INTERVIEW ▶▶▶ Nick Major
Towards a net-zero carbon feed and food industry
All About Feed talked with Nick Major − the new Chair of The Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI) about the role of the feed industry in reducing the carbon footprint of animal production.
BY MARIEKE PLOEGMAKERS T
he Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI), which is an initiative of the feed industry, provides a global reference data- base of emissions of feed materials. With the publicly available Animal Nutrition Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) data-
base and tool, the organisation is working towards a more sus- tainable, low-carbon animal production system. At the beginning of this year, ForFarmers’ Corporate Affairs Director Nick Major was ellected as the new chair of GLFI.
Congratulations on your election as the new chair of GFLI. What will you be focusing on as the new Chair? Thank you! My main focus along with the GFLI Board and team is to raise awareness of GFLI and in particular with two main groups. Firstly users of the data, whether they be feed producers or supply chain partners. The second is to encourage the many companies and organisations that either have or are working on emissions data for the feed materials they supply. The more feed materials we have in the GFLI database the more we can claim it to be the standard set of emissions data. I suppose the other priority is to encourage new members to join GFLI to contribute to developing this important initiative.
How does GLFI help the feed industry to achieve more sustainable, low-carbon animal protein production? The role of GFLI is to provide the industry with validated emis- sions data for the feed materials they use. If you look at the car- bon footprint of 1 tonne of feed delivered to the farm gate, a significant proportion of the emissions come from cultivation, harvesting and processing. These have much greater impact than feed production and transport. It is for the feed industry to pro- vide innovative solutions to their farmer customers to reduce the carbon footprint of animal production, but by using GFLI the whole industry can rely on a standard set of values.
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Is there an increasing need to monitor emissions from feed? We see increasing interest and pressure from supply chain part- ners such as retailers and processors but also from policy makers. Livestock production has to play its role in the transition to net-zero carbon objectives. Feed represents on average some- thing like 45% of the carbon footprint of livestock production ac- cording to the FAO. It’s slightly higher in pigs and poultry and slightly less in ruminants. With that comes both the responsibility but also the means by which the feed industry can and will contribute to more sustainable animal production.
Last year, GLFI launched their database consisting of the LCA of feed ingredients. Does this database cover all of the market? What is still missing? GFLI already has emissions data on 962 feed materials (not only CO₂) with three different allocation methods so it is already quite comprehensive. There are a number of materials we will want to focus on. Firstly more regional information, secondly minerals, mi- cro-ingredients and feed additives and finally the co-products that are commonly fed on farm. Ultimately the objective is to en- sure that 100% of the materials used in a feed formulation are available in GFLI.
Which are the feed ingredients with the most impact and where can improvements best be made? That’s a good question but the answer depends on how you measure it. Which impact category do you want to focus on? Do you include or exclude the impact of changes in land use? I need to make another important point here. When looking at the foot- print of any material you also need to think about the perfor- mance of the feed on farm. In other words, there is no point re- ducing the carbon footprint of a compound feed if it negatively affects animal performance and health. You need to look at the
PHOTO: FORFARMERS
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