Simplifying carbon footprint assessments for Australian beef producers

Summary

There is a need to determine the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and sequestration sources of beef-producing farms to help inform farm-level decision making and marketing efforts for low carbon or carbon neutral livestock products. This must be underpinned by a carbon footprint (CF) framework for Australian contexts and methods for efficiently quantifying the CF of beef-producing farms.

In response, this project delivered a set of minimum standards providing a systematic approach to the CF process. 

This investment has enabled progress to be made towards standardisation and simplification of Carbon Footprint (CF) assessment of Australian beef producers to inform farm-level decision making and marketing efforts for low carbon or carbon neutral livestock products.

Objectives

The objectives of this project were to:

• review existing CF methods and frameworks
• select a preferred method and framework to be applied on a preliminary case study and for further development and testing
• report a preferred carbon footprint method and framework for producers to determine their carbon footprint
• present a simplified set of data requirements for farm and industry scale carbon footprint assessment developed in consultation with industry wide data managers
• present up to seven case study farms that include analysis of key variables and summary of improvement options.

Key findings

The first major output of this project was the development of a common framework and set of minimum standards for determining the CF of beef and sheep farms. These are freely provided to service providers working on carbon assessments in the Australian red meat industry as an Appendix to the Technical Manual for Carbon Accounting.

Simplifications such as those identified in this project are important for facilitating the upscaling of CF assessments across the Australian beef industry.

Additionally, the project demonstrates the distinction between carbon footprints and carbon accounts as they relate to scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. Generally, a carbon account covers scope 1 and 2 emissions within an operational or organisational boundary, whereas a CF covers scopes scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.

Benefits to industry

The findings of this project promote producer engagement with the concepts of CF assessment by making the process of determining a CF more practical and efficient.

The minimum standards for CF and carbon account assessment developed under this project are important for encouraging a systematic approach to the CF process. These standards, which are appended to the Carbon Accounting Technical Manual, set the framework upon which industry efforts to achieve carbon neutrality will be assessed.

The present research shows the process of providing inventory data to a simplified CF calculator can be improved by providing regional default values for a select set of herd parameters (bull inclusion rate, cow weight and weaning rate) and many farm services (diesel, petrol, superphosphate and lime). Conversely, CF calculators would benefit by setting quality control thresholds on user input relating to mortality rate and steer weight for age.

MLA action

Outputs from this project are freely provided to service providers working on carbon assessments in the Australian red meat industry.

MLA is using the outputs as a basis for training resources to enable stakeholders to develop carbon footprints and carbon accounts.

Future research

The minimum standards developed as part of this research is intended to be a working document. A working group should be convened at the end of 2022 to review the relevancy of the standards and revise them as appropriate. This would set a revision interval of approximately three years.