The concordance between greenhouse gas emissions, livestock production and profitability of extensive beef farming systems

Abstract

Here we examine the concordance among emissions, production and gross margins of extensive beef farming systems by modelling a range of scenarios for herd management, animal genotype and pasture nutritive quality. We based our simulations on a case-study farm in central Queensland, Australia, and studied the influence of interventions designed for emissions mitigation, increasing productivity, or increasing gross margin. Interventions included replacing urea supplementation with nitrate, finishing cattle on the perennial forage leucaena (L), herd structure optimisation (HO), higher female fecundity (HF), and a leucaena finishing enterprise that had net farm emissions equal to the baseline (leucaena equal emissions; LEE). The HO intervention reduced the ratio of breeding cows relative to steers and unmated heifers, and lowered the ratio of costs to net cattle sales. Gross margin of the baseline, nitrate, L, LEE, HO and HF scenarios were AU$146 000, AU$91 000, AU$153 000, AU$170 000, AU$204 000 and AU$216 000, respectively. Enterprises with early joining of maiden heifers as well as HO and HF further increased gross margin (AU$323 000), while systems incorporating all compatible interventions (HO, HF, early joining, LEE) had a gross margin of AU$315 000. We showed that interventions that increase liveweight turnoff while maintaining net farm emissions resulted in higher gross margins than did interventions that maintained liveweight production and reduced net emissions. A key insight of this work was that the relationship between emissions intensity (emissions per unit liveweight production) or liveweight turnoff with gross margin were negative and positive, respectively, but only when combinations of (compatible) interventions were included in the dataset. For example, herd optimisation by reducing the number of breeding cows and increasing the number of sale animals increased gross margin by 40%, but this intervention had little effect on liveweight turnoff and emissions intensity. However, when herd optimisation was combined with other interventions that increased production, gross margins increased and emissions intensity declined. This is a fortuitous outcome, since it implies that imposing more interventions with the potential to profitably enhance liveweight turnoff allows a greater reduction in emissions intensity, but only when each intervention works synergistically with those already in place.

Greenhouse gas emissions from New Zealand sheep and beef farms

“…Sheep and beef farms in New Zealand are diverse and located over a range of landscapes, where each farm has different natural and capital assets, due to climate, location, aspect, altitude, slope, soil type (natural assets), along with previous investment in fencing, stock water, capital fertiliser, pasture improvement and animal genetics (capital assets). Despite their significance, little information exists describing the impact of the range in on-farm natural and capital assets and management decisions, which are key drivers of GHG emissions across these diverse businesses (Mackay 2008;Harrison et al, 2016). The inherent differences between these critical factors across commercial sheep and beef farms means that a large dataset is required to represent the diversity of these systems.…”

Climate change impacts and adaptation strategies for pasture-based industries: Australian perspective

“…On mixed farms in low-rainfall regions, increasing the proportion of livestock has shown to be beneficial as the returns are less risky with livestock providing better returns than crops in poor years (Ghahramani et al 2020). There are also emerging opportunities for farmers to earn income by reducing GHG emissions through the Australian government's Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) by implementing specific management practices on-farm, although a number of studies have shown that carbon income is relatively low compared with the costs of implementing an ERF mitigation option (Alcock et al 2014;Harrison et al 2016b).…”

Negative relationship between dry matter intake and the temperature-humidity index with increasing heat stress in cattle: a global meta-analysis

“…Despite known relationships between THI and DMI , many modelling approaches of future climate impacts on livestock systems ostensibly have not accounted for direct effects of heat stress on animals (e.g. Harrison et al 2016 ; Pembleton et al 2016 ). In this study, we aimed to develop a more general relationship between THI and DMI that could be used to predict dry matter intake reduction across environments, management and animal genotypes and that could be used as basis to improve future modelling approaches.…”