding strategies, ingredients and additives alter emissions?
How do lowC ingredients affect methane?
How can nutrition shift the full emission chain?
It is estimated that the demand for animal protein will increase by about 20 percent by 2050 globally, mostly driven by population growth in low- and middle-income countries. Under a business-as-usual scenario, this will lead to a further increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock sector. The talk will explore pathways to lower emissions for the sector and explore possible interventions in different regions and contexts.
Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model (GLEAM)
Livestock Greenhouse gas emissions
Food security
Animal protein
In 2030, Denmark will introduce a climate tax on cattle and pig production. This presentation outlines the policy rationale, tax design, and state initiatives promoting greenhouse‑gas‑reducing measures. It also covers cooperation on inclusion of mitigation actions in national inventories, collecting activity data, and coordinating with tax authorities.
Climate tax
GHG reducing measures
Collaboration between research, industry, and central government administration
Dynamic microbial ecosystems operating under shifting environmental constraints. As mitigation strategies increasingly target microbial activity, our modelling tools must evolve accordingly. This keynote argues for a paradigm shift: from empirical emission factors to more process-informed models that explicitly represent microbial capacity and system dynamics across the manure management chain. A model based on experiments studying degradation kinetics, emission dynamics, methanogenic activity, and mitigation technologies will be presented. It will be demonstrated how it can be used for farm-scale estimation, scaling of storage systems, integration with other models and emission inventories and challenges related to model complexity.
What processes should be included in a process model to reflect methane production at farm-scale?
How does manure management interact with a model with microbial activity and what are the chain effects does it predict?
Which mitigation technologies can be modelled and can we infer from modelling, which technologies to use?
