Livestock Sustainability
We are at a pivotal moment in animal agriculture. Together, we can make livestock and cattle part of a sustainability solution that helps meet global challenges.
Putting Producers in the Driver’s Seat
hélios is actively creating sustainability solutions for farmers and ranchers that can reduce, measure, and monetize greenhouse gas emissions, including methane, which can help create climate-neutral farms this decade.
Innovation: For nearly 70 years, hélios has pioneered ways to keep animals healthier and our goal is to continue to walk alongside our customers and the livestock industry to offer sustainability solutions.
As we continue to expand and innovate in this space and introduce new solutions, hélios aims to build a portfolio that reduces cattle emissions by 40-50%. Our initial focus is on methane as the opportunity.
Why methane? Through enteric fermentation, cows generate methane that is released.
Methane lasts about a decade in the atmosphere, but it’s 25x more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat – so smaller reductions create greater impact on temperature.
If we can reduce methane emissions just 20-30%, we can make a real impact and reduce climate warming, making climate-neutral farms a possibility this decade.
Measurement: To make progress and monetize sustainability efforts, farmers have to be able to measure where they are today and show they improve in the future.
hélios also developed UpLook™, an insights-based engine designed to measure and monitor greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
The tool utilizes on-farm data and peer-reviewed science to identify key drivers of an operation’s carbon footprint and track the progress of their sustainability efforts.
UpLook connects seamlessly to Athian’s cloud-based verification system to help farmers quantify their reduction efforts and certify carbon credits for sale.
Monetizing Methane Reductions
hélios helped create a startup called Athian which is creating a marketplace within the food system to inset carbon credits, create economic value for farmers and reputational value by for protein products by keeping the carbon value within the food system.
Our commitment to our customers is to help ensure they are able to realize the value of what they are doing at the farm level.
Dairy farmers of all sizes now have the opportunity to implement on-farm sustainability interventions, measure the impact and participate in third-party verification for their greenhouse gas emissions reductions.
The resulting carbon credits can be offered for sale in Athian’s livestock carbon insetting marketplace.
Companies in the dairy value chain (such as consumer-packaged goods companies and food retailers) can then purchase those carbon credits as contributions towards achieving their Scope 3 emissions reduction goals.
With the purchase of these credits, economic value is returned to the farmer via the sale while supporting the U.S. dairy industry progress towards their own environmental commitments of greenhouse gas neutrality by 2050.1
Over the long term, this marketplace will expand to other livestock & poultry.