Engagement

CONSULTING HIGHLIGHT

“Reducing climate impacts of beef production” was a collaborative consulting project by Daniela for the Climate and Land Use Alliance, with The Nature Conservancy. 

This project consisted of a meta-analysis of all available comparative Life Cycle Assessment studies looking at the carbon emissions footprint of different beef production systems.

The project compared global regions and different management approaches. The effort compiled data from 292 comparisons of “improved” versus “conventional” beef production. Results, which were published in the prestigious journal Global Change Biology,  indicated that net beef greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced substantially via changes in management. On average, a 48% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions per unit of beef was achieved at sites using carbon sequestration management strategies on grazed lands, and an 8% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions was achieved at sites using growth efficiency strategies. However, net-zero emissions were only achieved in 2% of studies. Among regions, studies from Brazil had the greatest improvement, with management strategies for carbon sequestration and efficiency reducing beef greenhouse gas emissions by 57%. In the USA, carbon sequestration strategies also reduced beef greenhouse gas emissions by over 100% in a few rangeland systems, whereas efficiency strategies were not successful at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, possibly because of high baseline efficiency in the region. Thisproject offered insight into pathways to substantially reduce beef production’s global greenhouse gas impact, while highlighting that the only pathway to drastic reductions in carbon emissions is diet switching away from beef.