There’s a battle going on in the rumen of all cattle over hydrogen. When the methanogens are winning, livestock methane emissions rise, and milk and meat production decrease. When the acetogens win, milk and meat production increase, and methane emissions decline. The best opportunity available to limit the climate impact of our food systems and provide highly nutritious food to the world’s population is to resolve this hydrogen war within our cattle and sheep. Professor Sharon Huws is a rumen microbiologist at Queens University Belfast who is leading global research teams working to develop solutions that benefit the climate and farmers. “If you can shift the biochemistry a little so that some of that the hydrogen is shuttled to energy, that will also reduce methanogenesis because there will be less hydrogen available.” Sharon said.  Sharon and her team are using Omics technologies to improve their understanding of the rumen microbiome. These are the same technologies that have revolutionised cancer treatments over recent years. The plan is to identify microbes that can act as a hydrogen sink, microbes that capture the available hydrogen before the methanogens. They are then looking at identifying the most effective microbes that could then be made into probiotics or direct fed microbials.    The team is not starting from scratch as nature has given them a head start. There is a lot to learn from termites, wallabies, and kangaroos. They all produce very little methane because they have reductive acetogens that act as a hydrogen sink, capturing the hydrogen and converting it to energy.  Methane emissions account for 5-15% of energy consumed by cattle and sheep. Winning the rumen hydrogen war will provide an economic benefit to farmers by increasing productivity and reducing feed costs, at the same time as mitigating the climate impact. This creates the vital win-win for farmers and the climate that is necessary for widespread adoption of new technologies.  Sharon is optimistic that her research will provide an additive benefit by improving the performance of other livestock methane reducing technologies such as 3NOP and Asparagopsis. These technologies have shown efficacy reducing methane but do not improve productivity, leading to the conundrum of who is going to pay for them.  I recently caught up with Sharon to hear more about her work. You can listen to our conversation here.