Cattle Australia says emissions calculations no longer fit for purpose

Cattle Australia has called on regulators to update their greenhouse gas emission calculations, saying the science on methane emissions from beef cattle needs to change to recognise its different emissions profile.

“The beef industry is unique, in that methane is the largest attributable greenhouse gas to our sector, not carbon dioxide,” CA CEO Dr Chris Parker said.

“It is important to recognise that notwithstanding their warming effect, methane emissions are part of a 12-year, short-lived biogenic cycle and therefore have a different impact on global warming than emissions from fossil fuels which are additional to the atmosphere and persist for thousands of years, if not millennia.”

Dr Parker said the current methodologies risk policy missteps and unfair burdens on a critical sector of the economy resulting in costly interventions and greater difficulty accessing financial services, which would have direct implications on production costs and asset values.

Cattle Australia stated that the beef industry has specific nuances when it comes to GHG emissions, and there needs to be more work done to understand the biogenic nature of methane emissions from grass-fed cattle and the manner in which this contributes both to net GHG emissions and to atmospheric warming.

“It is crucial Government and industry research efforts are in sync, and producers have access to accurate data on the net effect of both their CO2 and their methane emissions – something which is currently missing," Dr Parker said.

CA referenced a 2023 report from the CSIRO, Pathways to climate neutrality for the Australian red meat industry, that acknowledged different targets are needed for different types of emissions in order to measure the industry’s progress towards achieving a state of climate neutrality.

“Cattle Australia supports a target to be climate neutral, a point at which emissions from the beef industry will have no additional impact on global temperature rise,” Dr Parker said.

“The Australian beef supply chain has shown its commitment with significant contributions towards mitigating its emissions and will continue to do so, with large sections of the industry already sequestering more CO₂ than they produce.

“Given the scale of Australian grazing land, beef producers also have the ability to sequester carbon in vegetation and soil like no other sector.”

Speaking to APlus News, Adam Coffey, Vice-Chair of Cattle Australia said “Livestock emissions are not like an exhaust pipe. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have recognised that there is a problem with putting all gases into the one bag of CO2 equivalency” he said.

“When it comes to the land, it all has an emissions profile. If there is no ruminant, the grass will rot, or it’s going to burn, or native animals will eat it and they also produce methane. That won’t change if farmers are forced off the land.

“The average joe on the street inherently understands that concept but they’ve been told there is this massive problem. It is up to us as cattle producers to fund research and push back with the science.”

Cattle Australia and AuctionsPlus hosted a panel on the topic at Beef 2024. The full video will be available soon.