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the australian farmer
Regulations need to catch up to science on beef emissions
The Australian beef industry plays a unique and important role in the global push to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, however current emissions calculations are stymying its potential to be part of the climate change solution.
Dr Chris Parker
There aren’t many industries in the world quite like the Australian beef sector. We play an important role in food and nutritional security, contribute to the resilience of our commun- ities and nation, and as custodians of more than 50 per cent of the country’s land mass, are proud to play a part in ensuring the sustainability and prosperity of our environment for generations to come. It’s this last point that is particularly important when we consider Australian agriculture’s significant efforts to be part of the solution to climate change. Unlike the burning of fossil fuels, the beef industry is not an exhaust pipe into the atmosphere. More importantly, we are unique, in that methane is the largest attributable greenhouse gas to our sec- tor, rather than carbon dioxide. Here exists an opportunity. However, to fully realise our potential in this space, we must ad- dress a huge limiting factor - greenhouse gas emissions calculations do not reflect the science on beef cattle emissions. Notwithstanding their warming effect, it is impera- tive we recognise methane emissions are part of a 12-year, short-lived biogenic cycle. This means they have a different impact on global warming than emissions from fossil fuels which are additional to the atmosphere and persist for thou-
sands of years, if not millennia. A 2023 report from the CSIRO, Pathways to cli- mate neutrality for the Australian red meat indus- try, recognised different targets are needed for different types of emissions in order to measure the industry’s progress towards achieving a state of climate neutrality. As the peak industry body representing grass-fed beef producers, we have modernised our climate policy and fundamentally support a target to be climate neutral - the point at which emissions from the beef industry will have no additional impact on global temperature rise.
Committed to mitigating emissions The Australian beef supply chain has shown its
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