DSM expands precision tech market to Brazil with Prodap acquisition

07 Jun 2022 --- Global precision farming has seen bullish growth recently driven by a demand for efficiency, traceability and improved animal welfare as food companies try to meet the need to provide quality animal protein to an expanding population. In line with this, DSM has acquired Brazilian animal nutrition tech company Prodap.

Precision nutrition is a key pathway to improving the efficiency and sustainability of animal farming, creating value for a range of stakeholders, including farmers and society at large,” says Ivo Lansbergen, executive vice president, Animal Nutrition & Health, DSM.

Prodap collects data and develops insights in real-time, which are translated into nutritional solutions for ruminant farming operations. The company operates in Mato Grosso and Minas Gerais, serving more than 5,000 farms across Brazil.

DSM will further develop Prodap’s digital solutions to reach more global markets and advance data collection of various animal species. The financial details have not yet been disclosed. 

Livestock emissions top of agenda
Diligently applied farming strategies could mitigate livestock methane emissions to help the sector limit its share of global warming to the 1.5 °C targets by 2030, concludes a recent meta-analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). 

Twenty-four experts worldwide, including researchers from Netherlands-based Wageningen University & Research (WUR), reviewed hundreds of peer-reviewed studies for strategies to decrease product-based and absolute enteric methane emissions by ruminants. 

“Only concerted action will help countries meet their targets. It is crucial that adoption barriers are identified and removed and the identified strategies implemented”, says Jan Dijkstra, associate professor, WUR.DSM's precision nutrition solutions for animal nutrition and health include Verax and Sustell. 

“Such barriers may include availability of mitigation technologies, particularly in rural areas and costs of proposed strategies or technologies,” Dijkstra says. 

The Prodap acquisition contributes to DSM’s aim to reduce on-farm livestock emissions significantly by 2030. It also leverages the burgeoning digital solutions industry of Brazilian animal farming. 

DSM’s precision nutrition solutions for animal nutrition and health include Verax, an integrated animal management system that leverages data to understand the health and productivity of farmed animals. 

Additionally, Sustell, is the company’s sustainability service that enhances the environmental sustainability of animal protein production.

Methane reducing strategies
Because of ruminants’ multiple uses in low-income countries and their contribution to the sustainable development goals, the PNAS authors focused on strategies that reduce enteric methane production without reducing animal productivity. 

They identified three strategies related to feed management that could reduce methane emission per unit of meat or milk by 12% while increasing animal productivity. The strategies were increasing feed intake levels, having ruminants graze on less mature grass and feeding increasing levels of concentrate.

In addition, they identified five strategies that, on average, reduced methane per unit of product by 17% and reduced absolute methane emission by more than 20%, with relatively minor effects on animal productivity. The strategies include supplementing animals with methane inhibitors, oils and fats, oilseeds, nitrate (electron acceptors) and feeding tanniferous forages.

Additional strategies, or improvement of efficacy of current strategies, will be needed due to the projected increase in global demand for livestock products to stay on track for 2050. The authors looked at how implementing the identified strategies could help reduce global methane emissions by livestock.

In Europe, they found multiple scenarios that did not require full adoption of the most effective strategies to meet the 2030 targets and that full adoption of the two most effective strategies could meet the 2050 target.

In Africa, the identified strategies would not be sufficient to meet either the 2030 or 2050 target. 

“This is because of Africa’s growing human population and per capita demand for animal products, which are expected to lead to a substantial increase in livestock production and greenhouse gas emissions and also the reliance on ruminant production systems in many regions with the system’s features posing much stronger limitations to the implementation of some strategies,” says André Bannink, researcher and co-author.

Edited by Inga de Jong