How We Can Make Dairy More Climate-Friendly (Real Farm Solutions)

Conor McCabe sits down with CLEAR Conversations host, Tracy Sellers. At the CLEAR Center at UC Davis, researchers spend their days asking a big question with global stakes: how can we raise livestock in ways that are more climate-friendly? For PhD student Conor McCabe, now approaching the end of his fifth year in the Mitloehner Lab, that question has fueled not just one research project—but nearly an entire year of long days, early mornings, and a sprawling scientific effort that spans animals, microbes, emissions, and the future of food systems.

McCabe didn’t start out as a dairy kid. He grew up on a small farm in Oregon—“pretty much an Old McDonald’s farm,” he jokes—with pigs, cattle, pumpkins, and Christmas trees. His mother once served as a dairy princess, but dairy cattle weren’t part of Connor’s life until college. After studying animal science across Cornell, Purdue, and now UC Davis, he’s seen “different pockets of cows across the country,” as he puts it. But it wasn’t until arriving at Davis that he found the right intersection of ruminant biology and real-world impact.