ITHACA, N.Y. — ProAgni, the winner of last year’s Grow NY grand prize of $1 million, is part of a prestigious international consortium awarded a U$2,494,394 grant announced by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) as part of the Greener Cattle Initiative.
The consortium also includes the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, AgResearch, New Zealand, Agriculture and AgriFood Canada, Queen’s University Belfast, Ireland, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.
ProAgni is the only industry partner within the global consortium.
The consortium aims to advance low emission, highly efficient production, and assist dairy and beef sectors towards a target of net zero emissions, benefiting producers, animals and the environment.
ProAgni Co-Founder and CEO, Lachlan Campbell, said “Being part of this prestigious, global consortium further validates ProAgni’s approach to reducing methane emissions and antibiotic use in animal agriculture.”
ProAgni has already successfully commercialized ProTect, a low-methane emission nutrition solution, which also removes the need for non-therapeutic antibiotic in livestock production systems. ProAgni is also a member of Rev: Ithaca Startup Works, a business incubator administered by Cornell University’s Center for Regional Economic Advancement, a division of Research & Innovation.
Speaking specifically about New York, he added, “Outside this grant, we are working with Cornell University to trial ProTect to improve productivity and further lower the environmental footprint of the New York dairy industry.”
“Reducing the environmental footprint of animal agriculture without increasing production costs is why we started ProAgni. This grant both validates our scientific approach and provides significant traction in achieving that goal,” Campbell added.
About ProAgni
ProAgni creates and distributes novel nutrition solutions for livestock that help farmers reduce the environmental and social footprint of food production without hurting farm productivity or increasing the price of food. ProAgni’s first commercial product, ProTect, is already a leader in antibiotic free complete animal supplement. ProAgni is also developing probiotics to reduce transition time, improve productivity and reduce methane emissions.
About the Greener Cattle Initiative
The Greener Cattle Initiative is a consortium of stakeholders who share knowledge, leverage investments and accelerate research to identify, develop and/or validate scientifically sound, commercially feasible and socially responsible practices and technologies that reduce enteric methane emissions from dairy and beef cattle to slow the effects of climate change. The Greener Cattle Initiative’s Founding Members are the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, ADM, the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding (CDCB), Elanco, Genus PLC, the National Dairy Herd Information Association, Nestlé and the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre (NZAGRC).
JBS USA has joined the consortium as a steering committee member.
–ProAgni
Greener Cattle Initiative
