Environmental trade-offs in UK beef production
There are many choices a farmer makes about reducing the environmental impact of beef production. This project will evaluate trade-offs which may reduce, or counter, the benefits of specific mitigation plans and help identify optimised solutions. Partnering with M&S plc and their supply partners, the project will develop real-world case studies of beef farms for analysis. The project will aim to provide evidence and advice to M&S to limit negative trade-offs. It will evaluate the environmental impact of multiple farms, applying specified farm practices designed to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, using a leading farm-level GHG emissions calculator and will investigate whether there are options that are win-win (where all GHG emissions intensities reduce). The project will use a climate emulator to consider whether cases with trade-offs work out positively or negatively for reducing global warming at different timescales.
Project lead: Michelle Cain (Cranfield University)
Project collaborators: Andrew Loftus (Loftus Farms and Chair NFU Livestock Board, North of England) Peter Kennedy (Marks and Spencer plc), Myles Alle (University of Oxford), Jessica Zionts (University of Oxford)
Findings
- Reducing age of slaughter is often recommended as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for beef. Younger slaughter age systems are more ‘intensive’ with more grain or soy feed, and older slaughter age systems are more ‘extensive’ with more grazing.
- We found that reduced slaughter age is associated with reduced methane emissions but increased nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide emissions.
- Reducing slaughter age does not have a clear link with how much global warming is caused, as you decrease short lived greenhouse gas emissions while increasing the long lived ones.
- Intensive beef production systems with a younger slaughter age can cause more warming than extensive ones with an older slaughter age.
- Cattle in the intensive systems have higher emission per life-month that the ones on the more extensive systems since they are fed more intensively.
Suggestions for further research
Future research should be more focused on the effect that a system has on the climate system rather than relying solely on carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for assessing farms. It is also beneficial to include soil carbon sequestration (SCS) in future studies in this area, as such studies are scarce at the moment and a huge knowledge gap exists here. The few studies that have included SCS only used estimates and concluded that extensive systems could potentially act as carbon sinks, showing the potential for further and more accurate exploration of the topic.
