Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Part 1 of our time with Dr. Kim Stackhouse-Lawson, who is the director of the CSU AgNext program, in addition to conducting her own research. An incredible guest with a wealth of information and a passion for helping cattle producers navigate sustainability and profitability. Thank you for listening!
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
[music]
[mooing]
Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. It's a momentous day because the OG three is here. We're all here today, which hasn't happened for five or six weeks, I think. Great to have everyone back. Emily's here. Bradley's here. Despite him traveling everywhere, he's here today.
Bradley: Yay.
Emily: [sings] Be united and it feels so good.
Joe: Beautiful. More importantly than these two being here, we have amazing guest. Bradley's on the streak of getting amazing guests. Today, we have Kim Stackhouse-Lawson here from CSU AgNext. We're going to be talking a follow-up on a previous episode. In episode 133, we had Shane Bedwell on to talk about Herefords, which was probably one of Bradley's favorite episodes to talk about some of the sustainability projects they have going on and the partnership they have with CSU. With that, thank you for being here, Kim. We really appreciate it.
Kim: Thanks for having me.
Joe: Before we get to the very important questions, Kim, can you just give us an overview of what you do very briefly? I know it's probably pretty hard to do it briefly but give us an overview of your position, what you do now. Maybe a little background on where you were previously.
Kim: Sure. I'm the director of AgNext at CSU, which is a new initiative within the college that sits between the College of Ag and the College of Vet Med and Biomedical Sciences. My role here is to lead that group, and then I also conduct my own research, which is wonderful and of course very fun, and have graduate students and all the things that scientists love to do. Prior to that, I was the head of sustainability for JBS USA. JBS is the second largest food company in the world, and all they do is animal protein. It's a pretty unique group.
I led the sustainability initiatives for the company outside of Brazil. My responsibility was in all of the business units, so all three proteins. Beef, pork, and chicken, and then all of the ancillary businesses as well in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. Prior to that, I was with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, where I started the Beef Checkoff Sustainability Research Program and also started the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. Then prior to that, my PhD, I'm a UC Davis alum and worked alongside Frank Mitloehner there.
It's fun to come back to academia, but I certainly took a bit of a circuitous route to get there and to come back.
Joe: You can see why we're so excited to have Kim on. There's so much information that we want to get out. Hopefully, we can get it done in one episode. We might split it just because there's so much to talk about. Bradley's super excited especially with the sustainability side. Before we get into anything, Emily, take us away.
Emily: Of course, for our regular listeners, we have a guest on. You know that it's time for our two questions. Kim, the first question we have for you, super important, no wrong answers despite what Joe and Brad may tell you. What is your favorite breed of dairy cattle?
Kim: It's hard for me to pick a favorite because cows are my favorite animals. I think just their majestic nature and all of the things we don't know about them and all of the things we do know about them. The reason I went to graduate school is that I could just watch them all day. It's nerdy and a little bit weird but I really could. From kind of Bos indicus to Bos taurus. I don't know what it is. If it's their noses or their eyelashes or how they can eat anything and turn it into delicious milk and meat. To pick a favorite is hard.
I grew up showing livestock in 4-K and FFA. I was in the Round Robin at our state fair because I had one-- We showed sheep. I had one showmanship and it was my last year. I was showing a Brown Swiss, and of course, backwards. Which is hard for us, sheep kids. We walk forward. This cow, she was a in full milk production cow that was showing. She gave me the biggest kiss in front-- Licked me from neck to the top of my head as the judge was walking by and I ended up winning Round Robin somehow because I learned later that as a dairy kid, that's one of the things you do not do, is let them just totally lick you.
She was so endearing and so sweet. I would've to say certainly not a favorite breed, but she might be my all-time favorite cow because it's put a lasting impression on me as she looked down on me because of course she was huge and gave me the biggest kiss ever.
Emily: We got one friendly Brown Swiss. All right. Joe, where are we at in our tally?
Joe: Unfortunately, Holsteins at 20. Jerseys at 14. Brown Swiss now at 8. Montbeliadre at 3. Dutch Belted at 3. Normande at 2. Guernsey at 2. Milking Shorthorn at 1, and Ayrshire at 1. Of course, a special shout out to a Guernsey named Taffy.
Emily: Shout out to Taffy. That brings us to our next question. Now I'm curious if you're going to have a similar answer to this one. What is your favorite breed of beef cattle?
Kim: Again, can't pick a favorite breed, but I have a favorite cow. This was my big introduction into animal agriculture. I grew up, my parents are both foresters, so natural resource ecologist. My dad has a master's in fire ecology, and my mother was the first female forester in the State of California. That's cool that she was able to accomplish that. I didn't grow up in animal agriculture, but we grew up in a community that was trees and ranches. In Northern California, those two things very much work in parallel. We had made friends with a significant rancher in the state.
I think they had 2,000 mama cows. A big operation in Northern California. He befriended me. I was 10 years old and he would take me out, I would ride his ranch horses and we would go count cows and see the ranch. There was an orphan Hereford heifer, and her name was Annabelle. That was the first cow I ever owned. We ended up owning about 50 Angus cows as we got more comfortable through Annabelle and some other things. Annabelle died on our property when she was 18 years old. There was nobody that was ever going to allow that sweet cow to do anything else.
We rode her. She was the introduction. I'll say no favorite but a favorite cow and her name is Annabelle.
Emily: Annabelle sounds very special, and that mentorship relationship you were able to build with that rancher sounds really special too. Thanks for sharing that. I know Bradley is happy because you mentioned Annabelle was a Hereford.
Kim: Annabelle was a Hereford.
Bradley: That is the correct answer.
Joe: It is the correct answer according to Bradley. The totals on an update is that Herefords are sneaking up the board here. Black Angus at 14. Herefords at 10 now with a special shout-out to Annabelle. Black Baldies at 4. Scottish Highlander at 4. Red Angus at 3. Belted Galloway at 2. Shorthorn at 2. All with 1, Stabilizer Gelbvieh, Brahman, [unintelligible 00:08:13], Charolais, Simmental, Nelore, Jersey, Normande, Belgian Blue, Brangus, Piedmontese, and White Park.
Emily: I think it's time now to just dive into the meaty questions, and where I really want to start is naturally at the very beginning. You mentioned a little bit about being the director for CSU, that's Colorado State University for their AgNext program. Can you just tell us a little more about what AgNext is, how or what you do with it helps farmers? Just the overview of the program.
Kim: Sure. AgNext was really born out of a need for industry and academia to come together to address some of the most critical and pressing challenges that's facing the animal agriculture industry today. Our mission is to identify and scale innovation that fosters the health of animals and ecosystems. To promote profitable industries that support vibrant communities. What's different about us when you think about a sustainability center is that, one, all we do is focus on animal agriculture.
Two, we believe it's an important part of a sustainable global food system. Three, we're a group that's really focused forward. When we look at the majority of sustainability work that has been done, it's looked backwards in time. How have we changed management strategies and how has that shifted outcomes that we see today? What we heard from our industry partners is that's not good enough anymore. We need a team that is innovating. We need a team that is failing 99% of the time so that that 1% of the time we have a solution that's going to work.
We need a team that's looking 10 years out. Now, we're not ready to look 10 years out. We're not caught up. We're still in sustainability space and animal ag, especially when you think about it through the lens of greenhouse gas and climate, we're still behind. The intent is that we will eventually be very focused forward. The other really unique thing about us is that, and I said it in the mission statement, we're very focused on the three pillars of sustainability. What we heard from our industry partners was that maintaining economic status was not acceptable.
They want and deserve, frankly, to be profitable. That's a really important aspect of what we do when we're thinking about scalable solutions. The most exciting thing about AgNext is the investment that CSU leadership has put into the initiative. AgNext and we are working through this currently, will come with an eventual 12-person faculty cluster hire. I would be the 13th person, and I do have a research appointment, so I think it counts as 13. We'll have a group of 12 who are focused exclusively on developing sustainable solutions in animal ag.
Those cluster hires will extend across the university, so from veterinary medicine to ag-resourced economics, to animal science, to ecology, to engineering. That group will coalesce around this mission and vision and work in that space of private-public partnerships. We've actually established an industry innovation working group where we focus on continuous engagement with our industry partners. Those members, they're termed at three years. We're constantly hearing from new people in that space. It could be a smaller rancher, who has maybe 40 or 50 cows to a multinational food company.
Right now we have Safeway and Albertson sitting on that. There's an organic dairy, there's a conventional dairy. We're really trying to bring together diverse stakeholders to understand what are your challenges, how can we help innovate with you and how do we work in parallel to make sure that we're answering the questions that are most pressing to you. Asking them things like, why is this hard to implement? Where is the challenge as we come from more-focused research to actual boots on the ground? Let's put this practice in that play space solution setting.
Joe: I like that it is trying to look forward. We've been, like you said, looking backwards and trying to never quite catch up. It's really exciting that there's that much backing and support behind it. That's not an easy thing to get done. You mentioned the three pillars of sustainability, and I think one of the things that we struggle with is that sustainability has a lot of different definitions for a lot of different people. Can you run through those three pillars just real quick so we're all starting on the same page?
Kim: Yes. Those three pillars for sustainability are environment, social, and economic. They're spoken about in different terms. Those are certainly the most common. It doesn't necessarily mean that's the definition that someone may have, but that's certainly the way that the topic area of sustainability has matured, which is really positive. It allows those of us who focus on this area to be more systems-focused and to understand unique perhaps unintended consequences. If you focus on a solution in one category, there's going to be effects on the system.
The intent is that you are developing solutions that are not my optics, so not single-focused, and also considerate of these other really important elements of business.
Emily: [crosstalk] I really like how you talk about the three pillars because I think presenting sustainability more in here is the general framework, then here is the exact definition is really helpful because sustainability can mean all of these things. When we divide it up the way you presented with environment, social, economic, did I get them all?
Kim: You did.
Emily: To me, I'm like, "Oh, yes." It works as a system and we see how these systems frameworks can really help drive innovation and drive more ideas forward than more so just squabbling about what does this word really mean? What is its definition? I think that's a really great way to look at it.
Kim: Thanks. I think Emily, the work that you do in health and safety is absolutely a part of sustainability. It fits in that social category so does social equity, social justice, access of producers to Wi-Fi, for example. I mean, all of these things encompass a broader, more balanced approach when we think about sustainable solutions. We're hyper-focused on the moment at greenhouse gases and climate because that's the pressure that everybody is feeling. I think that another really important thing in sustainability to keep in mind is that emotion and science are often on equal-- not often, always on equal footing.
If you ever have a question about which one wins, it's not what the four of us do every day. It's often the emotional drivers that will elevate different topic areas within the broader sustainability concept or theory up. Right now that's greenhouse gases and climate. It has been in the past, antibiotic resistance. It has been in the past, animal welfare. Oftentimes for many corporations, team member health and safety is the number one thing that they're focused on.
It's going to depend on a lot of different things, how these topic areas are prioritized within an organization like the Hereford Association to an organization that maybe like a Nestl� or Unilever. They're all going to be approaching these topics differently. That's one of the reasons that sustainability remains a little elusive when you start thinking about a definition. It's also one of the reasons it's so complex because based on how a company or an organization or a producer maybe prioritizing these different things is going to depend on how they're measuring, reporting, and verifying those things.
They may actually be using different performance metrics. They may be using different standards. They may be reporting it through a different lens because it should be allowed to get quite prescriptive for that individual or that operation. That's really the intent of the topic area. That's one of the reasons that I think animal agriculture in particular when we start talking about animal agriculture at the industry level, it's one of the reasons sustainability is so challenging is because it lacks clarity.
Yet some of that is intentional and really important so that we can pivot and do systems things and we can talk about intended consequences. Producers can get place-based. Because what works for a dairy in Minnesota might not work for a dairy in Colorado. We've got to let these individuals use solutions driving towards innovation and similar outcomes. Those solutions may be vastly different. We've got to empower that. We've got to help them take credit for that too in this emotional framing of the topic.
Joe: Well, and that's something that we talk about on the show quite often, especially related to cattle production that nothing is cookie-cutter. You can't take a protocol or something and just plug it in on another cattle operation, dairy or beef because they're so different. I'm super excited that's the way that this is going and that you're trying to empower each individual system or region or individual themselves to figure it out in their own way. We got some of your background, Kim, on how you got interested in cattle themselves, but how did you get interested in this specific area of study talking about carbon footprints and things like that when it relates to cattle?
Kim: I was in graduate school. Well, actually I was just finishing my undergrad at Davis in California when San Francisco had their first meatless Monday. It was in response to dairies impact actually on the climate. It was a really unique thing to experience because I was a senior. I was thinking about what I was going to do next. I knew I wanted to make a difference, but I wasn't totally sure how. Then all of a sudden San Francisco has a meatless Monday around, this is how you save the planet. Basically, go meat-free and go dairy-free.
All of a sudden, Davis has the leading expert in greenhouse gas emissions. Dr. Lonere was an assistant professor at the time. He had been at Davis for one or two years and had measured emissions from beef. We didn't really know anything about greenhouse gas emissions right in that 2005, 2006 timeframe. It was just this really right time right place for me. My background when I grew up in Northern California and trees and cows coexisted, and it was beautiful. It was amazing. Those cattle provided great food.
The trees provided awesome infrastructure. Wildlife existed. I didn't understand why there was this pushback around livestock and environmental impact. I went to Frank and I said, "I want to help. What can I do?" He said, "Come to graduate school." That's how I got interested. I took my first atmospheric classes and learned about climate change and global warming and how anthropogenic greenhouse gases contribute to that and where they come from. Then I got good at more than just the principles of nutrition that a typical undergraduate would take and away we went.
It's been really fun. I guess to answer your question, carbon I really wasn't. Is it what I'm interested in now? Sure. It's what I'm good at. I think the passion that drives me is to develop solutions that work for the cattle and now work for the people. My love for cattle has matured into love for people. I think that's something a lot of scientists go through. We tend to be pretty introverted and I still would rather be with cows than people but I have grown to really love the cattle community and love what they provide all of us.
To help them come up with solutions that improve the environment and also hopefully improve their profitability and make food security a real thing for hungry people across the globe is something that inspires me. Today carbon is some of the pushback that we receive. That's what I study. I don't know if I'll study something differently as that changes. It's been this interesting evolution. When I sat down with Frank and said I wanted to make a difference and he said, "I think you can," here. He was right. That's what's driven me.
I guess I'm a little less about carbon a little more about the cows and the people and the planet that needs nutrition.
Joe: We talked about how a lot of the driver of this is emotion and that's what we're on right now. We're talking about emissions. That's obviously been one of your focuses lately. Give us a brief overview of your emissions work in general and then we'll follow up with some specific questions to see if we have answers at all, even to these questions.
Kim: I would love to. We're a relatively new organization within a university, of course. I've only been back in academia for two years. That's a very short timeframe to build a research program. What I have been working on is building the largest research facility in the country to measure greenhouse gas emissions from livestock and we have that now at CSU. We can measure 215 head individually, and if we jump to pin-level emissions we can measure 320 heads at a time. That's a confinement setting and grazing setting.
As we know, grazing, we don't know much about emissions from grazing animals. There's been some great work done actually at Michigan State but really understanding emissions and how they differ in different regions and different grazing environments is something we do not know from a scientific perspective. Our models are not truly granular enough to even estimate them well. That's something I have great passion in. We're working on getting a lot of this research up and running. We will do a lot of baselining emissions.
Today the equations that the international panel on climate change and EPA use to estimate methane emissions are only based on data from 440 head and a lot of that data is relatively antiquated. Think 2010 timeframe that we were collecting a lot of that data. We believe pretty strongly that cattle have changed since 2010. We believe strongly that we're better at measuring emissions now. No, it's not super fundable or novel work. Yet it's so important to get accurate baseline emissions on where we're at today for a lot of reasons. We need them for confidence in carbon markets.
We need them so the producers have confidence on where to start and we need them so that we know, okay, if we implement X technology Rumensin or Monensin depending upon what species you're working with is a great example. How much is it really improving and how do we begin to stack these technologies? In the cattle-feeding world, we know that fat reduces emissions. We know steam-flake corn reduces emissions. We know Rumensin reduces emissions a little bit but what happens when we start stacking those things?
That's never actually been studied. Those are really basic technologies. Technologies is even a stretch. Management schemes that producers are implementing today. Maybe they don't get credit for them in the carbon market but we should certainly understand where our emissions are at today so that we can prioritize other scalable solutions, whatever they may be, genetic, identification of low-producing methane animals, feed additives, whatever it is. We've got to understand where we're at today, what's the actual room and physiology capable of, and then how much more can we get.
It's interesting. I'm not really a scientist who focuses much on that basic work. That's not really what interests me. What interests me is more place-based production practical type research. We need some of that before we can jump into, "All right, let's roll on solutions." We're not ready. I think when we think about emissions, the majority comes from the cow-calf system and beef. 70% to 80% of the methane emissions are coming from grazing animals. That is a big black, dark coal of data. There are no solutions today that have been tested that actually mitigate absolute emissions.
We're really good at reducing intensity. Actually using fewer resources to produce more producers do great, focusing on efficiency metrics, those are very important. We need to keep doing that. To actually reduce total emissions, that's where we lack a lot of data and a lot of solutions that are ready to go, especially on beef. Little less so on dairy.
Joe: I find that interesting and a lot of us researchers, I was away for a bit here and that's one of the things that we are trying to figure out as well, is how do we mitigate in grazing. We were talking from the dairy perspective as well but beef as well. Grazing is such a black box to know what to do and how to measure it. There's so many other factors that go into that that we might not have in conventional systems. I think that's a key with grazing to be able to figure that out and it's not going to be easy.
Kim: No. It's very expensive. The innovations around technology to measure animals in their natural environment has improved so much and it's incredible what we can do now. Typically those green feed units tap out at about 24 head where you can actually get good individual data. There's just some serious restrictive, [laughs] maybe is not the right word but it's hard. It's just really hard to do and it's going to take us some time. I think importantly, there's really limited access to federal funding and grants that actually want to understand what are the emissions.
Why do we have these emissions? How are the emissions different from cattle grazing in Minnesota versus Colorado? Why are they different? What happens when we take a cow from Colorado and send it to Minnesota and vice versa or the methane emissions duplicate? It's going to help us understand what's happening in that microbial environment, microbial and physiological environment, and maybe help us get to a solution faster. There's private funding for solutions. I've got a molecule. I want you to study the molecule.
We're coming at it from the top rather than from developing knowledge, letting innovation happen after you've developed the knowledge. There's this huge gap and that huge gap is frankly causing a lot of problems for reporting as well in the corporate sustainability space. As people set more and more net zero targets and start to work on reporting supply chain, Scope 3 emissions, all of these things are connected. This gap, I don't know how else [inaudible 00:28:18] but the gap is really, really, really important. Is it super sexy science? No. Is it desperately needed? Yes. Desperately needed.
Joe: Well, it looks like you answered the next question because we were going to ask you about what phase produces most of our emissions. We've been talking about grazing, doing that. We've got our answer there. Brad, what's your next question?
Bradley: Well, and it follows up. We talk about breeds and I'm a geneticist by training. I'm very into breeds and specific data from breeds and not one Holsteins are not the same from Jersey. Angus is not the same from Herefords. Like I said at the beginning, I attended a webinar where you presented and you formed a partnership with American Hereford Association. Tell us a little bit about how that came to be, why Herefords, is that the future? How do we go about trying to figure out with different breeds to improve sustainability, reduce emissions, things like that?
Kim: This was an initiative that the Hereford Association came to us with. They are actually running the research in their own research station. They are buying the green feeds. They're putting it into their modules. We are working on helping them with data analysis which I really appreciate. I think it's really important to have robust and multidisciplinary teams that look at this for the reasons we already discussed those, those three pillars of sustainability. They're essentially working alongside CSU to make sure that we're not so there's a methane expert, there's actually a nitrogen expert as well.
There's the genetics that the animal breeding and genetics teams, there's an animal welfare expert involved, there's a lot of experts that are analyzing data. We're clearly, helping on the methane side, well, we look at a lot of methane data, so that's the role we're playing. The American Hereford Association is really conducting the research. Now, Brad, to get back to your question around how can genetics play a role. Potentially huge. We know that there's a 10 to 15% variation in methane emissions from animals who are fed the same diet in confinement.
Which Lord only knows what the variation is on animals in grazing, if the variation is so big on cattle in confinement. I think there's incredible potential to select for lower methane-producing animals. Now, but Brad, we don't know how to do it. We don't know how long to measure the methane for. We don't know what other metrics we need, feed intake, sure and feed efficiencies, as you well know, is not highly heritable. It's got to be connected to methane somehow. How? We know RFI, residual feed intake, it has been-- some studies has shown, there's maybe five or six studies that have actually been published in this space.
All of it's very confusing and more importantly, we don't even know the methods by which we should be conducting to answer these questions, which again, going back to the basic science, I actually don't like doing. We have to know how long you actually have to measure methane for to get to an actual phenotype, and we don't. I think that there's incredible potential. The American Hereford association is going to be figuring a lot of that out likely on their own and in fairness, and should be proprietary to them, frankly.
There's also this huge need in the public space where our institutions work, to publish that and to figure it out for society at large, but also other breed associations. How do we begin to select these animals? We're trying to do some of that, Brad, when we're doing other trials, we'll try to measure-- we're trying to run data analytics on some of those questions, but again, funding for methods papers, Brad, it's not easy. We all know, it's not easy to go find those kinds of funds.
Bradley: God I agree, trying to do a bunch of breed comparisons for stuff it's always difficult and what do you measure? You said, how long do you measure? I think those are great questions. Some of this is really getting back down to the true applied research that I think a lot of us need to do and that can really answer a lot of the questions that we all have for consumers and the dairy and the beef industry as a whole. Sometimes it's maybe not rocket science to figure this out but I think getting back to those basics is really what we need.
That's my interest as well from a dairy perspective, as I don't want to pit one breed against the other and say, "Well, this one's better and we should just move the industry to this breed." I think understanding the dynamics of the breeds, trying to figure out how they all work based on different diets, different phases, there's so much that we don't know and that's why I'm excited to learn about what Hereford is doing and your work with them so maybe we can apply that into the dairy space, because we're maybe a little bit behind the beef industry in trying to do that.
Kim: I don't know. This is the first group that has started, there's been a couple of groups that have talked about it for sure. Anyway, I think you're right and I don't think it is one breed over another. I think the other really important thing to remember about sustainability and yes, we get my optic on climate and we all have to make sure we don't, we all have to say like, "All right, we're focused on methane, because there's all this pressure," but there's reasons that breeds are used in different climates, different regions for different products. The Jersey Holstein example is perfect.
Those things have to be, I won't say they should trump methane, because right now the pressure is such I don't know that they can, but they need to be considered on an equal playing field with methane. We have to do everything well, and that's hard. It's really, really hard, especially for traits selection, which I'm not even a geneticist, but our geneticists at CSU have helped me understand that this is going to be very difficult. It may end up being an index, and it may end up being incremental progress towards a more holistic or well-balanced assessment of sustainability.
That includes methane, 100%, yes, but also includes other really important parameters. Maybe we define efficiency more broadly or more realistically or something or optimization, but it's going to have to be everything moving in the same direction.
Joe: Before we get going too much further, we've said the name green feed system several times. Just so that we're on the same page, I know that the three of us know what a green feed system is, but can you just briefly describe what that is and why it's so central to everything that we're trying to do?
Kim: Green feeds are a methane measurement device that was developed by C-Lock Incorporated. They are a very cool machine because you can measure methane from individual animals in their natural environment. The way the machine works, it has a hopper and the hopper dispenses a bait, we use alfalfa pellets, and the animal is baited. A chime goes off, and they hear the bait drop. My graduate students affectionately refer to the green feeds as the snack mobiles. The animal is given a snack and he or she comes in their RFID tag basically records the animal that's there.
They eat the snack and then while they're eating, the snack for usually three to five, three to six minutes is what we hope for, they respire methane. Biggest misnomer about methane is that it's farted, it's not the majority is expelled from the animal. Another misnomer is that it's burped and it is burped, for sure but actually 75% is respired through the lungs so that's why this works. They can actually eat a snack and over time, it takes about 30 days, but over time, and they visit anywhere from it depends on the system, but we hoped for two to six times a day.
Then over time, we get really accurate measures of methane, comparable to the other ways that we measure methane. Many of us who are more applied, would argue that this is a more accurate measurement because the cattle, they're never in whole animal chambers, or their heads are never in a respiration headbox. They're really living and eating, how they would be in their natural home environment, whatever that is, from a dairy to a feed yard to a pasture to whatever they're used to. It's really cool technology. I wish they measured more animals and they weren't as expensive.
Joe: They are expensive, like you talked about, which is a barrier to this, and then how many animals you can put on each one. The overhead per animal, you don't want to figure that number out at all.
Kim: No, or maintenance costs per day.
Joe: Don't do that either.
Kim: Don't figure that either.
Joe: Not a good idea.
Kim: Not a good idea. We do a lot of applied work for our industry partners. One of the reasons that I should have mentioned this, that we were able to build that research facility is because we had producer partners actually buy and donate the green feed machines to us, all eight of them.
Joe: That's amazing.
Kim: Amazing. We got new intake units so that there wasn't any interference between the grow safe units and the green-- our industry partners can just go, here you go. Now finding dollars to actually do research in those facilities is a whole another challenge, but that's one of the reasons our facilities exist. It wouldn't have been possible without them. The majority of our work is on crossbred, traditional Eric West cattle and that's because it's what's meaningful to our producer partners out here.
Joe: That makes sense, that's where we take our lead a lot of the time is when we get that information back from industry stakeholders, and that's the direction that goes a lot of times.
Kim: Absolutely. It is fun that Hereford is taking a leadership role here, right?
Joe: Bradley will agree fo sure.
Bradley: I agree.
Kim: [crosstalk] develop. It's really fun to watch them do it and I'm wickedly excited to see the data.
Joe: Me too.
Kim: To have access to that data is going to be-- or we're going to learn a lot. We're excited too, like I was saying before, we're trying to figure out some of these methods on top of other research projects that we're doing, it takes forever, of course, because methods, papers, take lots of data. We're combining things and trying to make sure we're doing all of the right measures at the right times, even if it's not applicable to the study and not implicating other studies, and all the things we try to juggle. I'm excited about comparing results on methods, did you guys see the same thing?
Did you guys see something different? I'm really happy and proud of them for taking a leadership role, but there's not a-- Hereford was chosen for these reasons, it was just they're being leaders so we're here to support them.
Joe: That's a good enough reason for us. I think it's time to switch gears a little bit just go over some of the things that we've been reading about and had questions on that we thought would be valuable to our listeners when it comes to CSU AgNext and some of the things in general that we use as terms in the industry. One of those things is adaptive livestock management. First of all, what is adaptive livestock management, and then how does that fit into the context of sustainability?
Kim: We define adaptive livestock management as livestock grazing--
Joe: What's up everybody? Dr. Joe Armstrong, not going to lie to you. We let this episode get really, really, really long, had to cut it. It was just way too long, too much information to digest at one time. Unfortunately, you're going to have to come back next week to finish our conversation with Dr. Kim Stackhouse Lawson. Lots of great information left in this conversation. I hope you join us next week. Comments, questions, scathing rebuttals, they go to themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu. That's all I'm going to do for plugs today. I really appreciate it, everybody.
Thank you. Check the show notes for more information. Bye.
[music]
[mooing]
[00:41:08] [END OF AUDIO]
1