Environmental Impact assessment of a semi-intensive beef cattle production in Brazil’s Northeast

Assessing the environmental impact of ruminant production systems

“…This signifies the complexities of drawing conclusions across multiple impact categories. Willers et al (2017) sought to identify environmental hotspots in semiintensive beef production systems in Brazil's Northeast. The study accounted for two farms: the cow-calf operation and a separate but nearby finishing system.…”

“…The authors considered five impact categories: GWP (reported as climate change); AP (reported as terrestrial acidification); EP (reported as freshwater eutrophication), LU (reported as agricultural land occupation) and fossil fuel depletion. Following Berton et al (2017), Willers et al (2017) used mass allocation to disentangle burdens arising from coproducts at the cow-calf stage. Regarding the identification of hotspots, the authors diverted from conventional approaches and considered pasture processes as separate entities to their modelled livestock.…”

Preface

“…Finally, in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the prevention of land use changes, especially in areas with native vegetation, appeared to be the dominant environmental hotspot. A third study by Willers et al (2016), in this case linked to the environmental analysis of semi-intensive beef cattle production system in Northeast Brazil, confirms the environmental benefits of substituting nitrogen-based chemical fertilizers by organic fertilizers.…”

Social Sustainability Assessment in Livestock Production: A Social Life Cycle Assessment Approach

“…In this analysis, the results are not related to a functional unit because there is no direct correlation [26]. However, for communication purposes, 1 kg of live calf is established as the functional unit, which has been used by other authors in LCA studies [11,27]. The assessment took place in the tropical region of southeastern Mexico in the states of V (in the municipalities of Ursulo Galvan and San Andres Tuxtla) and Y (in the municipalities of Tizimin, Tzucacab, and Merida).…”