Sustainable intensification in the Brazilian cattle industry: the role for reduced slaughter age

Abstract

The cattle industry in the Brazilian Amazon causes vast deforestation while producing at only one-third of the sustainable capacity. Slaughtering cattle at a younger age directly increases production per hectare per year, all else equal, and provides a potential path for sustainable intensification. Here we show that slaughter age is decreasing in the Amazon biome, but this increase in productivity varies across space and throughout the cattle supply chain. We characterize the properties and municipalities that have reduced slaughter age, providing insights into the incentives and barriers to this form of intensification. Most notably, reductions in slaughter age occurred in regions with low remaining forest cover and on properties with little current deforestation, suggesting that ranchers intensify via slaughter age as an alternative to deforestation. We then estimate how changing production practices to reduce slaughter age can reduce enteric methane emissions, accounting for production of additional feed. Our results indicate that reducing slaughter age through improved pasture and feed sources are a path to lower global GHG emissions from cattle production, particularly as beef is increasingly produced in developing countries with historically higher emissions. Yet in the Amazon, deforestation remains the leading source of GHG emissions, necessitating that any effort to reduce slaughter age must be coupled with strict enforcement of zero-deforestation policy. Our findings demonstrate the potential of policy limiting deforestation as a means to reduce both emissions from deforestation and enteric emissions from cattle.

The carbon footprint of young-beef cattle finishing systems in the Eastern Plains of the Orinoco River Basin of Colombia

“…This is shown from the calculated CH 4 yield ranges of 18.1-18.4 (heifers) and 17.9-18.5 (steers) that match the values from open-circuit respiration chambers values with B. indicus influenced heifers (18.07) and steers (18.4-19.0) that were with fed fresh grasses as reported by Ku-Vera et al (2018) and Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA, 2020), respectively. Although in agreement with Skidmore et al (2022), the present modeling effort followed a single-issue life cycle assessment approach across a wide range of slaughter regimes, the current predictive values for steers (24.2-32.9 months) are well below the estimated steers' lifetime CH 4 emissions of 151.23 kg (36 months) and 201.83 kg (48 months) from Brazilian pasture-based BFS. Interestingly, while using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier 2 methodology Skidmore et al (2022) argued that it is practicable to slaughter lifetime grazing heifers with 168.12 kg of CH 4 emissions at 36 months of age while the present modeling showed that unsupplemented younger heifers (23.9-30.7 months) can be slaughtered at a reduced time to lower enteric CH 4 emissions by ~44%.…”

Outsourcing the dry season: Cattle ranchers' responses to weather shocks in the Brazilian Amazon

“…I include a time trend, t , to control for the overall positive trend in cattle fattening in the region seen in Figure 2. Rondônia is an “old frontier” in the Amazon and has been experiencing steady increases in cattle production (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, 2019, 2019), soy production (Skidmore et al, 2022b), slaughterhouse presence (Vale et al, 2019a, 2019b), and confinement use (Vale et al, 2019a, 2019b) over the last decades. Importantly for this study, the beef industry has been intensifying (Koch et al, 2019; Moffette et al, 2021), including a 440% increase in feedlots in Brazil from 1990–2017 (Vale et al, 2019a, 2019b).…”

“…Confinement of an animal nearly always includes movement from an animal between properties, thereby increasing the number of sales of animals for fattening over the period. Vale et al (2019a, 2019b) discuss a number of reasons for this trend toward greater use of confinement, including better access to soy for feed, which is expanding into the Amazon (Skidmore et al, 2022b) and pressure to reduce land use for pasture in the Amazon. A time trend captures these overarching economic trends and pressures on cattle production in the region, and, importantly, is orthogonal to one‐time weather shocks in the short run, as I study here.…”

“…Today, cattle production is the leading driver of deforestation in the Amazon, and 40% of the nation's herd is in the region (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, 2019Estatística, , 2019Skidmore et al, 2021). Cattle production is largely extensive, or pasture based, and remains unproductive relative to the sustainable capacity of the region (Moffette et al, 2021;Skidmore et al, 2022a). Low investment in soil or pasture has resulted in 40% of pasture in the region being degraded (Ermgassen et al, 2018).…”

“…The GTA lists animals in 12 month age bins. Following Millen and Arrigoni (2013) and Skidmore et al (2022a), I categorize animals slaughtered below 36 months as "young." This crude bin likely does not capture the full extent to which ranchers sell younger animals compared to a typical year.…”