About the project

Norway has set political goals to increase domestic food production based on domestic resources in line with the population growth, while at the same time reducing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture (currently 8% of total domestic GHG emissions). The agricultural area is small, 3% of the total land area. Cereals are only grown on one-third of this area, due to constraints in climate and topography. The rest of the area (66%) is cultivated grass production. In addition, substantial valuable feed resources are located in outfields, i.e. uncultivated vegetation in the forests and mountains.

These areas (140 000 square km) represent a 50% unexploited grazing capacity, corresponding to 3.6 million sheep. Thus, utilization of natural feed resources is inevitably related to ruminant livestock, which is a challenge in relation to reducing GHG emissions. This project aims to contribute to a sustainable, climate smart sheep production based on exploitation of national feed resources, including outlying pastures, combined with lowest possible climate impacts.

The project goals will be reached by developing a farm-scale model for the estimation of GHG emissions from Norwegian sheep production.Further, the model will be used as a tool to identify factors related to animals and management that are of relevance for the on-farm GHG emissions. This can be used as a basis for mitigation options to reduce the environmental impact of the sheep meat production.

Finally, the project will examine how alternative sheep production systems will affect GHG emissions and use of resources, and recommend mitigation strategies to reduce GHG emissions from Norwegian sheep farms.

Participants at NMBU

Partners

Animalia, Matprat, NSG, Nortura, Norilia og Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.