Around twenty people, mainly technicians and engineers, watch over the herd of 600 cattle, milk some of them and collect a lot of data to feed the work supervised by the researchers.
Amount of food ingested, fattening status, composition of milk… Everything is evaluated, including burps loaded with methane, which has a very warming effect.
Cattle are the largest contributors to the carbon footprint of livestock farming, which itself accounts for 12% of greenhouse gas emissions attributed to human activity, according to the United Nations agricultural organization FAO.
But these emissions are likely to increase as the world’s population grows and demand for meat and milk increases.
The “art” of grazing
The Court of Auditors recommended in 2023 to “define a reduction strategy” in the number of cows (17 million head) to achieve France’s climate objectives.
This report made livestock professionals gasp and inspired researcher Luc Delaby to coin a phrase: “The paradox of the grazing cow.”
“The image of ruminants,” he emphasizes, “has deteriorated and at the same time we continue to praise meadows” for their role in carbon storage, the preservation of biodiversity and water quality.
“But we don’t know how to keep meadows without ruminants on them. We have to resolve this paradox,” continued Luc Delaby, during a press visit organized by INRAE.
On a stretch of almost evenly mown grass, indifferent to the dung in which one of his boots is stuck, the researcher describes an experiment.
Dairy cows stay on average ten days in a (large) plot, a “severe” regime when breeders traditionally rotate them much more often.
The idea is to “tell the cows ‘You finish your plate before you have dessert'”, says Luc Delaby, because “the shorter the pasture, the better the regrowth”.
For a farmer, better management of his grass stock allows him to reduce his dependence on purchased feed, particularly South American soybeans from deforested areas.
“Feeding cows grass is a simple matter but extremely complex, because you have to be in the right plot at the right time. The successful farmer is an artist,” says Luc Delaby.
Too modest to describe himself in this way, Sylvain Quellier raises 80 cows producing milk for Normandy Camembert. He draws inspiration from the work of his neighbors at the experimental farm “to improve himself.”
The 45-year-old farmer uses grass measurement tools and pasture management software. “We refocused on what was our strength, grass, it allowed us to bring income to the farm” by buying “almost half as much” feed as a farm of the same type.
“Real revolution”
Involved in the Normandy breed selection body, Sylvain Quellier also watches for advances in genetics “to create the breed of tomorrow”.
From next year, explains researcher Pauline Martin, breeders will be able to inseminate their cows based on a “methane index”.
Researchers have in fact managed to identify the genetic characteristics of cattle that emit less methane than their peers. Since this potential is written in their genes, it can be passed on to their descendants.
“A real revolution is in the making,” notes the CEO of INRAE, Philippe Mauguin.
He points out that other levers will nevertheless have to be activated to achieve the “ambitious but not unreasonable” objective of reducing methane emissions from cattle by 30% by 2030: starting dairy cows’ careers earlier, opting for smaller sizes that mechanically emit less, etc.
This last point, notes Sylvain Quellier, is currently coming up against the “ego” of breeders, who are attached to large animals.
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