Homegrown Solution Helps Farmers Reduce Emissions

Media release
Homegrown Solution Helps Farmers Reduce Emissions

Responding to the Prime Minister’s call for New Zealand farmers to find solutions to greenhouse gas emissions, biotechnology researcher and manufacturer, Donaghys Industries, is urging farmers to look more closely at its carbon footprint-busting technology developed in New Zealand.

LessN is a nitrogen response enhancer that, if applied using the LessN pastoral management system, can cut a dairy farmer’s carbon footprint by between 10 and 20 percent. Donaghys’ in-house and independent trials were recently peer reviewed by AsureQuality.

Donaghys’ CEO Jeremy Silva, who farms at Sheffield in Canterbury, says by adopting its LessN system some farms may deliver all the carbon savings required by the Emissions Trading Scheme, which is currently before a government select committee.

The LessN system involves spraying pasture with dissolved urea mixed with LessN. Ammonia volatilisation (the dissipation of ammonia into the air) is virtually eliminated and overall nitrogen response is such that nitrogen input can be halved while delivering increased pasture growth.

Silva says the economics of using the LessN system are proven in today’s market and that carbon savings are an added bonus. He points out that manufacturing urea is hugely carbon intensive with the burning of natural gas supplying the energy required.

“Nitrogen use is one of the biggest issues facing agriculture internationally because it contributes to nitrous oxide greenhouse gas emissions and water quality issues through nitrate leaching. When urea is spread, up to 50 percent can be lost to the environment but with the LessN system, over 95 percent of what is applied can be utilised by the pasture plants.”

In March this year, LessN won the new products award at the South Island Agricultural Field Days’ Agri Innovation Awards. The judges noted LessN’s importance to farming in the future under probable nitrogen constraints and commented: “LessN is an innovative product that will help farmers meet those restrictions without reducing plant growth or profitability”.

LessN was developed by Donaghys’ scientists following a scientific breakthrough in 2006. The company has since undertaken one of the country’s biggest ever pasture study series involving 1000 individual plots and over 100,000 field measurements. In his peer review, Dr Robert Sanson of AsureQuality congratulated Donaghys for embarking on a rigorous and comprehensive series of trials. He concluded “the adopted trial design and statistical analysis are scientifically robust”. Donaghys intends to submit these trial results for publication in an international agricultural peer-reviewed journal.

Silva says Donaghys has shown that nitrogen utilisation is direct and rapid with the LessN system and this is likely to reduce the potential for nitrate leaching and nitrous oxide emissions from livestock urine patches.

“When nitrogen is properly utilised before livestock graze a pasture this limits the amount of nitrogen excreted in urine. The LessN system exploits a gap in the approach to mitigating livestock greenhouse gas and nitrate leaching issues by addressing the problem at source. Production is not compromised – it’s improved. We have comprehensive experiments planned to further investigate this potential.”

Additional trials are underway both here and internationally, including measuring the effect of the LessN system on a variety of crops.

LessN is derived from four families of microbes selected for their specialised plant growth properties and two organic compounds that aid the uptake and utilisation of nitrogen. It is one of a growing number of cutting edge ‘green chemistry’ products being developed internationally which aim to reduce reliance on products derived from fossil fuels.

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