Seaweed food helps stop farting cows

IT IS barely visible, and needs no irrigation or fertilisers: lying off the coast of Australia is a vast seaweed crop destined to curb livestock’s climate-altering flatulence and belches.

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The underwater farm stretches across 1800 hectares in the Tasman Sea about 10 minutes off Tasmania.

Beneath the waves are forests of asparagopsis that is rich in the organic compound bromoform.

More than 40 studies have shown that the seaweed can lower methane emissions from livestock when added to fodder or grain, said Fran Cowley, at Australia’s University of New England.