Carbon footprinting of lamb and beef production systems: insights from an empirical analysis of farms in Wales, UK

Abstract

SUMMARYCarbon footprinting is an increasingly important method of communicating the climate change impacts of food production to stakeholders. Few studies utilize empirical data collected from farms to calculate the carbon footprints of lamb and beef. Data from two farms in Wales, UK, were employed to undertake such an analysis for two system boundaries.Within a system boundary that considers the embodied greenhouse gases (GHGs) in inputs and on-farm emissions, producing 1 kg of lamb releases 1·3–4·4 kg CO2 eq/kg live weight (case study farm 1) and 1·5–4·7 kg CO2 eq/kg live weight (case study farm 2). The production of beef releases 1·5–5·3 and 1·4–4·4 kg CO2 eq/kg live weight.Within a wider system boundary that also includes GHG emissions from animals and farm soils, lamb released 8·1–31·7 and 20·3–143·5 kg CO2 eq/kg live weight on the two case study farms, and beef released 9·7–38·1 and 18·8–132·6 kg CO2 eq/kg live weight. The difference in emissions for this system boundary relates to nitrous oxides emitted from the organic soils on case study farm 2.These values overlap with nearly all other studies of GHG emissions from lamb and beef production. No direct comparisons between studies are possible due to substantial differences in the methodological approaches adopted.

Life Cycle Assessment of a Modern Northern Great Plains U.S. Swine Production Facility

“…All LCA input data were normalized to this per head of swine unit of measure. Study results using our per head of swine functional unit are comparable to other commonly used functional units, such as kg of pork produced leaving the facility (Basset-Mens and van der Werf, 2005;Eriksson et al, 2005;Edwards-Jones et al, 2009) by dividing our results by net pig growth (89 kg), or kg of hot standard carcass (Peters et al, 2010) by dividing our results by net pig growth times 0.74.…”

“…For example, Edwards- Jones et al (2009) reported that methane enteric emissions from sheep and cattle (708.8 to 2308.1 CO 2 eq/ha/year) were significantly higher than manure emissions (25.9 to 79.5 CO 2 eq/ha/year). Peters et al (2010) also reported that the primary source of GHG emissions was enteric methanogenesis for their study of Australian red meat production (0.18 kg CH 4 / head of cattle/day) and that 38% reduction of enteric methane emissions occurred when utilizing grain instead of grass feed.…”

“…Most studies have focused on production within the European Union (EU) (Basset-Mens and van der Werf, 2005;Eriksson et al, 2005;Nunez and Fermoso, 2005;Basset-Mens et al, 2007;Dalgaard et al, 2007;Edwards-Jones et al, 2009) or Australia (Peters et al, 2010;Wiedemann et al, 2010), and only few North American-based studies are currently available. Direct comparisons between these studies and those presented within this or other North American-based studies can be challenging due to (1) differences in genetic make-up of EU swine herd; (2) utilization of nontraditional (from a U.S. perspective) feedstuff; (3) typically less-efficient ventilation systems for EU facilities; (4) differences in market weight pigs as EU market pigs are generally lighter weight resulting in greater feed efficiency gains; and (5) differences in manure management practices (Brewer et al, 1998).…”

Developing farm-specific marginal abatement cost curves: Cost-effective greenhouse gas mitigation opportunities in sheep farming systems

“…As an important source of emissions, the agricultural sectors in England and Wales are required to contribute to the UK commitment of reducing total national GHG emissions by 80% by 2050 (from 1990 levels) under the Climate Change Act 2008 (DECC, 2011). Agricultural emissions are dominated by methane (CH 4 ) emitted largely as a by-product of feed fermentation in ruminant animals, and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) primarily produced from soils in response to fertiliser application and excreta deposition (Edwards-Jones et al, 2009;Salisbury et al, 2013). The first and last of these can be primarily attributed to ruminant livestock production.…”

Diversification and use of bioenergy to maintain future grasslands

“…), and thus the carbon footprint per kilogram of output is considerably higher compared to more intensive production systems (Edwards‐Jones et al. ; Gill et al. ).…”