90 Cows 'Fart' And 'Burp' Altogether, Exploded An Entire Farm, One Cow Injured

According to Reuters, 90 flatulent cows exploded on a farm in Germany with the methane gas they produced. The incident happened on Monday, damaged the farm’s roof and injured one of the cows.

After that, local police showed up to investigate the explosion. They believed the methane was accumulated on the farm as it’s keeping a lot of cattle. Then, a static electric charge must have caused the built-up gas to explode and one cow was treated for burns, according to a police spokesman.

However, the accumulated methane on farms when cow belch is so common that the agricultural industry has become the largest source of methane emissions. In Germany, it makes up 58% of the total methane emissions. Sadly, there isn’t an effective solution to reduce methane emissions from animals, according to Dr Roland Fuß at the Thünen-Institut in Hamburg.

Over the past three decades, there hasn’t been a significant reduction in agricultural methane emissions. As the energy and waste industries have been significantly reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture remains the second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, on-par with the industrial sector.

As a greenhouse gas, methane is overseen by the international Kyoto Protocol, which means it’s included in the targets that industrialized nations are bound to meet. There aren’t any fixed targets for reducing methane.

However, the burden-sharing principle of the EU stipulates that by 2030, agriculture needs to decrease its greenhouse gas emissions by 30% compared with the 2005 level. And there are multiple approaches to achieve this goal.

Using suction devices, researcher Ralf Loges from the Institute for Grass and Forage Science at the University of Kiel found that cows’ methane emissions can go down if they are kept on the pasture and consume certain types of clover. However, the potential of this approach is limited as the microorganisms in the cows’ bodies will adapt to new conditions after a long-term change.

Other measures include using plant-based fertilizers and storing the animals’ residues in a gas-tight environment. Nevertheless, the ultimate solution is still reducing livestock.

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