Carbon, cash, cattle and the climate crisis

Abstract

While society increasingly demands emissions abatement from the livestock sector, farmers are concurrently being forced to adapt to an existential climate crisis. Here, we examine how stacking together multiple systems adaptations impacts on the productivity, profitability and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of livestock production systems under future climates underpinned by more frequent extreme weather events. Without adaptation, we reveal that soil carbon sequestration (SCS) in 2050 declined by 45–133%, heralding dire ramifications for CO2 removal aspirations associated with SCS in nationally determined contributions. Across adaptation-mitigation bundles examined, mitigation afforded by SCS from deep-rooted legumes was lowest, followed by mitigation from status quo SCS and woody vegetation, and with the greatest mitigation afforded by adoption of enteric methane inhibitor vaccines. Our results (1) underline a compelling need for innovative, disruptive technologies that dissect the strong, positive coupling between productivity and GHG emissions, (2) enable maintenance or additional sequestration of carbon in vegetation and soils under the hotter and drier conditions expected in future, and (3) illustrate the importance of holistically assessing systems to account for pollution swapping, where mitigation of one type of GHG (e.g., enteric methane) can result in increased emissions of another (e.g., CO2). We conclude that transdisciplinary participatory modelling with stakeholders and appropriate bundling of multiple complementary adaptation-mitigation options can simultaneously benefit production, profit, net emissions and emissions intensity.

Costs of transitioning to net-zero emissions under future climates

“…Co-designed interventions (singularly and in combination) were further examined using a social science lens, including assessment of adoption barriers, social license to operate, and new skills needed to adopt them. This co-design framework was used to quantify and stack individual whole farm adaptations on top of the baseline farm system, each intervention iteratively re ned by discussing results with the RRG over several cycles 10 .…”

“…Effects of, or interactions caused by, such interventions on or with extraneous social factors, such as prosperity, productivity, risk, environmental stewardship and social license, are often downplayed or ignored completely, even though such collectively factors determine the whether an intervention will be sustainable, and ultimately, successful 8, 9 . Compared with unidisciplinary approaches however, multi-and transdisciplinary work (cross discipline and cross institutional, respectively) tends to be more di cult to lead, and more costly in time and money to execute, and hence the majority of GHG emissions mitigation research continues to progress in siloed pockets [8][9][10] .…”

“…through carbon removals, GHG emissions avoidance, or GHG emissions mitigation), scienti c literature that develops, contrasts and identi es economic pathways to carbon neutral farming systems is scarce. Here, our aim is to (1) codevelop a range of management, genetic, environmental, livestock and landscape interventions for both adapting livestock systems while reducing GHG emissions, (2) analytically cost (economically and biophysically) a range of plausible pathways to net-zero emissions and (3) balance these with the needs of stakeholders within the 'reality' of a working farm and industry co-designing interventions with a 'regional reference group' (RRG) of industry experts and practitioners to ensure relevance, credibility and legitimacy of our proposed adaptation/mitigation interventions 10 . We calibrated our models and social research using two real farms in southern Australia, re ning analytical methods based on feedback from the RRG.…”

The promotion of sustainable land use planning for the enhancement of ecosystem service capacity: Based on the FLUS-INVEST-RUSLE-CASA model

“…While humans have benefited from ESs in various ways, changes in LULC patterns have generated enormous disruptions and stresses on ESs, leading to a cascade of devastating effects. Extreme climate change [ 1 , 2 ], food security [ 3 ], declining biodiversity [ 4 , 5 ], soil retention [ 6 , 7 ], and increased carbon emissions [ 8 , 9 ] all represent important problems. The increase in human activities, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature’s "Living Planet Report 2022" [ 10 ], poses a significant danger to the Earth’s Ecosystem Structure-Function-Services capability.…”