‘Net zero doesn’t cut it’

10-06-2022 | Market trends | Article

The buzz word in many industries around the world is ‘sustainability’ by making their operations ‘net zero’. But just as the masses realize that they shouldn’t use more resources and emit more pollutants, forward thinkers get to grips with the idea that ‘net zero’ isn’t good enough. We should be aiming for ‘net positive’.

It was one of the main mantras in the life of the late Dr Pearse Lyons; ‘Don’t get it right. Get it going’. And the latest edition of the Alltech One Ideas conference carried on in this spirit. Mark Lyons: “My father was right! It’s not about perfectionism, it’s about progress. If we change the lens and the way we look at things, we can change the way we think.”

What does sustainability mean?

In exchanging their ideas, the conference speakers surely painted a new perspective, on sustainability and on the steps beyond that. It was former Unilever CEO Paul Polman who shared his point of view in which direction the world should move. “’I need to be sustainable,’ that’s ‘net zero.’ But what does sustainable mean? No harm. It’s very noble to do. But ‘sustainable’ means, ‘I keep the status quo of what is currently happening. I sustain it.’ And that’s not good enough anymore. A little less bad, is still bad. The only way of thinking is to think restorative, reparative, regenerative, and that is what we call ‘net positive.’”

We are at the point confirmed by study after study where the cost of not acting is becoming higher than the cost of acting.

The greatest challenges present the greatest opportunities

He continued: “Net positive is not about doing less harm. It’s about doing more good.” According to Polman, a change needs to happen well beyond the scale of the Industrial Revolution. Increasingly, CEOs are required to be broader social leaders and to partner up within and beyond the industry level. Many CEOs are struggling to make change – and that is normal. The good news, however, is that the greatest challenges also present the greatest business opportunities. “It really is about making a business model where you can show that you profit from solving the world’s problems, not creating them,” advised Polman. “And when you can honestly answer the question, ‘Is the world better off because your business is in it?’” “We are at the point confirmed by study after study where the cost of not acting is becoming higher than the cost of acting,” said Polman, “which actually makes it an enormous economic opportunity to create this greener, more inclusive, more resilient future and not go back to the past where we came from, which, frankly, had run out of steam.”

2 big ideas

Lyons concluded: “We are truly at the interface of 2 big ideas: nourishing the present and the preservation of the future. Reducing is not enough; we have to do something different. Our belief is that agriculture has the greatest positive potential to influence the future of our planet that can provide nutrition for all and help rural communities to thrive and replenish our planet’s resources.”

Our ability to manipulate it is going to become more important.

Carbon sequestration

One of the ways that agriculture can have a major impact on restoring and conserving the environment is through carbon sequestration, a concept explained by Vaughn Holder, Alltech ruminant research group director. He introduced the audience to an Alltech research alliance called Archbold Expeditions. Based at the 10,000-acre Buck Island Ranch station in Florida, this research monitors land, nutrient and pollution inputs and outputs to evaluate experimental methodologies and modeling techniques for estimating carbon and nutrient fluxes on working cattle operations. Vaughn revealed that the data shows us that by implementing pasture management practices, agriculture is in a unique position where it can both provide the food resources that the world population needs while at the same time engaging in actions that will help conserve and restore the planet. In fact, he stated that by focusing on feed and growth efficiency strategies and carbon sequestration management strategies on grazed lands, we could reduce greenhouse gases by over 50%. “Our ability to manipulate it is going to become more important,” Vaughn explained. “No one else is positioned in the way that we are to do this.”

Sustainability does not begin and end with environmental impact.

Endless possibilities

Echoing Vaughn’s message of the importance of conserving the world in which we live, Nikki Putnam Badding, managing director and chief dietitian of Acutia, focused on expanding this theme to the world population. “Sustainability does not begin and end with environmental impact,” Nikki explained. “It actually means that we are taking care of the health of the planet and the people who share it.” This is of increasing importance as population growth puts extra pressure on our resources. Setting a table for 10 billion people by 2060, needs 70% more food. An impossible challenge? Heather White, author of ‘One green thing’ knows that it are the individual actions that lead to a culture shift towards solutions. “Every generation stands on the shoulders of the past and it is safe to say that we are our ancestors wildest dream. We have the technology and knowledge to make change happen, we just have to keep asking ourselves, where we want to stand, 30 years from now. What will be our legacy? With that mindset, instead of carrying on past principles, the possibilities are endless.”

The Significance of Selenium: Exploring a decade of research
It’s not that long ago that selenium was mistakenly being considered a toxin, but now it plays an essential role in equine health, especially in recent years. Alltech research scientist Dr Mieke Holder has conducted a great deal of research on this micronutrient and discussed its impact on horses’ antioxidant status and immune function at the Alltech ONE conference.Selenium was originally discovered back in 1817 in the inorganic form by Swedish chemist Jons Berzelius. Dr Holder said: “Most trace minerals, such as zinc, or copper, or any of the other ones, really function in more of a supportive type of role for all the different reactions in the body. “Selenium can actually be incorporated into amino acids, specifically the amino acid methionine and cysteine. Then it forms selenomethionine or selenocysteine. These are also the 2 main forms that we can see selenium occurring naturally in plants as well as selenized yeast. It’s also then in this form that selenium can be incorporated into selenoproteins.” One selenoprotein that’s been studied very closely in the horse is glutathione peroxidase.As more selenium is fed to the horse, glutathione peroxidase activity increases. “This means we know that what we fed to the horse was absorbed, and it was digested, and taken up and incorporated into a protein that was actually utilised by the body,” said Dr Holder. Dr Holder outlined various scientific reasons as to why selenium was useful in the diet of horses and specified how different regions may well require varied levels of intake. And she also highlighted that some horse activities required more selenium in the diet than others.In summary, Dr Holder said: “Geographical area dictates a need for level of supplementation. Selenium may indeed provide additional benefits at a total of 3 milligrams of selenium per day in dietary intake, specifically for horses such as our brood mares, our exercising horses, and our young, growing horses in training programs.”

Holistic Gut Health – The latest improvements in fish nutrition
Taking a forensic look at the digestibility of feed in salmon at Alltech ONE was Dr Martin Llewellyn, a research scientist at the University of Glasgow in the UK. Dr Llewellyn outlined the progress made by SalmoSim in collaboration with Alltech as they work to optimise gut health in aquatic species. The goal of the SalmoSim project was to build an in vitro system that can simulate the gastrointestinal tract of an Atlantic salmon. He said: “This one is really targeted at simulating the microbiome. We also developed it so we could simulate absorption as well and calculate digestibility, estimate digestibility.” Salmon farming is worth € 13.5 billion a year, but feed is the major cost when it comes to production. With fish welfare in mind, the team set out to build an artificial salmon gut so that they could perform numerous feed trials, again and again, at a lower cost compared to using live fish. “And the other thing is we can really get really fine scale tuning of the different physiochemical parameters inside salmon guts in a model system,” said Dr Llewellyn.In conclusion, he highlighted the fact that, with his work, it is possible to maintain gut microbial communities in vitro. Dr Llewellyn said: “We also have looked at Bio-Mos, done some work on prebiotics. Now we‘ve gone down the route of trying to look at digestibility. Tried to understand a little bit about the nature of the enzymatic complement involved in salmon digestion. “And we can kind of take that on to improve protein digestibility and beyond. So we think that we can also adapt this to look at lipid digestibility. But also crucially, we can look at the microbiome and absorb and how absorbance can be modulated through changes in the microbiome as well.”