OMAHA (DTN) -- Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) recently received a $5 million grant to study the environmental impact of cattle, according to a UNL news release.

Galen Erickson, professor of ruminant nutrition and lead of the Beef Innovation hub, and his team received a five-year, $5 million Grand Challenges grant from the university to accurately measure greenhouse gas emissions from grazing cattle.

"We're asking beef producers to make changes without the science to know it is beneficial, and not being able to accurately measure whether their change worked," said Erickson.

Researchers will graze cattle in grazing systems at three of the university's research facilities in the state: Eastern Nebraska Research, Extension and Education Center near Mead; Barta Brothers Ranch southeast of Ainsworth; and Gudmundsen Sandhills Laboratory near Whitman.

The Grand Challenges initiative is funded by the Office of the Chancellor and the Office of Research and Innovation at UNL. This grant will focus on climate resilience, sustainable food and water security, and science and technology literacy for society.

"The goal of the project is to develop tools that can be easily and economically employed to help predict the benefits and any situations where we can improve relative to greenhouse gas in grazing systems," Erickson said. "We want to provide tools that allow producers to say this is or isn't a practice that will have a positive effect on the environment."

Homer Buell, a beef producer from Rose, Nebraska, and former co-chair of the Beef Innovation hub, was involved in the grant proposal, according to UNL.

"It's really important that we know what impact we are having on greenhouse gases," Buell said. "There are so many things we can do within our industry, but we really need to know how we're affecting the environment so we can tell our story."

The cow-calf sector has been mostly ignored in the studies looking into greenhouse gas emissions, partly because of the variety and complexity of the grazing systems that produce beef.

"In closed-confinement systems like feedlots, only recently has the technology been developed to accurately measure greenhouse gas production by individual animals. Even in buildings that are climate-controlled, animal size, genetics, diet, stress and other factors can cause variation in greenhouse gas production," noted the news release. "A grazing system includes all these variables, plus temperature, wind, soil moisture, forage quantity and quality, and daily travel distance."

A diverse team will bring unique perspectives to the research, according to UNL.

"We need to not only be able to do the research and find the answers; we need to understand what the beef industry and consumers need from this project and deliver the results in a way that they understand and can use," Erickson stated. "One of the biggest priorities in this project is to make sure the technology we develop is accurate, economical and will have a legitimate use in the industry."

UNL stated a producer panel will gather feedback to meet that goal so the research can be adjusted accordingly, adding that the producers who have been involved so far are looking forward to having data and guidelines to make decisions about practices that may affect their environmental impact and their bottom line.

"Part of the problem has been research that was not done or not done right, so things came out that maybe weren't real," Buell said. "We have to find out what's real and affect that as positively as we can."

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