Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and agriculture is a major source of its emissions worldwide. Tackling climate change will hinge on cutting these emissions, and fast.

Within the farming sector itself, methane is also a significant greenhouse gas, accounting for more than a third of agriculture’s total contribution to climate change, second only to carbon dioxide.

On the opportunity side, cutting this powerful greenhouse is a huge prospect, and that story has already started.

New Food Finance data show that 14 tech start-ups involved in agricultural methane mitigation have already secured $991 million cumulatively across 50 fund-raisings, in the past decade.

Our chart above shows a striking, upward trend, with significant growth even since 2021 – beating the more general, post-covid, venture capital dip since then.

This strong recent growth comes even though we have excluded – as an outlier – by far the biggest deal to date, namely a €733 million private placement investment last May, by publicly-listed Dutch animal feed company, dsm-firmenich.

A keyword search of our database, for the word “methane”, reveals 14 companies targeting methane mitigation.

As the chart shows, these companies take several technological approaches to cut agricultural methane, centred on animal feed, agricultural waste, and precision devices.

Netherlands-based dsm-firmenich produces a wide range of feed additives, including conventional products such as vitamins, enzymes, gut probiotics and specific products to enhance the digestibility of animal feed, as well as colourants for the aquaculture industry. It has also devised a product called Bovaer, which it says even in low quantities reduces methane emissions from dairy cattle by 30%, and by up to 45% for beef cattle.

On a smaller scale, Australia’s ProAgni also produces ruminant feeds and supplements which it says reduce methane production, and has raised $5.1 million to date.

One specific animal feed approach is the use of seaweed-based feed additives, which companies say cut cut ruminant livestock methane burps, and has drawn $103 million in the past five years. The key companies here are CH4 Global and Rumin8.

Taking a different approach, ArkeaBio says it is developing a vaccine, to reduce ruminant burps.

Others are focusing on animal methane monitoring, or even capture, where perhaps the originality prize might go to Zelp, which has developed cattle-wearable technology to capture and neutralize the greenhouse gas. 

Aside from animal burps, another important focus for cutting agricultural methane is waste and manure.

Enterprising companies are using a variety of technologies to trap methane, from manure lagoons, water or solid waste, and upcycle this into other products.

N2 Applied is using electricity to cut emissions from slurry, and turn this into organic fertiliser, and has raised $39 million to date. Windfall Bio ($9 million) and String Bio ($25 million) both use bacteria-based approaches to turn methane into other products, such as fertiliser or animal feed.

These companies show a rich vein of originality, and are being rewarded for their efforts. Given the scale of the climate crisis, we can expect such growth and investment to multiply many times over.