Ermias Kebreab is a professor of animal science and associate dean for global engagement at UC Davis, where he also directs the World Food Center. Raised in Eritrea with a lifelong love of milk, he has built a career at the intersection of livestock productivity and environmental sustainability.
His research took an unexpected turn toward the ocean. After a species of red seaweed showed promise in early lab trials, Kebreab’s lab became the first in the world to test seaweed as a feed additive in live dairy and beef cattle. The results were striking: doses as small as three ounces cut methane emissions from feedlot cattle by as much as 82 percent, with no effect on the animals’ weight gain. His team has since developed solar-powered dispensers that deliver the supplement to free-ranging herds, cutting methane from grazing cattle by nearly 40 percent.
As NPR’s TED Radio Hour explored in its episode on seaweed and cow burps, Kebreab’s work offers a practical, scalable path to reducing a potent, short-lived climate pollutant, without asking the world to give up meat and dairy. He has served as a contributing author to the IPCC’s guidelines on livestock emissions and chairs the UN FAO’s technical working group on feed additives.
Why Their Voice Matters: Kebreab shows that climate solutions can come from surprising places, even the ocean floor, and that rigorous science can meet farmers where they actually work rather than asking them to abandon their livelihoods.
